Basketball Hall of Fame Enshrinement Weekend Begins

SPRINGFIELD, MA — Al Attles asked his wife to stand and be recognized, initiating a trend that prevailed throughout an informal ceremony Thursday as the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame enshrinement weekend got underway with presentation of official jackets to the Class of 2019.

"I didn't expect that at all," Wilhelmina Attles said in an interview following the ceremony. "Sometimes over the years, he'll make a joke, but not to have me stand. He's the celebrity; I've always liked to keep a low profile."

Her husband was the recipient of the John W. Bunn Lifetime Achievement Award from the Hall of Fame in 2014; five years later, the 82-year-old was elected as a full member in the category of contributor.

Since joining the then-Philadelphia Warriors as a player in 1960, Attles has maintained a place in the organization for nearly six decades, moving across the country when the franchise moved to the San Francisco Bay area. He was a standout defensive player, a player-coach (one of the first African-American head coaches in NBA history), a championship-winning coach with Golden State in 1975, a general manager and currently serves as a team ambassador.

His wife said, "We've been married for 55 years, but he's been married to the Warriors longer than that. I tease him all the time about being a bigamist, that the Warriors are his wife and I'm just his second wife."

After briefly addressing the crowd of sports media and family members in the Hall of Fame's Center Court, in what emcee Eddie Doucette described as "that big Barry White voice," the affable Attles spoke with Patch about an old-school coach being his biggest influence in the game.

"I had a high school coach, Mr. Lester, for whom I played football and basketball," he said. "He used to read the riot act to us, that regardless of what you did, he wanted to make sure you did the things necessary to make you a better person. A lot of athletes think because they play sports, they can do anything they want and they don't have to do what everyone else is doing. Mr. Lester would threaten us, meaning, 'You stay after school, we'll lock the door, you and I will go in the room and whoever comes out wins that battle.' I said, 'Mr. Lester, I might go in that room, but guess what? You win that battle.' He wa a nice man, and I really appreciated him."

Attles was joined on stage by fellow electees Vlade Divac, Bobby Jones, Sidney Moncrief, Jack Sikma, Teresa Weatherspoon and Paul Westphal, as well as family members of Bill Fitch and the late Carl Braun and Chuck Cooper. Representatives of the 1957-59 Tennessee A&I teams and the 1948-82 Wayland Baptist University program were also on hand.

Weatherspoon was the most enthusiastic member of the new Hall of Fame class, grinning broadly and practically dancing her way across the stage.

"I'm not afraid to show this type of emotion; if you ever watched me play, I played with emotion, I played because I love this game," she told Patch following the ceremony. "I didn't play for an individual accolades, for anybody to celebrate me or to recognize me. I simply played because I love playing the game of basketball, and I would have never thought this would happen."

The former Louisiana Tech point guard, who won the NCAA championship and an Olympic gold medal in 1988 and later became one of the original players in the WNBA, described her feelings about election to the ultimate shrine by saying, "You can't find the words; you can say it means everything, it's an amazing feeling, it's unbelievable, it's a WOW moment. You can use all of that, but you really can't get it all out of what it really means because you start to reflect a lot about the journey. When you start to reflect about the journey, and you get here and your name is called and you have this jacket on, it's an unbelievable moment and a tremendous blessing."

Westphal, a first-round draft pick of the Boston Celtics out of the University of Southern California in 1969, became a five-time NBA All-Star, and has had his jersey number retired by both his college alma mater and the NBA's Phoenix Suns. He first became eligible for Hall of Fame consideration in 1990, and finally made it after nearly three decades of waiting.

Making light of that fact during an interview with Patch, Westphal quipped, "Hey, I'm getting in before Kobe Bryant and Kevin Garnett! I'm really pleased this group of electors thought I was worthy; it's a great honor."

Westphal spoke highly about a former college teammate with whom he has remained friends for nearly half a century.

"Dana Pagett was a great high school player and we were great friends; I went to USC because of him," he recalled. "We ended up fighting for the same position, and the coach put me ahead of him, but we stayed friends. What happened wasn't necessarily fair, but you can't have a better teammate than that. We fought every day in practice, but it didn't hurt our relationship off the court. There are very few people you could point to that have that type of integrity."

Asked about contemporaries he feels should deserve Hall of Fame consideration, Westphal immediately named former teammates Walter Davis ("a terrific player...") and Alvan Adams ("he proved you don't have to be 7 feet tall to be a great center..."), as well as former coaches John MacLeod and Cotton Fitzsimmons.

The 2019 enshrinement ceremony is scheduled for Friday, Sept. 6 at 7:30 p.m. at Springfield Symphony Hall. Thursday's full jacket ceremony is embedded below, from WWLP-TV.