Tim Hardaway on his Hall of Fame wait, Miami Heat career and ‘tears of joy’
Tim Hardaway had already been turned down by the Hall of Fame a few times in recent years. The former Miami Heat point guard didn’t want to experience that feeling of rejection again.
So when Hardaway received another call from the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame on March 28 as one of the finalists for the Class of 2022, he was nervous.
“When you don’t get that nod three or four times and then that call comes in again, you don’t want to get rejected again,” Hardaway said during an interview with the Miami Herald. “That’s how I felt. I was just like, ‘I can’t take anymore rejection from the Hall.’ But I just kept that to myself. I never told anybody.”
Hardaway, 55, answered the phone bracing himself for bad news. But instead Hardaway received the news he had been waiting years to here: He will be inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame as a member of the 2022 class.
“It felt exuberant. There’s nothing that I can do to describe how I felt,” said Hardaway, who now lives in Michigan. “I was still shaking and I was crying. I was numb and everything. I had to take a moment and then I called my kids, I hugged my wife and we cried a little bit. And I called my parents, we cried. I called my friends, we cried. It was just tears of joy.”
The news was officially announced on Saturday in New Orleans, the site of this year’s NCAA Men’s Final Four. Hardaway is one of 13 honorees in the Class of 2022, which also includes San Antonio Spurs guard Manu Ginobili, former NBA coach George Karl, college basketball coach Bob Huggins and former WNBA star Swin Cash, among others.
Hardaway spent the first few seasons of his NBA career with the Golden State Warriors, enjoying success as part of Run TMC alongside Mitch Richmond (the “M”) and Chris Mullin (the “C”). He was then traded to the Heat in the middle of the 1995-96 campaign and spent six seasons in Miami, turning the organization into an Eastern Conference force with the help of Alonzo Mourning and Pat Riley.
Hardaway will now join Mourning, Riley, Richmond and Mullin, among many others, in the Hall of Fame.
“I’m in with my buddies,” Hardaway said. “I’m in with Chris Mullin. I’m in with Mitch Richmond. I’m in with Alonzo Mourning. I’m in with Sarunas Marciulionis. I’m in with my guys that I played with, I’m in with them. I can say that I’m in with them now. My buddies Mitch and Chris, they’re so elated. When I told them, they were more excited than I was.”
The Heat also spent the last few days celebrating Hardaway, who has already received congratulatory messages from many within the organization. Managing general partner Micky Arison, Riley, Mourning, coach Erik Spoelstra, former Heat teammate and current Heat director of college and pro scouting Keith Askins are among those who reached out to Hardaway.
“They congratulated me and they texted me, and you could hear it in the texts,” Hardaway said. “You could like hear it, they were happy, too.”
Hardaway was voted into the NBA All-Star Game five times and also earned All-NBA honors five times. He averaged 17.3 points while shooting 41 percent from the field and 35.6 percent from three-point range, 7.8 assists and 1.5 steals in 367 regular-season games through six seasons with the Heat.
Among the Heat’s all-time leaders, Hardaway ranks first in three-pointers made (806), second in assists (2,867), sixth in steals (541), and ninth in points (6,335) and field goals made (2,252).
“I love my teammates,” Hardaway said of his time with the Heat. “Ike Austin, P.J. Brown, Dan Majerle, Voshon Lenard, Jamal Mashburn, Duane Causwell, Mark Strickland, John Crotty, Gary Grant. Man, we had a ball. It was all about business, but we had fun taking care of business. It was just the camaraderie that when you got there, it was all about let’s win, let’s win, let’s win.
“Playing with a great center in Alonzo Mourning. I had never seen nobody that can block shots like that in my entire life.”
But when asked which Heat accomplishment he’s most proud of, Hardaway pointed to “the fans.”
The Heat had never advanced past the first round of the playoffs before Hardaway arrived. But behind the leadership of Riley and the duo of Hardaway and Mourning, the Heat made the playoffs in six consecutive seasons from 1995 to 2001 and advanced to the Eastern Conference finals in 1997.
“The fans didn’t like basketball. We made them like basketball,” Hardaway said. “We made them understand the game of basketball. They’re football fans, they’re soccer fans, they’re baseball fans. It wasn’t like, ‘Let’s go have some drinks and just go watch the Heat play.’ No. It was, ‘We’re going to watch the Heat play because they’re going to kick some [butt]. Let’s go watch these boys play. Let’s go cheer these guys on.’ That’s what I’m most proud of.”
Hardaway became eligible to enter the Hall of Fame in 2007. He knows the anti-gay comments he made in 2007 on Dan Le Batard’s radio show was a big reason his induction was delayed to 2022.
“They finally saw that I should have a second chance,” Hardaway said. “They made me wait and I do understand why they made me wait. They wanted to put some hurt on me and they put some hurt on me. But I put some hurt on a lot of people myself with my comments. I understand that my comments weren’t right and they never should have been said.”
It’s a moment that Hardaway relives in his head every day. He has since become a gay rights activist and expressed remorse for his comments.
“Every day I make amends. Every day I think about it,” Hardaway said. “A day doesn’t pass that I don’t think about what I said and just be like, ‘That was [messed] up [stuff] that you said, Tim. That was really [messed] up.’”
That’s part of why Hardaway never expected to get into the Hall of Fame. He hoped he would, but he never let himself expect it.
“People were like, ‘You’re going to make it this time. You’re going to make it this time.’ I was like, ‘Listen, I’m not even concentrating on that right now. I don’t even want to talk about it right now,’” Hardaway said.
“That’s the way I was. Until I get that phone call and somebody says, ‘Yeah, you’re in,’ I’m not in and I’m not expecting to get in until I get that phone call.”
That phone call finally came this year.
