The first inductees make this Hall special

If they could have gathered the four presidents of Mt. Rushmore in a hotel ballroom before etching their faces in the mountain, it might have felt like this.

John Wooden, Dean Smith, Bill Russell and Oscar Robertson came together Sunday night to represent the inaugural class of the National Collegiate Basketball Hall of Fame, and for anyone who loves the game there was no better place to be.

They could have added more names to the list of honorees -- Kareem Adbul-Jabbar and Pete Maravich come to mind -- but they couldn’t have found better. This really wasn’t a night for questioning, not even the logical query of why it’s necessary to have a collegiate Hall of Fame when the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame already includes all areas of the game.

Ian Naismith, the grandson of the basketball founder James Naismith, is a member of the board of trustees for the other Hall in Springfield, Mass., and a fierce protector of the family name. Yet he was here as well, representing his grandfather, who was posthumously inducted along with the four living legends.

“I wish it would be under the umbrella of the Naismith Hall of Fame, but that’s just not practical,” Ian Naismith said. “There’s room for it. The game is huge. It’s now the biggest game in the world. It’s the fastest-growing game in the world. That’s the reason I’m here. Naismiths are always amongst people that promote the game.”

If it’s good enough for a Naismith, it’s good enough for me. More important, it’s good enough for the likes of Russell and Wooden.

“I’m kind of blase about these types of things,” Russell said. “But when I saw the list of the people, I was so honored to be with them. Every one of these people, I have a lifetime of respect and affection for.”

It’s not an accomplishment anyone dreamed of because it never existed before. The Hall itself in downtown Kansas City is still about a year away from completion. Truly, these men judged the distinction by the company they were about to keep.

You think Wooden needs any more awards? He has already been inducted into the Naismith Hall twice (as a coach and a player) and has collected so many other accolades that he’s out of shelf space in his Encino home.

Yet here he was, getting on a plane at age 96 and flying to Kansas City, where he was the first man on the dais for a news conference two hours before the ceremony.

For Wooden, and for all of the honorees, a sense of gratitude to the game and those who came before them brought them here.

“I feel it’s a tribute to all of basketball,” Wooden said.

In Wooden’s case, sometimes it seems as if the only person who actually came before him was James Naismith himself.

At this point Wooden doesn’t just grace events with his presence, he amazes everyone there. Perhaps he walks with a cane and has to be helped out of his chair, but he stood for a while to give opening remarks at the news conference and didn’t lean on the lectern, standing back with his arms folded. His recollection of detail of decades-old events is astonishing -- even when he’s telling a story about bird poop. (More on that later.)

Sunday, Russell praised Wooden and Dean Smith for standing by their beliefs in equal rights for African Americans before and during the civil rights movement.

He also shared some fascinating thoughts on the definition of greatness. When Russell first came up to Wooden and shook his hand, the mental caption I had for that image was: “winners.” We think of Russell and his 11 NBA championships (usually omitting his two NCAA championships at the University of San Francisco). We think of the 10 championships Wooden brought to UCLA.

But Russell, in describing Wooden and Smith (the all-time leader in victories), preferred to use the term “innovators.”

“That was the reason they won,” Russell said. “They could have been innovators and not have won, but that would not have diminished their skills.”

Does he see himself as an innovator?

“Yes I do,” Russell said.

“And both of them, those two coaches, are well-known besides the fact they won basketball games. They’re what we call good citizens.”

We close with Wooden, who made his return to the city where he won his first national championship in 1964. A question about his Kansas City memories prompted a story about his trip to an Easter Sunday service the next day. Forty-two years later, Wooden still remembered the name of the church, the minister and the hotel where he stayed. While he was outside waiting for a taxi that day, the dropping from a pigeon passing overhead nailed Wooden in the head.

“I felt, ‘Well, we just won the national championship, don’t let it go to your head,’ ” Wooden said. “I think the good Lord was letting me know, ‘Don’t get carried away.’ ”

Nine championships and countless tributes later, Wooden was back for another remarkable night in his amazing life.

You hope he checked for any passing birds on the way out.

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J.A. Adande can be reached at j.a.adande@latimes.com. To read more by Adande, go to latimes.com/adandeblog.