SPRINGFIELD, Mass. -- When Sidney Moncrief (Little Rock Hall, Arkansas Razorbacks) arrived in the NBA, some people said he couldn't shoot the ball.
On Friday night, he attributed that mistaken idea to Eddie Sutton, his coach at Arkansas, and the three hours a day the team practiced defense.
Those long practice sessions laid the foundation for his love of playing defense, which he took with him to the NBA.
Of course it wasn't true that he couldn't shoot the ball, and Moncrief, a five-time NBA All-Star, was inducted Friday night into the Basketball Hall of Fame.
Along with Moncrief, the Class of 2019 included Jack Sikma, Vlade Divac, Paul Westphal, Bobby Jones, Al Attles and Teresa Weatherspoon. Chuck Cooper and Carl Braun were inducted posthumously, and Bill Fitch was unable to attend for health reasons.
Also honored at Springfield's Symphony Hall were the 1957-59 teams from Tennessee A&I, a historically black school that won three straight NAIA titles a decade before Texas Western fielded the first all-black starting five in the NCAA Tournament.
The Hutcherson Flying Queens from Wayland Baptist -- the first school to offer women's basketball scholarships -- were also inducted. Sponsored by a local aircraft company, they won a record 131 consecutive games in the 1950s.
Moncrief, along with Marvin Delph and Ron Brewer, were known as "The Triplets," and renewed interest in Arkansas' basketball program after years of little interest.
The team won the Southwest Conference championship and made a Final Four appearance in 1978. Moncrief was drafted 5th overall in 1979 by the Milwaukee Bucks and spent the next 10 seasons there. During that decade, they had the third best winning percentage behind only the Boston Celtics and Los Angeles Lakers.
Moncrief won the first two NBA Defensive Player of the Year awards in 1983 and 1984.
He played 767 games in his career, averaging 15.6 points, 1.2 steals and 3.6 assists per game. He played one season in Atlanta.
Moncrief coached the University of Arkansas at Little Rock in 1999-2000.
Sikma used his induction speech to make a plea for the NBA to return to Seattle, where he led the SuperSonics to the 1979 NBA title.
It was the only title for the franchise that moved to Oklahoma City in 2008.
"There's a hole in Seattle that needs to be filled," Sikma said to a crowd that included NBA Commissioner Adam Silver and many other league executives. "Speaking for all Sonics fans, it's our greatest hope that the NBA will soon find a pathway to bring basketball back to Seattle.
"It's time."
A seven-time All-Star in nine seasons with the Sonics, Sikma also played five years with the Milwaukee Bucks and remains the only center in league history to lead the league in free throw percentage for a season (.922 in 1987-88).
Divac, who won an Olympic silver medal with Yugoslavia and another with Serbia after the country broke apart in a civil war, was one of the NBA's first European stars. Among those he thanked were his former Yugoslav teammate Toni Kukoc, who is Croatian.
"The people of the Balkans are like a dysfunctional family. We may fight and argue, but in the end we are family," said Divac, who played eight years with the Los Angeles Lakers and six with the Sacramento Kings. "To me basketball was always about love."
Weatherspoon was presented by Cynthia Cooper, Sheryl Swoopes and Tina Thompson, who were on the Houston Comets when Weatherspoon hit "The Shot" -- a half-court buzzer-beater to give the New York Liberty a victory in Game 2 of the WNBA Finals.
"I know you guys are still salty about that shot, but you got to see it again tonight," said Weatherspoon, who won an Olympic gold medal in 1988 and also played in Italy and Russia.
"The game has meant so many things to me," she said. "It's been my sanctuary; it's been my safe haven. The game has allowed me to see things I never thought I'd see, meet people I never thought I'd meet."
Cooper, who died in 1984, was a Celtics forward who was the first African-American player drafted by the NBA. He made his debut in 1950 at the same time as Earl Lloyd and Nat "Sweetwater" Clifton.
"The NBA's color barrier was broken, and the game of basketball was forever changed," his son, Chuck Cooper III said.
Cooper's presenters -- 10 Hall of Famers that included Bill Russell, Larry Bird, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Julius Erving -- were so illustrious that host Ahmad Rashad stopped the ceremony to take a selfie with them.
Tennessee A&I, which was then known as Tennessee State, was represented by Dick Barnett, who listed some of the civil rights battles going on in the era when the Tigers played in the NAIA tournament because the NCAA and NIT weren't open to them: Emmitt Till, Rosa Parks, the Little Rock Nine, Brown vs. Board of Education.
"As the TSU Tigers won their third title, I could see that the death knell of segregation was sounding," he said on a video, going on to quote from the song "Dixie" as the entire hall fell silent.
"Old times there are not forgotten," he said. "Look away. Look away. Look away. Dixie Land."
Sports on 09/07/2019