Doug Collins puts bow on wide-ranging basketball career with Hall of Fame enshrinement: 'I feel like I belong here'

SPRINGFIELD, Mass. — Doug Collins brought a basketball onstage, a physical representation of why they all had gathered Sunday night at Symphony Hall.

“Eight pounds of air,” Collins said, “and what it’s done for all of our lives.”

That is how Collins began a heartfelt, candid and entertaining speech to commemorate his enshrinement in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. His remarks only reinforced that he is the definition of a contributor to the game, as the 76ers’ first-overall draft pick and four-time All-Star in the 1970s, as a coach who compiled more than 400 wins leading four NBA teams (including the Sixers from 2010 to 2013), and as a broadcaster for multiple networks who in 2009 earned the Hall’s Curt Gowdy Media Award.

Collins’ enshrinement came alongside that of Bo Ryan who, before becoming a celebrated coach in Wisconsin, was a Chester kid falling in love with the game. He teared up Sunday while speaking about his parents, saying, “From the time I was a toddler, until I was a teenager, my life with my father revolved around sports.”

“Either watching him play or coach,” Ryan continued, “or as a spectator at Chester High School basketball games or watching the Big 5 at the Palestra.”

Collins, 73, acknowledged at Saturday’s pre-enshrinement press conference that he once “had a lot of mixed feelings about my career.” Injuries to his foot and knee derailed his prime during a championship window. He was fired from multiple coaching jobs, and resigned from the Sixers in 2013. When he won the Gowdy Award the same year Michael Jordan was enshrined, Collins said that Jordan jokingly told his former coach, “I knew you couldn’t play. I knew you couldn’t coach. But I knew you could always talk a good game, so congrats.”

But by this celebratory weekend, Collins could healthily reflect on the full journey.

“This has sort of put a bow on my career,” Collins said Saturday. “I feel like I belong here, and for the longest time, I didn’t. I beat myself a lot. I never gave myself the grace that I gave others, and I’m trying to be better at that.”

Collins continued to share stories about the “kid from Benton, Illinois” on Sunday night. That he became the No. 1 overall draft pick in 1973 still left him dumbfounded. He called Billy Cunningham — the fellow Hall of Famer and former Sixer who was one of Collins’ presenters Sunday — the “all-time great Philly man.” He drew audible reactions from the balcony crowd while imparting the life lesson to not be afraid to fail.

“I’ve got a lot of scars,” he said. “But I grew from them.”

He also looked back on joining a Sixers team that had gone a disastrous 9-73 the season before he was drafted and, four years later, advanced to the NBA Finals. And on the first time he encountered the legendary Julius Erving, when Dr. J dunked a basketball in each hand on one takeoff while in the Catskills. And on the foot he broke just before his rookie training camp, an unfortunate foreshadowing that his playing career would be cut short before age 30. And on a clause in his contract that put his post-playing broadcast career in motion, which then caught the interest of the Chicago Bulls because of the way he taught the game to viewers.

“I always tell young people [that] you’re always being evaluated,” Collins said.

Another Philly figure recognized Sunday was Alan Horwitz, the “Sixth Man” added to the Hall of Fame’s SuperFan Gallery alongside celebrities Billy Crystal, Spike Lee and Jack Nicholson. The 80-year-old Horwitz — a passionate courtside staple at the Wells Fargo Center who has befriended Sixers and taunted opponents for decades — choked up while sharing that his late mother “would be so proud of me” for the honor, as Crystal held the microphone and Lee looked on. Horwitz finished his remarks with his trademark “Go Sixers! Oh yeah! Oh yeah! OH YEAH!” and pointed both thumbs into the air.

When a reporter later noted that Crystal and Lee were clearly touched by Horwitz’s words, Crystal responded with, “Who wouldn’t be?”

“That was 100 percent honesty,” added Lee, who spent part of his Sunday remarks suggesting to Horwitz that they manifest a Sixers-Knicks Eastern Conference finals. “That just shows you how deep this thing is that we’re talking about.”

Deep for Collins, too.

As the former Sixers star player and coach wrapped his speech, he turned the attention back to the basketball still with him at the podium. He said that his coach at Illinois State, Will Robinson, told him to never leave home without it.

“Well, I’m not, Coach,” Collins said. “I’m taking it with me. I’m in the Hall of Fame now.”