Basketball Hall of Fame enshrinement ceremony. Dirk Nowitzki feted.

SPRINGFIELD, Mass. (AP) – Fans waved a German flag and chanted Dirk Nowitzki’s name when the former Dallas Mavericks big man walked the red carpet into Symphony Hall on Saturday night for the Basketball Hall of Fame enshrinement ceremony.

Tony Parker’s fans whooped it up when he took the stage to lead off the proceedings. “There are a lot of French people in town. Sorry,” the San Antonio Spurs point guard said.

Spain was well-represented, too, with Pau Gasol shouting out his national team – “mi familia” – before joining what may be the greatest international class of inductees in the Springfield shrine’s history.

“I want to give a special mention to those first Europeans, who came here, across the ocean, who took a chance,” said Gasol, who fell in love with the sport when the 1992 Olympics were held in his hometown, Barcelona. “I was 12. It changed my life. The Dream Team showed us how basketball could be played.”

The Class of 2023 brought a distinctly international flavor to the basketball hall.

Nowitzki was the first European-born player to win the NBA MVP award, in 2007. Parker’s NBA Finals MVP award that year in was the first for a European. In 2002, Gasol was the NBA’s first international rookie of the year.

The Spurs were well represented, too, led by longtime coach and five-time NBA champion Gregg Popovich, and Parker, the point guard on four of those title-winning teams. Becky Hammon, who after a career in the WNBA joined the Spurs as the first woman to serve as a full-time NBA assistant coach, was also honored. Gasol played his last two healthy seasons with the Spurs.

“Coach Pop – it starts with him,” Parker said.

Others enshrined include Dwyane Wade – a key piece of three NBA championship teams in Miami – and former North Carolina State coach Jim Valvano, who led the Wolfpack to the 1983 NCAA title and went on to be a broadcaster and advocate for cancer research. Valvano was inducted posthumously.

Rounding out the class were the silver medal-winning 1976 U.S. Olympic women’s basketball team; former Purdue coach Gene Keady, a seven-time Big Ten coach of the year; former Texas A&M women’s coach Gary Blair, who took two teams to the Final Four; longtime coach at Amherst and two-time Division III national champion David Hixon; and Gene Bess – who won 1,300 games as a junior college coach at Three Rivers Community College in Poplar Bluff, Missouri

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