Dave McMenaminESPN Staff Writer6:33 PM ET2 Minute Read
SALT LAKE CITY — Dwyane Wade, Dirk Nowitzki, Pau Gasol and Gregg Popovich headed the list of finalists for the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame Class of 2023, announced Friday during NBA All-Star Weekend.
“I love the class,” Hall of Fame chairman Jerry Colangelo said at a news conference. “I think this is a loaded class. … I think that’s unique in that we have a lot of first-timers and it’s unusual for someone to make it on the first ballot. But this is going to be so unique in class. Because there might be four or five first-time visitors. So I’m really looking forward to it.
Wade won three championships with the Miami Heat and was a 2006 NBA Finals MVP, 13-time All-Star and 2008 Olympic gold medalist for US basketball.
Nowitzki is the Nowitzki 6th all-time scorer in the NBA with 31,550 points, was named league MVP in 2007, and won a championship with the Dallas Mavericks in 2011 when he was named Finals MVP.
Gasol won two championships with the Los Angeles Lakers alongside Kobe Bryant and was a six-time All-Star and two-time Olympic silver medalist for Spain.
Popovich is the all-time NBA leader, winning coaching victories and leading the San Antonio Spurs to five championships.
Other finalists included former Spurs point guard and 2007 Finals MVP Tony Parker; Becky Hammon, a six-time All-Star in her WNBA career; and Jennifer Azzi, a collegiate national champion at Stanford, a 1996 Olympic gold medalist for USA Basketball and a five-year WNBA veteran.
Other coach finalists included Purdue men’s basketball all-time leader Gene Keady; Marian Washington, who had 560 wins in 31 years as coach of the University of Kansas women’s team; Gary Blair, who led Texas A&M to the 2011 Women’s Championship; Gene Bess, who won 1,300 games and two national championships with Three Rivers Community College; and David Hixon, who won 826 games in 42 years at Amherst College.
The candidates for the August Ceremony in Springfield, Massachusetts will be announced during April’s NCAA Final Four ceremonies in Houston.
Admission is determined by a vote conducted by a 24-member honors committee. A finalist must receive at least 18 votes from the committee to be admitted to the hall.
“A young Dwyane Wade never thought this moment would come,” said Wade, who owns a stake in the NBA All-Star host team, the Utah Jazz, after the finalists were announced. “Sometimes when you’re young and you have a dream, a lot of people don’t believe in your dream because it seems so far-fetched. But I’ve always been a dreamer.”
Gasol was also present at the press conference, sitting in the front row next to Wade while NBA TV’s Matt Winer moderated the event.
“As Kobe once said, ‘It’s really about the journey,'” Gasol said. “These kinds of recognitions, which are an incredible honor, come when you’ve been doing things very, very well for a long time. And if you love what you do.”