Welcoming David to the Hall of Fame are Bill Russell, Irvin Magic Johnson,

Larry Bird, Russ Granick, and Bob Lanier.

Ladies and gentlemen, David Stern.

Bill Russell.

Theresa, I've never led a weekday mass, but I'm going to give it my best shot tonight.

Thank you so much to the Hall of Fame for what it does, for bringing our sport together and dealing with its history.

And Jerry Colangelo leads it so beautifully.

Thank you, Jerry.

And congratulations to all of the enshrinees tonight.

I think it shows the breadth and width of our hall.

It shows a couple of other things as well, but we'll talk about that at another time, because it takes a lot of time for us to express ourselves.

But let me say that...

What are you laughing at, Magic?

Okay?

So each one of these people tells the NBA story.

I grew up actually believing that Harry Gallatin was better than Bill Russell, because I was a Knick fan, and I love this game.

And that's what fanship does when you love a team.

But Bill Russell is someone who is special to the NBA in many unique ways.

First of all, at a time when our sport was under duress because people said it was getting too black,

I remember this guy named Russell who played with this other guy named Koozie, the best basketball that I think ever existed in the world, and it dawned on me that we had something to teach the world.

And Bill Russell, early on, was a man who expressed his views very strongly and independently, and was actually at the March on Washington in 1964.

And we're grateful to him for that.

I was determined that Bill Russell was going to come back to the league, because he was very grouchy when I first got to know him.

Right? Okay.

And it is... I must tell you that one of the highlights of the last several years for me was being in Boston when Bill Russell came home and the statute of Bill Russell was unveiled there.

It was wonderful.

APPLAUSE

And welcome to the Hall of Fame, Bill.

Magic taught us that out of adversity, we in basketball could teach the world something.

We changed the debate on AIDS.

It was bad enough that when Magic announced that he was HIV, that we all thought he was going to die.

I don't know how else to say it.

I'm almost moved to tears every time I'm in his presence, and I love to give him a hug, just to check that he's still there.

And I tell him when he gets a little flabby.

Coming from me, that's kind of interesting.

But Magic... And I actually believed him when he said he would play the game for nothing, because he loved it so much, and that smile...

Is it still true, Magic? Yes? OK.

And he's demonstrated off the court how you give back to the community, not only working with respect to HIV, but investing in the inner city.

He tells us what the best of basketball is possible about.

And I'm moved by him on a regular basis.

Russ...

APPLAUSE

Russ is here because if I were to engage in thanking everyone that had something to do with the success that you celebrate me for, we would be here all night.

And we've been here all night, but it would take us into tomorrow.

LAUGHTER

So let me just say that Russ, to me, is a 30-year colleague at the NBA who is responsible for just a few things, like doing everything, whether it's reacting to FIBA's request that we come into the Olympics, and I'm thankful that Ivan Menini is here, the president of FIBA, representing FIBA, or making sure the WNBA got launched, or making sure the NBA Development League got launched, or, you know, even making sure that our referees did whatever they were supposed to do, except for Joey Crawford, who's here tonight.

You thought I'd let you get away with that, Joey, right?

No. OK?

But on behalf of all of my colleagues, or to all of my colleagues, I say thank you, and Russ is here representing you.

APPLAUSE

You know, Larry Bird, he was grouchy too as a rookie, but he loves this game, and he tells us that if you're a great player, there's a place for you in our league as an investor, as a coach, as a general manager, and as a leader.

And together with Magic,

Larry and Magic, they're forever interwoven.

They even did one of our first music videos together.

You know, it's kind of interesting, right?

I save it. I'm going to do it.

It was incredible.

And to me, he's here representing what it was to have greatness, what it was to have a competition.

I thought when I became commissioner, it was a natural thing that you did.

You went from L.A. to Boston and back to L.A. again, and that's what June was.

It wasn't always to be thus, but it was kind of fun while it lasted.

And finally, Bob Lanier.

Big Bob is important to me for so many reasons because he's such a great friend, but he was the president of the union in 1983, and we negotiated that collective bargaining agreement.

To say intensely is not enough of an expression, and in fact, Bob taught me not to be afraid of size because having him glower at me from across the table was intimidating for a bit, but I got over it.

