The late Kobe Bryant headlines the list of inductees for Saturday night's Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame ceremony in Uncasville, Conn. (AP photo)

Kobe. Timmy. KG.

The full names weren’t necessary. The first name, or even the initials, were enough. Such was the star power that Kobe Bryant, Tim Duncan and Kevin Garnett carried throughout their careers and still possess, all of them now five years removed from their final games as NBA greats. Each was an NBA champion, an MVP, an Olympic gold medalist, annual locks for All-Star and All-Defensive teams.

And now, the ultimate honor comes their way: On Saturday night in Uncasville, Connecticut, they all officially become members of the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.

“I like to think that all three of us pushed each other to be the best that we could be,” Garnett said last year, shortly after learning that he was part of the same class with Bryant and Duncan. “To be going in such a class like this, I’m more than honored.”

The combined numbers for the trio are impressive: 11 championships (with Bryant and Duncan getting five apiece), 48 All-Star nods, more than 86,000 career points, and roughly $900 million in NBA salaries — a figure that doesn’t take into account their off-court earnings. Bryant is the No. 4 scorer in NBA history, Duncan 15th, Garnett 18th.

Their star power is so bright that the Hall of Fame changed its rules for a year: For the 2020 class the electors enacted a one-year suspension of direct elections from the Veteran’s, Women’s Veteran’s, Early African-American Pioneers and Contributors categories.

The electors didn’t want any deserving nominee from those groups overlooked.

“When we selected this group for induction, we immediately knew that this would be, maybe, one of the great classes of all-time,” said Jerry Colangelo, the chairman of the Hall of Fame’s Board of Governors. “I mean, the people going in, the three headliners in Kobe and Garnett and Tim Duncan … that says it all.”

There are nine members of the class that will be enshrined Saturday: Alongside Bryant, Duncan and Garnett are new LSU women’s coach and former Baylor coach Kim Mulkey, former Bentley coach Barbara Stevens, four-time Olympic gold medalist Tamika Catchings, two-time NBA champion coach Rudy Tomjanovich, three-time Final Four coach Eddie Sutton and former FIBA secretary general Patrick Baumann. Bryant, Sutton and Baumann will all be enshrined posthumously.

Duncan averaged 19.0 points, 10.8 rebounds, 3.0 assists, 2.2 blocks per game in 19 NBA seasons with the San Antonio Spurs. He was the NCAA player of the year in 1997 at Wake Forest, the NBA’s rookie of the year the following year, a champion a year after that — and the accolades just kept coming.

“On a professional level, the most concise way to put it is, ‘No Duncan, no championships,'” said Spurs coach Gregg Popovich, who coached Duncan for his entire career. “And on a personal level, I love the guy.”

Duncan never sought the spotlight as a player. Last season, when he returned to the Spurs as an assistant coach for a year, he shunned almost anything that would have brought attention his way. He prefers to keep things simple, and what made him click with the Spurs — and with Popovich — is a shared belief that the simple way isn’t an impediment to greatness.

Duncan’s formula for winning, he said in an interview with the Spurs ahead of this weekend’s ceremony, wasn’t that complicated. “I just loved playing, hated losing — that’s a big one, I don’t think it gets enough credit — and an organization kind of committed to putting the best things in place to give a city, a team, a player like myself an opportunity to win year-in and year-out,” Duncan said.

Garnett was different. Demonstrative, loud, trash-talking, he pushed opponents’ buttons with ease. Like Bryant, he went straight to the NBA out of high school and didn’t need much time before making an impact. He played 21 seasons for Minnesota, Boston and Brooklyn, averaging 17.8 points, 10.0 rebounds and 3.7 assists per game.

“I never accepted losing,” Garnett said.

Philadelphia coach Doc Rivers, Garnett’s longtime coach in Boston including for the 2008 title season, said the same thing in a different way.

“The thing about Kevin, he only wanted to win,” Rivers said.

Bryant averaged 25.0 points, 5.2 rebounds and 4.7 assists per game in his 20 NBA seasons, all with the Los Angeles Lakers. He scored 81 points, the second-most for a game in NBA history, in 2016. He scored 60 points in his final NBA game — two years before winning an Academy Award, as his post-NBA passion for storytelling was becoming an instant success.

He was, and is, iconic. Philadelphia’s Joel Embiid, an MVP candidate this season, said remembers the first NBA game he ever watched — and who starred in that game.

It was Bryant, and Embiid immediately had a hero.

Here’s how much Embiid, in his formative years, was smitten with watching Bryant play: He would sometimes defy the 9 p.m. bedtime edict in his home, sneak into the TV room, turn on the tube and turn off the volume so he could watch his favorite player. And this, mind you, was before Embiid even started playing the game himself. Half a world away, Bryant was planting seeds for basketball greatness into the psyche of a kid who thought at that time his future might be in soccer.

