By HARVEY ARATON

Enlarge This Image

Mark Lennihan/Associated Press

Dennis Johnson was known for his defense and his clutch play with the Boston Celtics.

Related

• Stepping Out of Jordan’s Shadow, Pippen to Enter Hall (August 13, 2010)

Keep up with the latest news, on the court and off, with The Times's basketball blog.

Elise Amendola/Associated Press

The Celtics icon Larry Bird with Donna Johnson, widow of the Hall of Fame inductee Dennis Johnson, who died in 2007 of a heart attack.

Enlarge This Image

Brian Snyder/Reuters

Karl Malone, left, and Scottie Pippen, were inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.

Johnson was 52 when he died of a heart attack after putting his N.B.A. Development League team through a practice in Austin, Tex., three and a half years ago. Johnson retired as a player in 1990, and his eligible wait for the Hall was already 12 years and counting — much too long for those who knew him as a three-time champion and, mostly, as a big-game Boston Celtic.

“He used to say it wouldn’t solidify his career, but it was something that he would love to have and enjoy,” said Donna Johnson, his widow. “It wasn’t like it was his only goal in life, but it was something he was hoping for and looking forward to.”

Fate had its own untimely plan, a posthumous induction for Johnson Friday night that was an emotionally wrenching occasion for his family. Donna Johnson said her 18-year-old daughter, Denise, was still too grief-stricken to attend, and she was so overcome when handed her husband’s Hall of Fame jacket during a morning ceremony that she was unable to speak.

“I remember when I got the call — I was in the kitchen, cooking,” Donna Johnson said later of his induction. “I just said, ‘It’s about time. It’s just about time.’ But then I cried because I thought, ‘It’s just so sad that he couldn’t be here to enjoy it.’ ”

Her youngest of three children, Daniel, 16, accompanied her to Springfield; her oldest, Dwayne, 30, was unable to attend but planned to watch on television. “My older one, he was into that era; he was there the whole time,” Donna Johnson said. “He remembers everything that happened.”

He knew, then, why it was Larry Bird standing alongside Donna Johnson while her husband’s brother, Gary, gave an acceptance speech.

By presence alone, a presenter can provide a synopsis to an inductee’s career. Michael Jordan needed no introduction climbing onto the stage with Scottie Pippen, nor did Magic Johnson, Pat Riley and Jerry West, presenters for the Lakers’ owner, Jerry Buss. The Utah Jazz great Karl Malone chose the Knicks legend Willis Reed, a fellow northern Louisiana native and devout outdoorsman. Bob Hurley Sr. — the New Jersey high school coaching lifer — brought his entire St. Anthony basketball team to Springfield but chose another coach, Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski, who coached Hurley’s son and namesake, Bobby, a point guard.

But of all the pairings, none were as tightly bound as Bird and Johnson by one precious moment, one video clip that will long be replayed as a symbol of concerted hope and joint execution.

Bird and Johnson were together for two championships in Boston (Johnson also played on Seattle’s 1979 championship team), but it was in 1987, when the Celtics lost to Johnson and the Lakers in the finals, that Bird stole an inbounds pass from the Pistons’ Isiah Thomas with the Celtics down by one with five seconds left in Game 5 of the Eastern Conference finals.

The steal was made with a brilliantly timed burst, Bird reading Thomas as he foolishly passed the ball back toward his basket to Bill Laimbeer. Bird cut into the lane, caught the pass and fell toward the baseline.

“Once I got my hands on it, I knew there wasn’t much time,” he said. “I was going to shoot it until I saw the white flash coming. It was a white jersey, but I didn’t know who it was. Everything’s a reaction in basketball. I seen Laimbeer, I seen Isiah, I seen Laimbeer moving. I was in reaction mode, and Dennis made a reaction to the reaction.

“People will say, ‘How did it happen?’ Well, you don’t know how the hell it happened; it just happened.”

Bird would always credit Johnson for his role in the play, proof of his being an ultimate gamer, a 6-foot-4 guard who overwhelmed no one with blinding speed or the most picturesque jumper by the time he was traded to Boston by Phoenix in 1983. “He wasn’t the type of point guard that everybody thought you had to have, but the way he did it worked for us,” Bird said.

Johnson — instantly recognizable with his freckled face and red-tinged hair — was a nine-time all-N.B.A. defender. As for the jumper, which could desert him for regular-season spells, Bird said, “He would just say, ‘When the big games come, I’ll be there,’ and he was.”

Like Donna Johnson, who met Johnson in college at Pepperdine and was married to him for 30 years, Bird could admit to conflicting emotions Friday night about the man he called “the best player I ever played with.” He, too, remembered Johnson saying how much he looked forward to enshrinement, sooner or later.

The best anyone could say was better too late than never.

“Yes, it’s disappointing,” Bird said. “But still, he’s there.”

With Bird, in passing and forever.

REBOUNDS

Cynthia Cooper became the first W.N.B.A. player to be inducted. ... Gus Johnson, remembered for his fierce battles with Dave DeBusschere in the old Knicks-Baltimore Bullets playoffs wars of the late 1960s and early 1970s, was inducted posthumously and presented by his former teammates Wes Unseld and Earl Monroe. ... Also inducted were two United States Olympic gold-medal winning teams: the 1960 squad featuring Oscar Robertson and Jerry West, and the 1992 Dream Team. Every player showed up, with Magic Johnson paying tribute to Chuck Daly, the team’s coach, who died last year. ... Maciel Pereira, a Brazilian international star, was also inducted posthumously.