Hall of Fame finalists include Carmelo Anthony, Dwight Howard

Carmelo Anthony and Dwight Howard are one step closer to going into the Basketball Hall of Fame.

If all goes well, they might get in twice.

Anthony and Howard were among the finalists announced Friday by the Naismith Memorial Hall of Fame for enshrinement as part of the class of 2025. They both made it as individuals — and for their roles on the 2008 U.S. Olympic team that won gold at the Beijing Games, the so-called “Redeem Team” that also is now one step from induction.

“I think any time you have an association with a group of people that come together for a common cause and good, you see a lot of good things happen,” said Hall of Fame chairman Jerry Colangelo, who also was managing director of the 2008 Olympic team. “I’ve said some things about that experience … ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ being played, the flag being raised, it was a moment of total completion.”

Also announced as finalists on Friday: women’s basketball greats and Olympic gold medalists Sue Bird, Sylvia Fowles, Maya Moore and Jennifer Azzi. Bird won five Olympic golds, Fowles won four, Moore won two, and Azzi was part of the team that won gold at Atlanta in 1996.

“You look at the accomplishments for each of them in terms of championships, in terms of winning gold, in terms of being the players they were for as long as they were, it’s a real tribute to the game of basketball and women’s basketball in particular,” Colangelo said.

The other finalists as picked by the North American committee were Chicago Bulls coach Billy Donovan (a two-time NCAA champion coach at Florida); Gonzaga coach Mark Few; retired NBA referee Danny Crawford; NBA legends Marques Johnson and Buck Williams; and Jerry Welsh — who coached Potsdam in upstate New York to NCAA Division III titles in 1981 and 1986.

Miami Heat managing general partner Micky Arison is also a finalist for enshrinement. Arison was put forward by the Contributors Committee, as was longtime Maccabi Tel Aviv star Tal Brody.

The Women’s Veteran Committee put forward Molly Bolin, who was the first player signed by the Women’s Professional Basketball League. And the International Committee selected as a finalist former Serbian professional player and longtime coach Dusan Ivkovic — already an FIBA Hall of Famer.

The finalists have one more step to go: the Hall’s Honors Committee will meet in the coming weeks, with 18 votes from that 24-person panel needed for election. The class will be unveiled at the NCAA men’s Final Four in San Antonio on April 5.

Enshrinement weekend is Sept. 5-6 at the Mohegan Sun in Uncasville, Conn., and the Hall of Fame in Springfield, Mass.

Back at the beginning

Damian Lillard was a normal student when he was a member of Oakland High’s class of 2008. And he has never forgotten where he came from.

“I was a regular kid,” Lillard said, leaning against one of the walls inside Oakland High, one of the trophy cases a few feet off to his right. “They knew I was good at basketball, but none of this was expected. So, when I kind of think back on it, I always remind myself of how important the journey is. Everybody will look at where I am now but when I think about the moments in the journey, that’s what gives me chills sometimes about how it all happened.”

Lillard is home this weekend, the standout guard for the Milwaukee Bucks returning to the Bay Area as an NBA All-Star with events in both his native Oakland and in San Francisco. He’ll look to win a third straight three-point contest Saturday, then play in the All-Star Game — his ninth time getting picked for the league’s midseason showcase — on Sunday.

He went back to Oakland High on Thursday to help make the path for some current students there a little easier.

Lillard started his All-Star weekend with a stop at his alma mater to unveil the Damian Lillard Scholars program. He’s helping provide $25,000 scholarships to students at nine East Bay high schools that will help with out-of-state tuition if they choose to attend Portland State, a nod to where his NBA career began with the Trail Blazers.

“Him providing this opportunity ... it means a lot,” said Oakland High senior Princess Momoh-Danga, who has applied to Portland State.

Hot ticket

NBA Commissioner Adam Silver had no idea 25 years ago that the Tech Summit would turn into much of anything, much less one of the hottest tickets at All-Star weekend.

Then again, nobody could have seen this coming.

The NBA celebrated 25 years of tech summits on Friday, a full-circle moment of sorts. The event started when the league’s All-Star weekend was most recently in the Bay Area in 2000 — and now, a quarter-century later, with this weekend’s events in San Francisco the tech summit is back and still growing.

The question at that first summit was a simple one: “What’s next?” Turns out, nobody had the entire answer.

“Our first Tech Summit feels like a distant memory because there has been so much innovation around media and technology over the past 25 years,” said Silver, who was president of NBA Entertainment when the tech summit was born. “We started the Tech Summit in San Francisco during the early days of the internet. At that time, there were skeptics, including many of the prominent leaders in sports media, who felt the ’World Wide Web’ wouldn’t become as transformational as some were forecasting.

“Of course, the internet went on to impact virtually every aspect of our lives and create enormous disruption in every industry, with sports being no exception.”