A TITLE in the college or professional level, or an Olympic gold medal, is something to crow about.
Still, the highest honor that can be bestowed to a basketball player or coach, or even an official, is to be inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.
The 13-member Class of 2018 – including seven men with NBA-playing experience – will be inducted into the Hall of Fame on September 8, (PH time) in Springfield, Massachusetts.
The new HOF inductees included former NBA stars Ray Allen, Jason Kidd, Steve Nash, Maurice Cheeks and Grant Hill, who all were elected by the North American Committee; one-time Boston Celtics frontliner Dino Radja, who was elected by the International Committee; and ABA-NBA legend Charlie Scott, who was elected by the Veterans Committee.
Allen, Kidd, Nash and Hill all made it to the Hall in their first year of eligibility.
The other personages to be inducted are Charles (Lefty) Driesell (North American Committee) in the coaches’ category, former WNBA stars Tina Thompson and Katie Smith (now the New Liberty head coach) in the players’ category, former NBA and team executive Rod Thorn and current president and chief operating officer of the back-to-back NBA champion Golden State Warriors Rick Welts, both of whom were elected in the contributors’ category by the Contributor Direct Election Committee; and older women’s player Ora Mae Washington, who was elected posthumously by the Early African-American Pioneers Committee.
To be inducted into the Hall, a finalist candidate must secure at least 18 votes from the 24-member Honors Committee.
With the latest batch, there are now 378 individual inductees to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.
Overall, there are 388 players, coaches, referees, contributors and teams in the Hall.
John Wooden, Lenny Wilkens, Bill Sharman and Tom Heinsohn have each been inducted as both player and coach – Wooden in 1960 and 1973, Sharman in 1976 and 2004, Wilkens in 1989 and 1998, and Heinsohn in 1986 and 2015.
John McLendon also made it to the Hall as both coach and contributor, entering in 1979 as a contributor and 2016 as a coach.
Thrice in the past, the Hall has inducted new batches without honoring a single player. That happened in 1965, 1968 and 2007.
The Hall, which was established in 1959, is an American history museum and hall of fame that is located at 1000 Hall of Fame Avenue in Springfield, Massachusetts. It serves as basketball’s most complete library, in addition to promoting and preserving the history of the sport. It is dedicated to James Naismith, the Canadian-American physician and inventor of basketball.
The Hall inducted its first batch of members in 1959.
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All-time great center Bill Russell, who powered the Boston Celtics to 11 NBA championships in 12 Finals trips during his illustrious 13-year pro career from 1956-69, was the first black player to be inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame on February 8, 1975.
The five-time NBA Most Valuable Player awardee, however, boycotted the enshrinement ceremonies after charging the organization of racism. At the time, all the members of the Honors Committee that voted for the Hall honorees were white.
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