The NBA does pomp better than anyone, and that extends to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, whose induction night on Sunday is sure to be filled with viral moments, laughter and tears. Vince Carter, Chauncey Billups, the late Walter Davis and Michael Cooper are the headliners of this year’s class, along with the recently deceased Jerry West, who will be honored in the contributor category.
But does anyone know exactly how new members are selected and who does it?
It’s too important an event to be shrouded in secrecy, and it’s an important event because of the work the NBA has done to revitalize it, led by Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame president Jerry Colangelo, whose basketball resume It’s never… final. You feel like you’re entering a basketball shrine in Springfield, Massachusetts, from all the greats’ shoes, basketballs, and jerseys to exhibits on the evolution of tires.
The Hall got that part right because the NBA wanted it that way, and the league knew that, compared to other professional sports, it fell behind in making the weekend as glorious as possible.
But when you look at the classes in the Hall, there are some inconsistencies in the selections, even if most of them are obvious. 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 it lacks transparency.
This is a league that listens and reacts, and is very sensitive to the belief that things are not as clear as they should be, in the public eye. Your lottery draw, while held in a room where media and team personnel cannot bring in phones or video devices to ensure integrity, is shown to everyone in the moment. The media can touch the pingpong balls and feel that they weigh no different than the others, and anyone who is there can touch the actual machine that the pingpong balls are thrown at, so we can see that there is nothing funny .
It has become a made-for-TV moment during the conference finals, a half-hour-long spectacle where the lucky few are sequestered, unable to communicate with the outside world as they watch the process of revealing large envelopes with the logos of the equipment.
It’s stressful and annoying, but in some ways it’s fun, and while you assume that anything can happen to manipulate a certain outcome, at least we feel like the league is doing its part by pandering to the conspiracy theorists and showing that everything is on the line.
The NBA season awards process, while becoming a form of X groupthink, lets each voter know that their picks will be made public once all the awards are revealed. The voter must be held accountable, and while it may lead to influences trying to tip the balance, it is usually a process that seems quite genuine.
Random MVP voting has been few and far between in the decade since the NBA implemented this policy, and while there is an argument against it, it has 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 list of the 75 greatest (actually 76) players for its 75th anniversary; again, a moment full of all the pageantry in which the NBA wants to bathe. , most of the top 76 are in a room together reminiscing and connecting in ways that will be recorded 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, overall.
But that process has not extended to the place where basketball figures will be immortalized forever: the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.
Baseball voters will tell you exactly who they voted for, they will tell you why Barry Bonds is gone, and they will defend him. We can see who reaches the 75 percent threshold, how close some are to finally achieving it, while others are very, very far from achieving it.
In football, the feeling is even more intimate. Writers go into a room and openly discuss and present arguments to get candidates in. That may seem a little unsettling given that the relationship between media and player is often portrayed as antagonistic, but when it comes to pure athletic excellence, those small complaints, if they exist, can be referred for the case of merit. In this case, it could be a TV moment, but for the sake of the process, we’re just imagining how these discussions go.
None of this happens in basketball and it’s frustrating. Is it simply a popularity contest? What is the criterion? Who is in the room? Hell, is Is there a room? According to a ESPN 2022 Reportfinal ballots are destroyed.
Now, this isn’t to pick on Michael Cooper, an integral player for the Showtime Lakers in their five NBA championships during the NBA’s greatest period of growth on and off the court, but in what world is Hall infallible? of fame?
He wasn’t a starter, played behind Norm Nixon and then Byron Scott, averaged double figures only twice in his career and never made an All-Star team. Now, offense is half the court and the NBA has come to devalue defense, so it’s refreshing in some ways to see Cooper honored, as he was Defensive Player of the Year and an eight-time All-Defensive member. Equipment.
But did we look at Cooper playing and say, “That’s a Hall of Famer?” If anyone did, please raise your hand and come to the front of the room.
When we 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 squint and look at a player closely, is he really a Hall of Famer or just someone notable, someone you had to deal with?
There is supposed to be an exclusivity to being in the Hall. Unfortunately, some good players who made a mark on the game should be left on the outside looking in; That shows how special it is, how difficult it is to get into.
It seems like it’s easier to get into the Hall than to make an All-Star team, and without transparency, we have no way of knowing how much weight is given to Cooper’s WNBA coaching career compared to her on-court career. career that ended in 1990, or whether we, as a collective basketball community, have changed our minds about the importance of some players relative to conventional thinking of the past.
Maybe that’s the case. And if it is, it should be explained rather than letting the public assume why a player is coming in, because there are certainly some others who have had great cases, but we never hear them discussed even tangentially, and that seems like a disservice. .
There is no basic set of rules that determine a Hall of Fame member. It’s in the eyes of the fans and the media. Some crowed when Tracy McGrady came in, a scoring champion who never seemed to reach his enormous potential, partly due to bad luck. Actually, most of it was bad luck.
The same was true for Ben Wallace, another one-way player whose style defined a generation with his record four Defensive Player of the Year awards. There’s not much argument from here about those guys, but it’s understandable that those with higher standards had questions that needed answering, assuming it’s extremely difficult to get into the Hall.
Billups was a catalyst for a good team becoming a great one in Detroit, winning Finals MVP in 2004 and helping the Denver Nuggets achieve their best run of success before the recent Nikola Jokić-fueled run. Basketball-Reference.com lists him as having an 84.4 percent chance of being a Hall of Famer, higher than recent inductee Tim Hardaway, higher than Joe Dumars (2006 inductee) and Dennis Rodman.
Carter’s probability of being Basketball-Reference is even higher, at 94.5 percent, higher than that of Kawhi Leonard, Tony Parker and James Worthy. Carter didn’t have singular success in the playoffs, but he had franchises and was a top-tier face for a decade, and his play deserved all the attention. He wasn’t just a standout movie, he was a superstar player.
And again, if McGrady is a model, Carter compares favorably even before beginning his career as a reliable veteran off the bench or as a starter. And that’s not even taking into account his stellar career at the University of North Carolina.
Cooper’s probability? 0.9 percent.
The Basketball-Reference model is not perfect and context beyond the numbers is needed, so it has more arguments. But an unassailable Hall case?
This does not require the NBA to part ways with the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. It is a great event that tells stories about integral figures at all levels, from the international level to the women’s side, through to the contributors and coaches who have helped shape this wonderful game.
We would feel a little better if we knew who made the selections, why the selections were made, and the arguments in favor of them.
The players deserve it and the Hall itself deserves it.