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Tracy McGrady, Chris Webber, Tim Hardaway headline 2017 Basketball Hall of Fame finalists

Tracy McGrady had plenty of reason to smile on Saturday morning. (Getty Images)
Tracy McGrady had plenty of reason to smile on Saturday morning. (Getty Images)

NEW ORLEANS — Back in December, Tracy McGrady couldn’t believe he’d made the ballot for the 2017 class of the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. Two months later, he’s one step closer to enshrinement … and the prospect hasn’t gotten any less surreal.

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“I still can’t believe I’m here,” McGrady said Saturday, when the Hall announced that he was one of 14 players, coaches and contributors to make the cut as finalists for this year’s induction class. “This is not even a dream come true.”

Only 23 players in NBA history have scored more than 18,000 points, grabbed more than 5,000 rebounds, and dished more than 4,000 assists over the course of a career, according to Basketball-Reference.com. Fifteen (Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Wilt Chamberlain, Karl Malone, Michael Jordan, Oscar Robertson, Charles Barkley, Jerry West, Larry Bird, Gary Payton, Clyde Drexler, John Havlicek, Scottie Pippen, Hal Greer, Alex English and Rick Barry) already reside in Springfield, Mass. Six (Tim Duncan, LeBron James, Kevin Garnett, Kobe Bryant, Paul Pierce and Ray Allen) will join them as soon as their names hit the ballot.

The other two? McGrady and, fittingly enough, his cousin and former Toronto Raptors teammate, Vince Carter, whose Hall of Fame bona fides have been the subject of some debate over the years. Add in the seven All-Star appearances, the seven All-NBA selections and the two scoring titles, and you start to understand why T-Mac ranks among this year’s finalists … though, as I wrote back in December, there remains a chance that McGrady’s lack of postseason success and the long-repeated assertion that he just didn’t try hard enough to fully maximize his talents. He’s now passed the first hurdle in that debate, but the race isn’t over yet.

McGrady is one of nine first-time finalists for enshrinement, joining:

• Hugh Evans, who spent 28 years as an NBA referee;

• Rebecca Lobo, legendary University of Connecticut women’s basketball player, WNBA All-Star and former Associated Press Female Athlete of the Year;

• Rollie Massimino, one of 20 men’s college basketball coaches with at least 800 career wins, and the head coach of the legendary 1985 national champion Villanova Wildcats;

• Sidney Moncrief, who twice won the NBA’s Defensive Player of the Year award, made five All-Star teams, five All-NBA teams and five All-Defensive teams, and ranked as one of the best all-around players in the league with the Milwaukee Bucks of the early- to mid-1980s;

• Kim Mulkey, a two-time national championship winner with the Baylor women’s team, and the first person in NCAA history to win an NCAA basketball championship as a player, an assistant coach and a head coach;

• Kansas coach Bill Self, a three-time National Coach of the Year, coach of the 2008 NCAA champion Jayhawks, and one of four active college coaches to lead three different schools to the Elite Eight;

• Rudy Tomjanovich, who made seven trips to the postseason in 11 full seasons on the bench with the Houston Rockets and led by the great Hakeem Olajuwon, won back-to-back NBA championships in the 1993-94 and 1994-95 season (along with a bronze medal with the U.S. men’s national team from the 1998 FIBA World Championship, which featured no NBA players due to the lockout, and a gold from the 2000 Sydney Olympics); and

• Chris Webber, a five-time All-Star whose scoring and playmaking helped turn the Sacramento Kings into a perennial contender and presaged the generation of deft-passing big men who would come to pack today’s NBA, and who has made the last round of voting after missing the cut the last two years.

“I don’t know what I’m most proud of,” said Webber, one of just six players in NBA history to average more than 20 points, 9.5 rebounds and four assists per game over the course of his career. “I’m proud to be in the room with all these great individuals.”

The first-timers are joined by five finalists who had previously appeared on the ballot, but hadn’t made the final cut, including:

• Tim Hardaway, a five-time All-Star and 2000 Olympic gold medalist who starred for the Golden State Warriors and Miami Heat during his 14-year career, who ranks 16th in NBA history in total assists, and who now serves as an assistant coach on Stan Van Gundy’s staff with the Detroit Pistons;

Legendary coach Robert Hughes, who won a record 1,333 games during a long career as a boys’ high-school coach in Texas;

• Muffet McGraw, a three-time Consensus National College Coach of the Year, who has led Notre Dame to 22 NCAA tournament berths, 13 Sweet Sixteens, seven Elite Eights, seven Final Fours and one National Championship in 2001;

• Longtime University of Wisconsin head coach Bo Ryan, who led Wisconsin to four Big Ten regular-season championships and two Final Four berths before his retirement, and who had previously won four NCAA Division III national championships as the head coach of UW-Platteville; and

• the Wayland Baptist University women’s basketball team, which won 10 total AAU National Championships and 131 consecutive games from 1953 through 1958.

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Among the notable names who did not make the list of finalists: diminutive point guard Muggsy Bogues, who carved out a 14-year NBA career and ranks in the top 20 all-time in assists and the top 60 all-time in steals despite standing just 5-foot-3; former All-Star guard Kevin Johnson, whose controversy-plagued political career might have made him “too toxic” to continue to consider; longtime point guards-turned-coaches Maurice Cheeks and Mark Price; and legendary college coaches Lefty Driesell and Eddie Sutton.

Defensive ace Ben Wallace — a four-time Defensive Player of the Year, four-time All-Star, five-time All-NBA selection and six-time All-Defensive Team choice who served as the paint-protecting heartbeat of the 2004 NBA champion Detroit Pistons — also apparently wasn’t quite decorated enough to make the list in his first year, which seems kind of nuts:

The late Craig Sager and longtime New York Times sportswriter Harvey Araton will be honored as the recipients of the Hall’s 2017 Curt Gowdy Media Award, presented annually to “members of the electronic and print media whose longtime efforts have made a significant contribution to the game of basketball.” This year’s lifetime achievement award recipients are former UConn coach Donald “Dee” Rowe and Michael Goldberg, the longtime former director of the NBA Coaches Association, who died earlier this year.

Finalists need to receive 18 of 24 votes from the Hall’s Honors Committee to earn election, so it’s not yet certain which of the 14 announced Saturday will make the final cut. The Class of 2017 will be announced on Monday, April 3, in Phoenix before the NCAA Men’s Championship game, and will be enshrined in September.

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Dan Devine is an editor for Ball Don’t Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at devine@yahoo-inc.com or follow him on Twitter!