UNCASVILLE, Conn. (AP) — The Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame has boasted an array of deep classes since honoring its inaugural one in 1959.
Though he’s admittedly biased, 2025 inductee Dwight Howard believes there’s an argument that the five individual players being inducted this year on the men’s and women’s side could be one of the best collective groups ever.
Howard will be joined in this year’s class by Carmelo Anthony, who with Howard will also be honored on Saturday night along with the 2008 U.S. Olympic men’s basketball team they played on that became known as the “ Redeem Team,” after winning gold at the Beijing Games that summer. They’ll share the stage with WNBA legends Sue Bird, Maya Moore and Sylvia Fowles.
“You put us together, you put all of us out of one team, how you going to stop us?” Howard said Friday.
Combined, the quintet of players going in as individuals – Bird, Moore, Fowles, Howard and Anthony – were part of 11 WNBA or NBA championship teams, captured 15 Olympic gold medals, made 37 All-NBA or All-WNBA appearances and were named as All-Stars 45 times in their careers.
Others being inducted in Saturday's ceremony will be Chicago Bulls coach and two-time NCAA champion Billy Donovan, Miami Heat managing general partner Micky Arison and longtime NBA referee Danny Crawford.
The fact that Moore, Bird and Fowles are entering the Hall together is apropos.
First, it will mark the first time three WNBA players will enter the Hall of Fame in the same year. They are also connected in other ways.
Moore and Bird ended their college careers at UConn with two NCAA titles apiece. Fowles was also instrumental in the final two of Moore’s four WNBA championships with the Minnesota Lynx.
Being in Connecticut to receive their official Hall of Fame jackets and rings on Friday was also symbolic for Bird and Moore.
“I was looking at, and I was like, ‘I think I’m picking UConn,’” Bird said. “It’s like, Maya, Diana (Taurasi), myself, Stewie (Breanna Stewart), Rebecca Lobo. That’s a pretty good starting five.”
For Anthony, who never won an NBA title but earned three Olympic gold medals, a place in the Hall is the latest in a string of accomplishments during his career that he said were unimaginable when he first burst on the national scene as a 19-year-old college freshman, leading Syracuse to the NCAA championship in 2003.
Anthony said he hopes his lasting basketball legacy is that of a player who played with “grace” and “competitiveness.” And with something the three-time Olympic gold medal winner has in common with Frank Sinatra.
“I did it my way,” Anthony said. “I did it the way that a lot of people didn’t agree with. I did it a way that I went against the grain a lot of times. Not disrespectfully, but just I have my own visions. I have my own ways of doing things. I have my own ways of approaching the game."
While this weekend has brought back a lot of memories about her basketball exploits, Moore, who retired before the 2019 WNBA season to focus endeavors like social justice issues and helping overturn the wrongful conviction of her now-husband, Jonathan Irons, said she’s also preoccupied with other things these days.
“The next challenge for me is fully potty training with (3-year-old son Jonathan Jr.),” she joked. “He had his, you know first successful poo poo, in the potty recently. It’s just like, that’s championship level joy”.
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FILE - Dwight Howard, left, shows his support for the Florida Gators as Billy Donovan, right, watches during a Naismith Hall Fame Class of 2025 inductee news conference at the Final Four of the NCAA college basketball tournament Saturday, April 5, 2025, in San Antonio. (AP Photo/David J. Phillip,File)
FILE - Minnesota Lynx forward Maya Moore (23) and Minnesota Lynx center Sylvia Fowles (34) celebrate after forcing a Washington Mystics timeout during the second half of a WNBA basketball game, Tuesday, Sept. 12, 2017 in Minneapolis. (Aaron Lavinsky/Star Tribune via AP, File)
FILE - USA's, from left, Kobe Bryant, LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and Carmelo Anthony face photographers as they celebrate after beating Spain in the men's gold medal basketball game at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, Aug. 24, 2008. (AP Photo/Dusan Vranic, File)
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — As Iran returned to uneasy calm after a wave of protests that drew a bloody crackdown, a senior hard-line cleric called Friday for the death penalty for detained demonstrators and directly threatened U.S. President Donald Trump — evidence of the rage gripping authorities in the Islamic Republic.
Harsh repression that has left several thousand people dead appears to have succeeded in stifling demonstrations that began Dec. 28 over Iran’s ailing economy and morphed into protests directly challenging the country’s theocracy.
There have been no signs of protests for days in Tehran, where shopping and street life have returned to outward normality, though a week-old internet blackout continued. Authorities have not reported any unrest elsewhere in the country.
The U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency on Friday put the death toll, at 2,797. The number continues to rise.
Iran's exiled Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi urged the U.S. to make good on its pledge to intervene, calling Trump “a man of his word.”
Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami's sermon, carried by Iranian state radio, sparked chants from those gathered for prayers, including: “Armed hypocrites should be put to death!” Executions, as well as the killing of peaceful protesters, are two of the red lines laid down by Trump for possible military action against Iran.
Khatami, a member of Iran's Assembly of Experts and Guardian Council long known for his hard-line views, described the protesters as the “butlers” of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and “Trump’s soldiers.” He insisted their plans “imagined disintegrating the country.”
