Alan Horwitz has cheered on Sixers from Wilt Chamberlain to Joel Embiid. He’ll now take his place in the Hall of Fame.

Alan Horwitz began attending 76ers games as a teenager in the 1960s, when his mother bought him tickets in the old Philadelphia Civic Center rafters for 75 cents.

Now the 80-year-old sits courtside between the Sixers’ bench and scorer’s table, decked out in his trademark sunglasses, ball cap, and “Sixth Man” jersey. He’s one of the NBA’s most recognizable superfans, so recognizable that the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame is set to formally distinguish him as such, when he is added to its SuperFan Gallery during a Sunday celebration as part of enshrinement weekend in Springfield, Mass.

“It’s just a tremendous, tremendous honor,” Horwitz told The Inquirer over Zoom earlier this week.

Horwitz will be recognized alongside Jack Nicholson, Spike Lee, and Billy Crystal, three A-list celebrities who are forever attached to their fandom of the Los Angeles Lakers, New York Knicks, and Los Angeles Clippers, respectively. The gallery was created in 2018 and named after James F. Goldstein, the businessman with long hair and a flashy wardrobe who jaunts from game to game around the league. Late actor Penny Marshall and Canadian businessman Nav Bhatia also are part of the gallery that recognizes “basketball enthusiasts who have made a profound impact on the game through their loyalty, passion, and dedication,” according to the Hall of Fame.

The Sixers submitted Horwitz, the founder and former chairman of Campus Apartments, for consideration for this year’s class. He received the good news on his 80th birthday from Sixers minority owner David Adelman, the current CEO of Campus Apartments, who said Horwitz “basically raised me.”

“It’s not something that money can buy,” Adelman told The Inquirer of Horwitz’s honor. “It’s not something that everyone just gets. He earned it, being able to share with him that other people in the league and all of that appreciated his energy and passion and love of the game.”

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It is a celebration of Horwitz’s lifelong fandom. He still revels in the fact that he and the legendary Wilt Chamberlain attended West Philadelphia’s Overbrook High School and that a young Horwitz used to witness a teenage Chamberlain stopping by his elementary school for extra training. Then, Horwitz watched Chamberlain dazzle the NBA from those high-up seats.

Horwitz’s successful business career eventually led to moving courtside. When he was a bit younger, he regularly would drop to his knees to cheer on key moments. He has personalized handshakes with players as they step onto the court for tipoff and hovers outside timeout huddles. His notoriety exploded even more with the creation of “Sixth Man” social media accounts, which, as of Saturday afternoon, had nearly 64,000 followers on Instagram.

“We walk down the street and people want to take pictures with him,” Adelman said. “It’s unbelievable.”

Added Horwitz: “The players all say to me, ‘You’re more popular than we are.’”

But those player relationships also run deep for Horwitz, from Hall of Famers Julius Erving and Allen Iverson to Joel Embiid. He considers T.J. McConnell, the former Sixers point guard now with the Indiana Pacers, “like a grandson to me.”

Conversely, Horwitz has never been afraid to trash-talk Sixers opponents (or famous hip-hop artists such as Drake and Lil Baby) — and many of those heated encounters have been caught on video. He once was ejected from a 2012 playoff game for making contact with Boston Celtics players including guard Rajon Rondo, an example of the times “he’d get a little too anxious as a fan, and they’d have to talk to him,” Adelman said.

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On the late Kobe Bryant, whom he taunted after a 2012 loose ball, Horwitz said: “He listened when I said, ‘Get down to the other side of the court!’”

And on now-Sixer Kyle Lowry, with whom he jawed during a 2019 playoff series against the Raptors: “Now I root for him.”

And on Rondo, following their incident: “He apologized.”

Sunday’s celebration is part of a big year for Horwitz, who also is the namesake (and a benefactor) of newly renovated $36 million Alan Horwitz “Sixth Man” Center in Nicetown that is home to the Philadelphia Youth Basketball organization. A much-anticipated Sixers season will begin later this month, after the team added perennial All-Star Paul George in free agency.

Unsurprisingly, Horwitz was in his normal courtside seat for Monday’s preseason opener against the New Zealand Breakers.

This weekend, he will take that superfandom to the Hall of Fame.

“I’m very happy still to be this one thing,” Horwitz said. “My enthusiasm has always been there.”