My rational mind tells me it surely happens at some point to all of us addled fans who trace our lives through sports seasons as much as anything else.

But damn if it isn't surreal when it hits.

Shaq, Yao and Iverson are being inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. Shaq, Yao and Iverson? Where did the years go?

They'll be joined by several more basketball luminaries during the ceremony Friday night: Michigan State coach Tom Izzo, WNBA trailblazer Sheryl Swoopes, former coach John McClendon, Chicago Bulls exec Jerry Reinsdorf, former ABA star Zelmo Beaty and Cumberland Posey, one of the game's earliest black stars.

But this isn't about them. This is about Shaq, Yao and Iverson — and about us. It's about some of us, anyway, the ones who came of age in the late '90s and early aughts while nursing serious cases of the basketball jones.

Iverson challenges Shaq in the 2001 NBA Finals. Image: Jeff Mitchell/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Here's a major piece of our childhoods being tremendously honored, but also put in a museum, that place where old things go. They're being officially banished to the rearview mirror, and declaring the rest of us old by association.

Even last year's Hall of Fame class wasn't like this. Sure, Dikembe Mutombo might have hit a little close to home, but he was never an icon like Shaq, Yao or Iverson. Dick Bavetta? A ref. Meh. Spencer Haywood? Old. Played in the '70s, for crying out loud. Guys like that always felt like they belonged in the Hall of Fame in the abstract sense, not just the literal one.

My parents took me to the Hall of Fame as part of a family trip to Boston when I was 11 years old. I was a basketball-crazed prepubescent boy. I was in heaven. Such history! Such artifacts! It was roundball time travel, getting lost in names and stories from the olden days.

That was August 1996. Shaq was already a star. Iverson was about to begin his rookie year. Yao hadn't yet entered the league, but his rookie season, 2002-03, would coincide with my senior year of high school.

Shaq and Yao, 2004. Image: David J. Phillip/AP

The Hall of Fame was the past. These guys were the present! Shaq was the larger-than-life celebrity who rapped, acted and — most of all — dunked on people's heads.

Iverson was the iconoclast, with his baggy clothes, cornrows and a kamikaze playing style. He became an early portal for myself and many others to begin considering real-world notions of race and hegemony. He, as the tired-but-true line goes, transcended sports.

Yao arrived from China in 2002, dragging mountains of hype and all sorts of symbolism about a brave new globalized world. His career, cut short by injuries, began in my final year of high school. It played out through college and my early years of adulthood and finally ended in my final year of grad school.

"Father Time is undefeated," says one of the better clichés in sports. Guess that goes for fans as well as players.

So, from a kid who grew up watching them: congratulations to Shaq, Yao and Iverson for making the Basketball Hall of Fame. And extra congrats for making me — and so many of us — feel a bit long of tooth on this Friday night.