The NBA puts on a show better than anyone and that extends to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame – with induction night on Sunday sure to be filled with viral moments, laughter and tears. Vince Carter, Chauncey Billups, the late Walter Davis and Michael Cooper are the headliners in this year’s class — along with the recently passed Jerry West honored in the contributor category.
But does anyone know exactly how the entrants are chosen, and who does it?
It’s too important of an event to be shrouded in secrecy, and it’s an important event because of the work the NBA has done to revive it – led by Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame president Jerry Colangelo, whose basketball resume is never – ending You feel like you’re walking into a basketball shrine in Springfield, Massachusetts, from all the shoes, basketballs and jerseys of the greats to exhibits on the evolution of the rims themselves.
The Hall got that part precisely because the NBA wanted it, and the league knew that compared to other professional sports, it was lagging behind in making the weekend as glorious as it could be.
But when you look at the classes in the Hall, there are some inconsistencies in the choices – even if most of them are meaningless. All we know is that the media will receive an email from the Hall sometime in February announcing the finalists and then before the NCAA Final Four the class will be revealed.
It’s nice and tidy, but the transparency is lacking.
This is a connection that listens and reacts, and is very sensitive to the belief that things are not as clear as they should be, in full view of the public. Its draft lottery — while conducted in a room where media and team personnel are not allowed to bring phones or video devices inside to ensure integrity — is shown to everyone in the moment. The media can actually touch the ping pong balls and feel that they weigh no differently than the others, and anyone there can touch the actual machine that the ping pong balls are launched into, so we can see that there is no funny business .
It has become a pro-television moment during the conference finals, a half-hour long spectacle where the lucky few are sequestered, unable to communicate with the outside world while watching the process of large envelopes with team logos being unveiled.
It’s edgy and annoying, but it’s kind of fun, and even though you assume anything can happen to gerrymander a certain outcome, we at least feel like the league is doing its part to indulge the conspiracy theorists and show that everything is on the line.
The NBA’s season awards process, while becoming a bit of X group think, lets each voter know that their picks will be released after each award is revealed. It’s a responsibility for the voter, and while it can lead to influences trying to tip the scales, it’s usually a process that feels pretty genuine.
Random MVP votes have been few and far between in the decade since the NBA implemented this policy, and while there’s an argument to be made against it, it’s done more good than harm.
And even from a historical perspective, the NBA told the world exactly who was part of the voting committee for its best 75 (actually 76) player list for its 75th anniversary – again, a moment filled with the entire spectacle in which the NBA want to bathe , most of the above 76 being in a room together reminiscing and connecting in ways that will be chronicled forever.
That committee was filled with basketball royalty, and even if you want to question the qualifications of some of the voters, the NBA got it right, by and large.
But that process did not extend to the place where basketball figures will be forever immortalized, the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.
Baseball voters will tell you exactly who they voted for, tell you why Barry Bonds isn’t and stand on it. We can see who reaches the 75 percent threshold, how close some are to finally getting in while others are far from it.
In football, it feels even more intimate. The writers go into a room and openly discuss and make cases for candidates to enter. Now that might feel a little murky given the media-player relationship often cast as antagonistic, but when it comes to pure athletic excellence, those minor complaints. , if they exist, can be set aside for the case of merit. In this case, it could be a TV moment, but for the sake of the process, we can only imagine how these discussions go.
None of this happens in basketball, and it’s frustrating. Is it just a popularity contest? What are the criteria? Who is in the room? hell, is is there a room According to a 2022 report from ESPNthe final ballots are destroyed.
Now, this is not to choose Michael Cooper, an integral player for the Showtime Lakers in their five NBA championships during the NBA’s greatest period of on-floor growth and off-floor popularity, but in which world he is a sure Hall. of Famer?
He wasn’t a starter, playing behind Norm Nixon and then Byron Scott, averaged double figures just twice in his career, and never made an All-Star team. Now, offense is half the floor and the NBA has devalued defense, so it’s refreshing in a way to see Cooper honored, as he was Defensive Player of the Year and an eight-time All-Defensive member. team
But did we look at Cooper when he was playing and say, “That’s a Hall of Famer?” If someone did, please raise your hand and come to the front of the room.
When you think of the Showtime Lakers, you think of Magic Johnson, then Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, then maybe James Worthy — and maybe Bob McAdoo, Jamaal Wilkes and a few others.
If you have to strive and look long and hard at a player, is he really a Hall of Famer or just someone remarkable, someone you had to deal with?
There is supposed to be an exclusivity that comes with being in the Hall. Unfortunately, some good players who have left a mark on the game should be left on the outside looking in – that shows how special it is, how hard it is to get into.
It’s easier to get into the Hall than make an All-Star team, it seems, and without the transparency, we have no way of knowing how much weight is given to Cooper’s coaching career in the WNBA compared to his on the floor. a career that ended in 1990, or if we as a collective basketball community changed our minds about how important some players are relative to conventional thinking of the past.
Maybe so it is. And if it is, it should be explained rather than leaving the public to guess why a player is getting in – because there are certainly a few others who have had great cases, but we never hear them discuss even tangentially, and that feels like a disservice. .
There is no basic set of rules that determine a Hall of Fame. It is in the eyes of the fans and media. Some cried when Tracy McGrady came in, a scoring champion who never seemed to fulfill his massive potential – some of it due to bad luck. In fact most of it was bad luck.
The same went for Ben Wallace, another one-way player whose style defined a generation with his record four Defensive Player of the Year awards. Not much of an argument from here on those guys, but it’s understandable if those with higher standards had questions that needed answering if the Hall is supposed to be extremely difficult to get into.
Billups was a catalyst for a good team becoming great in Detroit, winning Finals MVP in 2004, and helping the Denver Nuggets to their best stretch of success before the recent run floated by Nikola Jokić. Basketball-Reference.com has him listed as an 84.4 percent likely Hall of Famer, higher than recent inductee Tim Hardaway, higher than Joe Dumars (2006 inductee) and Dennis Rodman.
Carter’s Basketball Reference probability is even higher, at 94.5 percent — higher than Kawhi Leonard, Tony Parker and James Worthy. Carter didn’t have the extraordinary playoff success, but he carried franchises and was a premier face for a decade – with his play warranting every bit of attention. He wasn’t just a movie highlight, he was a superstar.
And again, if McGrady is a model, Carter compares favorably, even before he began his run as a reliable vet off the bench or starter. And that’s not counting his stellar career at the University of North Carolina.
Cooper’s odds? 0.9 percent.
The Basketball Reference model isn’t perfect, and context is needed beyond the numbers, so he has more of a case. But Hall’s case, unassailable?
This does not require the NBA to separate itself from the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. It’s a great event that tells stories about integral figures at all levels — from international, to the women’s side, to the contributors and coaches who helped shape this amazing game.
It would just feel a little better if we knew who made the choices, why the choices were made and the arguments for them.
The players deserve it, and the Hall itself deserves it.
