SPRINGFIELD, Mass. (AP) – Billy Crystal was honored for his commitment to a basketball team that has no Hall of Fame history and couldn’t help but notice the irony.

“How strange to get a ring in front of one of the Clippers,” he said.

The actor will be inducted into the James F. Goldstein Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame SuperFan Gallery and attended a ceremony on Sunday alongside fellow entertainer and filmmaker Spike Lee and Philadelphia businessman Alan Horwitz. Longtime Lakers fan Jack Nicholson will also be attending, but the three-time Oscar winner was unable to attend.

Crystal wore a sports jacket and pants, while Lee and Horwitz were dressed as if they were sitting courtside. Lee, wearing an orange vest over a New York sweatshirt and a black Knicks bucket hat, battled the opposition as if he were sitting in his seat at Madison Square Garden.

“I saw some green from Boston Celtic. “Uh-uh,” he said before showing fans that he had brought coach Red Holzman’s 1973 NBA championship ring, the last one the Knicks won.

“It’s been a long time, but I think this year the sky will be orange and blue,” Lee said.

Horwitz, known as the 76ers’ sixth man, wore a 76ers sweatshirt, a blue Sixers cap and blue and white sneakers. He choked as he thought about how proud his mother would have been if she had known of his honor.

Their time as basketball fans goes back more than five decades. Horwitz watched the Philadelphia Warriors when Wilt Chamberlain was a rookie in 1959. Crystal was in high school a few years earlier when he became attracted to another high school student, Larry Brown, who would later become a coach in college after winning championships in the NBA.

Lee was in the arena when the Knicks won their first championship in 1970, and Crystal was often at MSG himself after starting out as a Knicks fan. He attended Lakers games as he moved across the country before someone recommended he see a Clippers game.

“And I said, ‘Why?'” Crystal said.

But he enjoyed it and has stayed with them ever since, even though the team never rewarded him with a championship. Lee has held season tickets for the Knicks since 1985, when they signed Patrick Ewing, although it took a while for him to get his hands on the prime real estate he now occupies.

“Every film I moved down,” he said.

While Lee talks about the title this season, Crystal doesn’t have such high expectations for the Clippers. But he noted that the loyal fans remain loyal to their teams no matter what.

Not that it’s always easy. As he spoke, a baby started crying.

“That’s how we’ve felt for the last 30 years,” Crystal said.

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