Patrick Aloysius Ewing, Sr. (born August 5, 1962) is a Jamaican-American retired Hall of Fame basketball player and current assistant coach for the National Basketball Association's Orlando Magic. He played most of his career with the NBA's New York Knicks as their starting center and played briefly with the Seattle SuperSonics and Orlando Magic. Ewing was named as the 16th greatest college player of all time by ESPN. He won Olympic Gold Medals as a member of the 1984 and 1992 US Men's National Basketball teams. In a 1996 poll celebrating the 50th anniversary of the NBA, Ewing was selected as one of the 50 Greatest Basketball Players of All Time. On April 7, 2008 he was elected to the Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Massachusetts. He was inducted into the Hall of Fame on September 5, 2008 along with former NBA coach Pat Riley and former Houston Rockets center, Hakeem Olajuwon. His number 33 was retired by the Knicks in 2003.

Born in Kingston, Jamaica, Ewing excelled at cricket and soccer. He was 11 years old when he arrived in the United States with his family, settling in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He learned to play basketball at Cambridge Rindge and Latin. In order to prepare for college, Ewing joined the MIT-Wellesley Upward Bound Program. Upward Bound is a federally-funded TRIO college-prep program for disadvantaged high school students. He went to Georgetown University in Washington, D.C..

Jalen Anthony Rose (born January 30, 1973) is a retired American professional basketball player and current sports analyst for the television network ESPN. In college, he was a member of the University of Michigan Wolverines' "Fab Five" (along with Chris Webber, Juwan Howard, Jimmy King and Ray Jackson) that reached the 1992 and 1993 NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Championship games as both Freshmen and Sophomores. Rose played in the NBA for six teams, most notably alongside Reggie Miller on the Indiana Pacers teams which made three consecutive Eastern Conference finals, including the 2000 NBA Finals.

As a star at Southwestern High School in Detroit, Rose obtained a high profile and can even be seen at a high school All-American camp in the documentary film, Hoop Dreams. Rose attended the University of Michigan where the Wolverines reached two NCAA Finals games in 1992 and 1993, finishing as national runners up both times. Rose was a part of Wolverines coach Steve Fisher's legendary 1991 recruiting class, dubbed the "Fab Five". He led the Fab Five in scoring his freshman year, averaging 19 points per game, and set the school freshman scoring record with 597 total points. Aside from being the most outspoken of the Fab Five, Rose was also their point guard and leader. During his career, he racked up over 1700 points, 400 rebounds, 400 assists, and 100 steals. Of the players called before the grand jury (Robert Traylor, Webber, Rose, Maurice Taylor, and Louis Bullock) in the University of Michigan basketball scandal, he was the only one not listed as having received large amounts of money.

Latrell Fontaine Sprewell (born September 8, 1970) is a former American professional basketball player; he played for the Golden State Warriors, the New York Knicks, and the Minnesota Timberwolves. During his time as a professional, Sprewell was named to the annual NBA All-Star game four times; he also helped the Knicks reach the NBA Finals and the Timberwolves the Western Conference finals. Despite his accomplishments, his career was overshadowed by a 1997 incident in which he choked coach P.J. Carlesimo during a practice, which ultimately resulted in a 68-game suspension.

Sprewell's career came to an unexpected end in 2005 when he refused a $21-million three-year contract offer from the Timberwolves, which he implied would not be enough to feed his children. Since that time, he has made headlines for grounding his million dollar yacht, having two of his homes foreclosed upon, and being prohibited from seeing his children.

After attending Washington High School in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Sprewell played competitively with the Three Rivers Community College Raiders Basketball Team in Poplar Bluff, Missouri from 1988–1990, and from 1990–1992 with the University of Alabama, where he was a teammate of future NBA players Robert Horry, Jason Caffey and James Robinson.

Scottie Pippen (born September 25, 1965) is a retired American professional basketball player who played in the National Basketball Association. He is most remembered for his time with the Chicago Bulls, with whom he was instrumental in 6 NBA titles and their record 1995–96 season of 72 wins. Pippen, along with Michael Jordan, played an important role in transforming the Bulls team into a vehicle for popularizing the NBA around the world during the 1990s.

Considered one of the best small forwards of all time, Pippen was named to the NBA All-Defensive First Team 8 straight times and the All-NBA First Team three times. He was a seven-time NBA All-Star and was the NBA All-Star Game MVP in 1994. He was named one of the 50 Greatest Players in NBA History during the 1996–97 season, and is one of four players to have his jersey retired by the Chicago Bulls (the others being Jerry Sloan, Bob Love, and Michael Jordan). During his seventeen-year career, he played twelve seasons with the Bulls, one with the Houston Rockets and four with the Portland Trail Blazers, making the postseason sixteen straight times. Pippen is also the only person to have won an NBA title and Olympic gold medal in the same year twice (1992, 1996). Pippen was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame on August 13, 2010.

Michael Jeffrey Jordan (born February 17, 1963) is a retired American professional basketball player, active entrepreneur, and majority owner of the Charlotte Bobcats. His biography on the National Basketball Association (NBA) website states, "By acclamation, Michael Jordan is the greatest basketball player of all time." Jordan was one of the most effectively marketed athletes of his generation and was considered instrumental in popularizing the NBA around the world in the 1980s and 1990s.

After a three-season career at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he was a member of the Tar Heels' national championship team in 1982, Jordan joined the NBA's Chicago Bulls in 1984. He quickly emerged as a league star, entertaining crowds with his prolific scoring. His leaping ability, illustrated by performing slam dunks from the free throw line in slam dunk contests, earned him the nicknames "Air Jordan" and "His Airness". He also gained a reputation for being one of the best defensive players in basketball. In 1991, he won his first NBA championship with the Bulls, and followed that achievement with titles in 1992 and 1993, securing a "three-peat". Although Jordan abruptly retired from basketball at the beginning of the 1993–94 NBA season to pursue a career in baseball, he rejoined the Bulls in 1995 and led them to three additional championships (1996, 1997, and 1998) as well as an NBA-record 72 regular-season wins in the 1995–96 NBA season. Jordan retired for a second time in 1999, but returned for two more NBA seasons from 2001 to 2003 as a member of the Washington Wizards.