“That was also when I fell in love with basketball and that’s why he became my favorite player,” Embiid said. “I mean, I would say that I am probably here because of him. … We miss him a lot. I miss him a lot. He was my favorite player. When you watch the way I play basketball and the moves that I’ve added, especially when it comes from fadeaways over both shoulders, that comes from a lot of tapes of Kobe’s games.

“I miss him a lot,” Embiid said. “I wish he was still here with us.”

WOMEN INDUCTEES HAD BRYAN’T SUPPORT

Bryant was a huge proponent and supporter of women’s basketball, and that wasn’t just because his daughter Gianna — one of the eight people who perished alongside him in a helicopter crash on Jan. 26, 2020 — was coming into her own as a standout young player with a bright future. He made no secret about how much he respected the women’s game, even telling CNN in one of the final interviews he gave, just 11 days before his death, that WNBA stars like Diana Taurasi, Maya Moore and Elena Delle Donne could keep up with NBA players.

Make no mistake: The three women who would have shared the stage with him Saturday night would have had his respect.

New LSU women’s coach Kim Mulkey has three national championships from her just-ended stint at Baylor. Indiana Fever vice president of basketball operations and general manager Tamika Catchings has four Olympic gold medals. Barbara Stevens won more than 1,000 games as a coach. They’ll all get their time on the stage Saturday night in Uncasville, Connecticut — the Hall of Fame ceremony isn’t at the Hall of Fame this year because of virus-related concerns — and they deserve far more than to be thought of as the “others” in this class.

“He made the WNBA cool,” said Catchings, whose friendship with Bryant dated back to when they were little kids and their fathers played pro ball in Italy together. “He made it cool for him and Gigi to be courtside. You could always see him teaching her different things that were going on on the court. He’d lean over and they’d start evaluating and breaking down plays.”

Every incoming Hall of Famer is presented for enshrinement by another Hall of Famer, and the women in this class got some seriously big-time names to fill those roles.

Catchings will be presented by NBA champion Alonzo Mourning and South Carolina coach Dawn Staley. Stevens will be flanked by Connecticut coach Geno Auriemma and former Notre Dame coach Muffet McGraw, longtime rivals who’ll become teammates for a night to pay tribute to the former Bentley coach who won the NCAA Division II national coach of the year award five times. And Mulkey is getting presented by none other than Michael Jordan, who somehow was her second choice for the job.

“Let me tell you how that transpired,” Mulkey said this week. “Coach Leon Barmore is in the Naismith and he was my coach at Louisiana Tech, my mentor and he worked three years with me at Baylor. I asked him and he can’t present me because of health issues. So, Michael and I played in the ’84 Olympics together and I said, ‘Let Michael do it’ and he was gracious in accepting that. That’s how that came about.”

Mulkey sent Jordan a note, thanking her fellow 1984 Los Angeles Olympics gold medalist for his willingness to be with her for the moment. Jordan will also present Bryant on Saturday night, and is likely to play a role in whatever tribute the Hall comes up with to commemorate the life of the five-time champion with the Los Angeles Lakers who he considered a little brother.

“I’m very respectful of who Michael is and respectful of the honor that he would do that for me,” Mulkey said.

Stevens retired from Bentley last year after 34 seasons at the Waltham, Massachusetts school and 44 years as a college coach. She won 1,058 games; the only women’s college coaches ever to win more are Tara VanDerveer, Auriemma and Pat Summitt. Vivian Stringer is 12 wins shy of Stevens’ win total; it’s going to be many, many years before another women’s coach even gets close to that number.

“You look at all those coaches. They are huge names in the sport,” Stevens told The Associated Press in 2018 before her milestone 1,000th victory. “I don’t see the connection with me and them. I found my niche and I don’t need any limelight. I don’t need anything like that. What I’m trying to do in a small way is create a program that can be successful and that’s it.”

Bryant would have loved that approach, too.

He could champion women’s basketball and the WNBA sometimes without saying a word. The best-selling piece of WNBA merchandise is an orange hooded sweatshirt with the league’s logo emblazoned on the chest; sales of that hoodie started going wild when Bryant wore it while attending a Lakers-Dallas game with Gianna in December 2019. After his death, sales soared again.

He worked out with WNBA players. He mentored them. The luckiest ones had his number. They would get random texts, video messages, good-luck wishes.

“I respect greatness,” Bryant told AP in a 2016 interview. “I respect the ones who are trying to be great even more, the ones not afraid of the work.”

Catchings, Mulkey and Stevens are part of what might be the most star-studded Hall of Fame class ever: Bryant, Kevin Garnett and Tim Duncan as the NBA players with 11 combined championships and 48 All-Star nods going in together, along with two-time NBA champion coach Rudy Tomjanovich, three-time Final Four coach Eddie Sutton and former FIBA secretary general Patrick Baumann — one of the best leaders international basketball has ever known. Baumann died in 2018 and Sutton died last year, about a month and a half after getting the word that he was selected for enshrinement.

All nine earned this moment.

Bryant, most definitely, would say the same.

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