TORONTO — Shaquille O’Neal was only 9 years old when his stepfather began teaching him basketball with a plan to dominate like Wilt Chamberlain, Bill Russell and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.
Young Shaquille didn’t even know who they were.
Now he’s on the verge of joining them in basketball immortality.
“He told me this day would happen and I never believed him,” O’Neal said of Phillip Harrison, who raised Shaq along with his mother and died in 2013.
O’Neal was chosen Friday as a finalist for induction into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, joining Allen Iverson to highlight the potential class.
Yao Ming could accompany them in Springfield, Mass., in September, though he was nominated by the Hall of Fame’s International Committee and wasn’t subject to the step O’Neal and Iverson had to clear Friday.
Former Phoenix Suns point guard Kevin Johnson, college coaches Tom Izzo, Bo Ryan, Lefty Driesell, Eddie Sutton and Muffet McGraw, women’s superstar Sheryl Swoopes, longtime referee Darrel Garretson, high school coaches Leta Andrews and Robert Hughes, 10-time AAU national champion Wayland Baptist University and John McClendon, the first African-American coach in a professional league, were also chosen as finalists by the North American or Women’s Committees.
The entire class will be unveiled April 4 in Houston before the men’s NCAA championship game, and the enshrinement ceremony is set for Sept. 9 in what could be an overcrowded birthplace of basketball if O’Neal, Yao, Iverson and their fans are all there.
“We’re going to go on tour,” joked Jerry Colangelo, chairman of the Hall of Fame board. “It could be a big one.”
O’Neal and Iverson couldn’t be much different as people or players. The 7-foot-1 O’Neal, dressed in business attire wearing a jacket and tie, lived up to his stepfather’s vision by becoming an inside force like Chamberlain, Russell and Abdul-Jabbar on his way to four NBA championships and a league MVP award.
Iverson came casually dressed as he did for most of his career, wearing a T-shirt, New York Yankees hat and faded jeans with a couple of neck chains as accessories. It was his look that made him as popular with a generation of fans as his game.
“I’m a product of Michael Jordan, Isiah Thomas, Magic Johnson, Charles Barkley, Shaquille O’Neal, all those guys that paved the way for us,” Iverson said. “They might not have no idea of what they did for us as kids wanting to be like them.”