But what people don't know is after we did the collective bargaining,

I said, let's talk about drugs.

And Bob said, let's talk about drugs.

I don't want kids to think that if you're a very large black man, you must be on drugs.

We're going to have an anti-drug agreement.

It wasn't me. It was Bob Lanier.

And I said, okay, what should we do if somebody doesn't turn themselves in?

He said, throw them out for life.

I said, Bob, that's a little bit rough.

So we had a deal that said you're out for life, but you can come back if we let you back in after two years.

That wasn't Bob. That was me.

And then and now, Bob, big Bob, tours the NBA as the ambassador towards the world for NBA Cares.

He has given meaning to what we can do off the court.

Together with Dikembe, the two of them crisscrossed the world, giving voice to the fact that we as a league have the ability to express our values, that we, and I mean as a league with teams that do the same thing, that we are responsive to our communities, that we are socially responsible.

And together with FIBA, our friends at FIBA, we go all over the world.

Dikembe just returned from South Africa for our 10th time doing Basketball Without Borders, which we do all over the world.

And Bob is about the greatest expression of what we do as anyone has ever been in our game.

Thank you, Bob.

I have all kinds of other good things to talk about, but I'm going to hit the 10-minute mark and observe it, okay?

I'm a fan.

I went to the games, those same blue seats that Nancy Lieberman spoke about.

You paid 50 cents with your G.O. card and you went to see the Knicks at the Garden.

You could see a doubleheader.

Teams that people in our league don't even know used to be, the Syracuse Nationals, the Philadelphia Warriors.

It was a wonderful, wonderful time.

The Rochester Royals.

And you've got to love the game.

And everything we do is always about the game.

Always about the game.

When Diane and I were in China, we had a guide that told us she was a big fan of the Red Oxen.

Of course, she was corrected.

She meant bulls.

When we were in Lithuania, you know, the head of the Communist Party of Kaunas,

Sharunas' hometown, wanted to argue with me.

It was 1988.

Didn't I think the NBA salary cap was un-American because there was no room for Portland to sign Sabonis?

When we were in...

You know, we were all over.

When I was in Paris and was sitting with the Prime Minister of France at a game, he said, because it was the Bulls, could he go into the locker room?

I thought, here it comes, Michael Jordan.

He said, I'd like to meet Dennis Rodman.

It's always about the game.

It is so much about the game that when I became commissioner, one day, my mom, who lived in...

who is no longer with us, who lived in Miami, who had been going to Heat games, she did know that the ball...

It took her a while to understand that the ball was inflated and not stuffed, but she was there, and she called me one day to say,

I met Dr. Irving.

Okay, Mom.

And then she called me again, and she said,

Honey, can I ask you a question?

I said, Yes, Mom, what is it?

And she really called me in the office to ask questions.

She said, Do you assign the officials?

I had a feeling something was coming.

I said, Mom, why is that?

Why are you asking?

She said, Well, our boys have had a rough patch.

I said, Mom, I'm your boy.

Okay?

But if you have any doubt that it's about the game, it is always about the game.

And we have wonderfully articulated our values together.

We go around the world.

We talk about exercise, fitness, and good health.

We enroll a million Indian children into junior NBA and junior WNBA because we teach them about discipline, about hard work, about sacrifice, about teamwork, and about a sense of confidence that comes from accomplishing something.

It's absolutely incredible, but it's always about the game.

And my partner in all of that has always been my wife, Diane, who is here tonight.

And my boys, Eric and Andrew, are with me.

They all suffer a bit.

I'm...

You know, they tell me what I'm doing wrong on a regular basis, and they lecture me about basketball, and they've always done that.

But I try, and I persevere.

And I think the future is incredibly bright.

And the reason I'm here is because of thousands of people, thousands of people over the years who have done so much about what you saw on that tape.

And so I'm going to ask all of you to stand up, okay?

I don't... Not so you can applaud, but so you can see that we've got fans of NBA, women's basketball, you know, the media, the teams, the NBA.

Thank you very much.

You're responsible for it, and the league is in spectacular shape going forward under the extraordinary leadership of Adam Silver.

Thank you for having me.

Good night.