UNCASVILLE, Conn. —
They should’ve all been on the stage together Saturday, generational players, winners at the highest level, competitors who demanded the best from one another.
The differences and similarities would’ve been impossible to ignore — Tim Duncan’s quiet earnestness, Kevin Garnett’s unflinching intensity and Kobe Bryant’s confident poeticism all tied together by their basketball greatness.
Friday as basketball’s Hall of Fame began a weekend dedicated to those three players at the top of the 2020 enshrinement class, Bryant’s absence was once again jarring — mostly because he was everywhere.
While Vanessa Bryant toured her late husband’s exhibit at the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame 70 miles northwest of here, Duncan, Garnett and other inductees took the stage inside a small theater at the Mohegan Sun Casino to begin their journey into the Hall.