Ricky Grace likes to live in the here and now but his Hall of Fame induction means now is a great time to revive memories of his remarkable career.

Grace couldn’t be more proud of everything he achieved with the Wildcats as he helped make the club the most successful West Australian sporting franchise on a national stage.

He grew to love Perth and Australia so much, and playing with the Wildcats, that he could never bring himself to leave after arriving in 1990 and that led to his gaining his citizenship and ultimately representing Australia at the Sydney Olympic Games.

For him it's hard to go past that as far as career highlights go.

"The highlight would definitely be representing Australia in the Olympics and the highlight of that was being in the locker room when Andrew Gaze got the phone call that he was going to be carrying the Olympic flag," Grace said.

"I'm a proud American but also a proud Australian and that would have been one of my proudest Australian moments just to be there with those guys."

As for achievements, all four of the championships in 1990, 91, 95 and 2000 were special, but the first one certainly stands out and he was glad to help the veterans of the team finally achieve the goal that the club had since starting up in the NBL in 1982.

"In 1990 when we won the championship when we were the first West Australian national team to win a grand final and get the monkey off our back was great," he said.

"Guys like Mike Ellis, James Crawford and 'Tiny' Pinder had been here for a while and just to get the monkey off their back is something that I'll always remember. Every grand final was fantastic and I always love being the first that's why 1990 was great, but there are just so many great memories."

Grace was one of the megastars of an NBL competition that was massively popular throughout the 1990s. That was a special time for him to be part of and to now reflect back on, but he's sure the game will remain strong in Australia and continue to grow back up again.

"Those days were special and I don’t really know if basketball will ever get back to that point, but basketball is definitely here to stay in Australia," Grace said.

"If you happen to have been around in those days they were once in a lifetime days. To have a packed Entertainment Centre for all those years, to have people standing in line and spending a night waiting for tickets was fantastic."

Two other things that stand out to Grace that might not immediately spring to mind to anyone else are the fact that he's the second all-time leading shot blocker at the Perth Wildcats and his popular hair cut from much of his career and the reason behind it.

"One of my proudest stats that nobody ever mentions is that I was second all-time in block shots. When my obituary is done I want it to say that I was second all-time in blocked shots for the Wildcats. I'm looking at the guys now and I can't see them jumping as high as I could," he said.

"I then look back at me with that big high top fade that just kept growing and growing because they didn’t have any barbers here who could cut African American hair, and those were the good old days."

One of Grace's most personal and memorable one-on-one battles was with Melbourne Tigers great Lanard Copeland, and even in retirement the competitiveness between the two isn’t forgotten and remains something Grace will forever look back on fondly.

"I used to love the trash talking, especially when me and Lanard Copeland would just go back at each other," Grace said.

"I hated him, he hated me, I couldn’t stop him, he couldn’t stop me and sometimes you would forget that you were in front of 9000 people and it was just you and him. Those are the type of things you miss and that are special, and that I think people enjoyed watching."