The day after an absolutely loaded basketball HOF class was enshrined in Springfield, the 2021 class was announced to noticeably less fanfare. To be clear, we may never see another class quite like Duncan, Garnett, and Kobe going in simultaneously. Unless the stars align and somehow we get a LeBron, Anthony, Paul, Wade “Banana Boat” induction class, it’s tough to see another collection of players rivalling the resumes of the one which was just honored.
The 2021 class will be inducted on September 11th, and includes: Paul Pierce, Chris Bosh, Chris Webber, Ben Wallace, Rick Adelman (former Blazers coach), Jay Wright (NCAA coach), Bill Russell (as a coach), Yolanda Griffith (WNBA), Lauren Jackson (WNBA), Bob Dandridge (veteran’s committee), Toni Kukoc (international committee), Pearl Moore (women’s veteran committee), Clarence Jenkins (early pioneer), Val Ackerman (WNBA), Cotton Fitzsimmons (coach), Howard Garfinkel (founder of the 5-star camp).
Most fans will agree, go ahead and induct Bill Russell in there as many times as you want. He’s already in as a player, now as a coach, why not complete the trifecta and include him in the African-American pioneer category as well? Pierce was another lock with 10 All-Star appearances, a championship, finals MVP, and 16th all time in league scoring. All four of the women’s inductees are deserving, and Clarence Jenkins got a long overdue nod as well. From there however there are cases to be made for and against many of the remaining inductees.
For starters you need to remind yourself that this is not the NBA hall of fame, but rather the basketball hall of fame. For all the same reasons that Vlade Divac was inducted in 2019, Toni Kukoc will be inducted later this year. Most of their success was international based, but that coupled with their NBA numbers were enough to get them both enshrined. Will anyone be talking to their grandkids about Divac or Kukoc moments 20 years from now? Probably not, but their contributions to growing the game overseas were huge for the league during the 90’s and 2000’s.
Wright is in there because of his success at the NCAA level with Villanova, and Adelman won over 1,000 games as a coach and reached two finals with the Blazers. In Adelman’s case, it appears the committee favoured longevity and perhaps even rewarded him for his roles as a player as well in his nod.
Bob Dandridge is a name well known in Milwaukee and the state of Wisconsin, however to the modern NBA demographic may be relatively obscure. Bob was part of two championship Bucks teams in the 70’s and posted a career 18.5pts/6.8Reb/3.4Ast statline. He would go on to win another championship with the Washington Bullets in 1978 and is one of the highest scoring forwards in the 70’s.
While Webber finally broke through after being a finalist for the past 5 years, Pierce and Bosh were first ballot hall of famers. One of those two players many fans would have assumed would get in fairly easily, the other not so much. That is until you start going up and down the list of NBA Hall of Fame inductees over the years, and realize that the blueprint is there to reward “solid” careers with induction.
Bosh may benefit from the “what if” factor as his career was cut short because of blood clot issues, so some will argue he would rank significantly higher on the all time PTS/REB lists if not for his health. Webber may have qualified for induction earlier if he had an NBA championship on his resume. Instead, he likely had to lean on his collegiate success as a member of Michigan’s Fab Five to finally get him over the hump with voters.
Wallace meanwhile may go down as one of the greatest undrafted players of all time. While he’ll never be known for his offensive prowess, his 4 defensive player of the year awards (tied for most all time), and 5 all NBA defensive team selections were key components to the Pistons title and multiple runs to the Eastern Conference finals in the early 2000’s.
However, for all the positives that Bosh, Webber, and Wallace have going for them, there will still be a significant segment of the NBA fanbase who will question their inclusion in this year’s draft class. While their numbers may be nice, and you can make a case for their candidacy, nothing about the three of them was generational. In fact in most years, you could argue they weren’t even the best player on their own teams let alone one of the top players in the league. Which is why it all comes down to the basketball hall of fame’s selection process, and blueprint for inclusion. Because if you’ve got some players in there based on certain criteria, you can’t move the goalposts and punish other players for doing the same.