“They should wait for hard revenge from the system,” Khatami said of Netanyahu and Trump. “Americans and Zionists should not expect peace.”
His fiery speech came as allies of Iran and the United States alike sought to defuse tensions. Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke Friday to both Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian and Israel's Netanyahu, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.
Peskov said “the situation in the region is quite tense, and the president is continuing his efforts to help de-escalate it.”
Russia had previously kept largely quiet about the protests. Moscow has watched several key allies suffer blows as its resources and focus are consumed by its 4-year-old war against Ukraine, including the downfall of Syria’s former President Bashar Assad in 2024, last year’s U.S. and Israeli attacks on Iran and the U.S. seizure of Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro this month.
Days after Trump pledged “help is on its way” for the protesters, both the demonstrations and the prospect of imminent U.S. retaliation appeared to have receded. One diplomat told The Associated Press that top officials from Egypt, Oman, Saudi Arabia and Qatar had raised concerns with Trump that a U.S. military intervention would shake the global economy and destabilize an already volatile region.
Yet the Trump administration has warned it will act if Iran executes detained protesters. Pahlavi, whose father was overthrown by Iran's 1979 Islamic Revolution, said he still believes the president's promise of assistance.
“I believe the president is a man of his word," Pahlavi told reporters in Washington. He added that "regardless of whether action is taken or not, we as Iranians have no choice to carry on the fight.“
Despite support by diehard monarchists in the diaspora, Pahlavi has struggled to gain wider appeal within Iran. But that has not stopped him from presenting himself as the transitional leader of Iran if the regime were to fall.
Iran and the U.S. traded angry accusations Thursday at a session of the United Nations Security Council, with U.S. ambassador Mike Waltz saying that Trump “has made it clear that all options are on the table to stop the slaughter.”
Gholam Hossein Darzi, the deputy Iranian ambassador to the U.N., blasted the U.S. for what he said was American “direct involvement in steering unrest in Iran to violence.”
Khatami, the hard-line cleric, also provided the first overall statistics on damage from the protests, claiming 350 mosques, 126 prayer halls and 20 other holy places had sustained damage. Another 80 homes of Friday prayer leaders — an important position within Iran's theocracy — were also damaged, likely underlining the anger demonstrators felt toward symbols of the government.
He said 400 hospitals, 106 ambulance, 71 fire department vehicles and another 50 emergency vehicles also sustained damage.
Even as protests appeared to have been smothered inside Iran, thousands of exiled Iranians and their supporters have taken to the streets in cities across Europe to shout out their rage at the government of the Islamic Republic.
Amid the continuing internet shutdown, some Iranians crossed borders to communicate with the outside world. At a border crossing in Turkey’s eastern province of Van, a trickle of Iranians crossing Friday said they were traveling to get around the communications blackout.
“I will go back to Iran after they open the internet,” said a traveler who gave only his first name, Mehdi, out of security concerns.
Also crossing the border were some Turkish citizens escaping the unrest in Iran.
Mehmet Önder, 47, was in Tehran for his textiles business when the protests erupted. He said laid low in his hotel until it was shut for security reasons, then stayed with one of his customers until he was able to return to Turkey.
Although he did not venture into the streets, Önder said he heard heavy gunfire.
“I understand guns, because I served in the military in the southeast of Turkey,” he said. “The guns they were firing were not simple weapons. They were machine-guns.”
In a sign of the conflict’s potential to spill over borders, a Kurdish separatist group in Iraq said it has launched attacks on Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard in recent days in retaliation for Tehran’s crackdown on protests.
A representative of the Kurdistan Freedom Party, or PAK, said its members have “played a role in the protests through both financial support and armed operations to defend protesters when needed.” The group said the attacks were launched by members of its military wing based inside Iran.
The death toll of at least 2,797, provided by the Human Rights Activists News Agency, exceeds that of any other round of protest or unrest in Iran in decades and recalls the chaos surrounding the 1979 revolution.
The agency has been accurate throughout years of demonstrations, relying on a network of activists inside Iran that confirms all reported fatalities. The AP has been unable to independently confirm the toll. Iran's government has not provided casualty figures.
Amiri reported from New York. Associated Press journalist Serra Yedikardes contributed to this story from Kapikoy Border Crossing, Turkey.
Iranian opposition leader Reza Pahlavi speaks during a news conference on Friday, Jan. 16, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)
A woman crosses an intersection in downtown Tehran, Iran, Friday, Jan. 16, 2026. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)
People cross an intersection in downtown Tehran, Iran, Friday, Jan. 16, 2026. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)
Vehicles drive in downtown Tehran, Iran, Friday, Jan. 16, 2026. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)
A street vendor adjusts clothes for sale in downtown Tehran, Iran, Friday, Jan. 16, 2026. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)
Vehicles drive in downtown Tehran, Iran, Friday, Jan. 16, 2026. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)
FILE - Iranian senior cleric Ahmad Khatami delivers his sermon during Friday prayer ceremony in Tehran, Iran, Friday, Jan. 5, 2018. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi, File)
