Carmelo Anthony and Dwight Howard got emotional after their Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame announcement.
Announced Saturday, the two are officially a part of a 2025 HOF class that also includes Danny Crawford, Billy Donovan, Sue Bird, Sylvia Fowles, Maya Moore and Micky Arison, and they couldn’t contain their emotions (and excitement) in the aftermath. Speaking at the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame press conference, both Anthony and Howard spoke about a broad range of topics within their careers, including answering the question of whether or not they thought they would ever be inducted.
Both Anthony and Howard were a part of the prestigious 2008 U.S. Olympic men’s basketball team aka the Redeem Team, where they restored American basketball dominance on the international stage after a disappointing loss in the 2004 Olympics. The ’08 squad went a flawless 8-0 in Beijing, securing the gold medal with a thrilling 118-107 victory.
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“Thank you, first of all. Again, I keep trying to come up with things to say for these moments and there’s nothing that I can say that’s actually going to express the way that I feel or the way that I’m just trying to take this moment in,” Anthony told reporters at the conference, which was captured by ASAP Sports, adding, “To be sitting here as an inductee of the ’25 Hall of Fame, not just as an individual but also as a team, 2008 USA Team member. It’s a lot to put into perspective.”
“You get the call about coming to be entered into the Hall of Fame for what you’ve done for your career and as an individual and what you’ve brought to this game of basketball. Then on the flipside, I was actually waiting on my other call for the 2008 Olympic team. I didn’t get that call. I had to come here and hear the announcement.”
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“I don’t think there was any doubts, but I just didn’t think about anything but I had an amazing career. I gave 110 percent every time I stepped on the court. And what’s going to happen is going to happen. When I got the call, it was the best feeling in the world,” said Howard of his selection. “For me, I’ve never thought about it, to be honest with you. You’re just playing basketball and you look up, okay, you accomplished this. And it’s on to the next. You don’t really have time to sit back and reflect on any of the accomplishments as you’re going through the journey,” Anthony expanded.
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“So I’ve never thought about the Hall of Fame. You start thinking about it as you — your work will tell you when to start thinking about it. The work you put in would tell you. Things that I was doing were starting to tell me, okay, Melo, you put in the work. You’re in the game for 19 years. You have all of these accolades, but it’s not just about winning and losing why we’re up here. It’s actually the impact you actually have for the game of basketball.”
“For me, globally, having an impact for the game of basketball, having an impact from a grassroots program, to college, to professional, to international basketball, to me that’s when I started looking at the Hall of Fame for basketball. It wasn’t just about what I was doing on the court. It was, like, how am I impacting this game from a global standpoint? If my peers and people I played against and owners and things like that look at me and say, hey, Melo is a great representation of this game of basketball around the world, then, yeah, I’ll start looking at the Hall of Fame after that.”
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Well, Carmelo Anthony and Dwight Howard, you are officially Hall of Famers and it is beyond well-deserved.