We won’t run through the entire list of questionable inclusions over the decades (as there are hundreds of lists of “worst hall of fame selections” out there for your viewing pleasure), but once you dig a bit deeper into the Basketball Hall of Fame ranks there are more than a few head scratchers. Compared to the baseball hall of fame (which has an induction rate of roughly 1% of players who have ever played the game), the basketball hall of fame seems like the JV team of the two. And that’s in large part because of the voting process in place between the sports.
Baseball has over 400 journalists vote for the 10 players they believe should be inducted annually. In order to be inducted a player needs 75% of the vote. If a name on the ballot receives less than 5%, they are permanently removed. Players are put on the ballot 5 years after retiring and are only eligible for 15 years before they are taken off.
Basketball on the other hand, has a series of small committees made up of a collection of members and rotating groups. They’re comprised of:
- North American Screening Committee (9 members)
- Women’s Screening Committee (7 members)
- International Screening Committee (7 members)
- Veterans Screening Committee (7 members)
- American Basketball Association Committee – *disbanded in 2015
- Contributor Direct Election Committee
- Early African-American Pioneers of the Game Committee
From there, nominees there move to a 24 person “Honors Committee” which works as follows:
“Individuals who receive at least seven votes from the North American Screening Committee or five votes from one of the other screening committees in a given year are eligible to advance to an Honors Committee, composed of 12 members plus rotating groups of 12 specialists (one group for female candidates, one group for international candidates, and one group for American and veterans candidates) who vote on each candidate. Each screening committee has a limited number of candidates it may submit to the Honors Committee—10 from the North American Committee, and two from each of the other committees. Any individual receiving at least 18 affirmative votes (75% of all votes cast) from the Honors Committee is approved for induction into the Hall of Fame. As long as the number of candidates receiving sufficient votes from a screening committee is not greater than the number of finalists that the committee is permitted to submit, advancement to the Honors Committee is generally pro forma, although the Hall’s Board of Trustees may remove from consideration any candidate who “has damaged the integrity of the game of basketball”.”
All of that to say is if you want to be inducted into the baseball hall of fame you need to get 75% of the vote amongst over 400 voters. If you want to get into the basketball hall of fame, you need to get 75% of the vote amongst 33 voters (in the North American category which would include the NBA, and even less in some of the sub categories such as pioneer etc.). Anyone who has a passing knowledge of statistics, or has ever run for class president knows first hand that it’s far easier to influence a small number of people than it is to sway a larger population. And that ladies and gentlemen is how you end up with players like Bob Davies, Calvin Murphy, Frank Ramsey or Mitch Richmond in the Hall of Fame. Players who were either rewarded for team success, or who put up empty numbers over a long stretch of their career.
It’s for that exact reason that Bill Simmons put out his 700+ page behemoth “The Book of Basketball” laying out his argument for a pyramid style format to the hall of fame. On the lower levels you’d have the players who qualified and were inducted who may have made contributions to the game but didn’t exactly shake the foundations of the sport. Then you’d have the middle tier inductees. Those who put up solid numbers and are likely the cutoff for inclusion in the HOF (i.e. if you’re not better than this person, then you’re not making it in). Then as you get higher up the pyramid you get better and better players until you reach the pinnacle where you’d have the Jordans, Birds, Russells, and Kobes of the world.
It’s not a bad concept, and would right a lot of the wrongs the Hall of Fame has made over the years. Because to put the names Michael Jordan and Frank Ramsey in the same sentence is almost blasphemous. In the end, all of this year’s inductees made it on their own merits over remarkable careers. But if the basketball HOF wants to get serious about truly representing the best the sport has to offer. It may need to take a long hard look at its selection criteria, or move to a levels based model like Simmons advocates for. Somewhere out there in California, the Sports Guy is likely nodding in agreement.
-Kyle Skinner
Twitter: @JKyleSkinner