Hardaway channeled ‘fight’ to solidify Hall of Fame credentials
Former UTEP star one of 8 inductees
CHICAGO — Tim Hardaway was halfway to what on Saturday formally became a Hall of Fame career, and suddenly there was question about whether he had enough remaining fight.
Enter Pat Riley, Alonzo Mourning and the Miami Heat — and immediately the gloves were off.
The rest of the story now can be told in September in Springfield, Massachusetts, when the former UTEP Miner star follows Riley and Mourning into the sport’s ultimate shrine.
Also selected this year were former NBA star Manu Ginobili, WNBA champion and two-time college national champion Swin Cash, former NBA coach George Karl, longtime college coach Bob Huggins, WNBA champion and two-time Olympic Gold Medalist Lindsay Whalen, NCAA national championship coach and former WNBA Coach of the Year Marianne Stanley, and former NBA official Hugh Evans.
The class will be enshrined into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Massachusetts, on Sept. 10.
“We put the Miami Heat on the map and made them what Pat Riley wanted the Miami Heat to be,” Hardaway told the South Florida Sun Sentinel from New Orleans, where on Saturday at the NCAA Final Four he formally was named to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame’s Class of ’22. “It started when I got traded there in February in ’96.”
That also was when Hardaway, in the wake of his Run TMC success alongside Mitch Richmond (the “M”) and Chris Mullin (the “C”), found himself benched by Golden State coach Rick Adelman, some left to wonder whether, at 29, Hardaway had run his course as an elite-tier point guard.
Enter Riley and then-Heat general manager Randy Pfund, who saw anger that could be channeled into what would become perennial Heat playoff runs.
“That,” Hardaway said to the Sun Sentinel in New Orleans, “was just the faith of Pat Riley understanding that I could still play, Pat Riley and Randy Pfund understanding that I could still play, that I had still a lot left in the tank.”
Only for all the flash and sizzle that Hardaway had displayed under his best of Warriors days under coach Don Nelson, Riley was looking more for fight and snarl. Even now, that draws a knowing laugh from Hardaway, 55.
“That’s the way I grew up in Chicago,” Hardaway said. “That’s the way I grew up on the South Side. We get real nasty and we go out there and just play. And we can talk a bunch of stuff and still go out there and play. And when I saw I had that chance to come to Miami, I told Zo, ‘He needs to trade for me.’ And I knew what I could do.”