Archive for the 'Hall of Fame' Category

...Artis Gilmore is going to be a Hall of Famer!

This means we will have to come up with a new answer to #6 on our Keltner List posts.

I've been thinking about this concept for a while, but I want to throw it out there for the readers and see what they think...

Everyone knows we already have a Basketball Hall of Fame. But from an NBA perspective, a lot of people think it's broken -- as the argument goes, too many non-NBA people get inducted while great NBA players are left out in the cold. So there's a growing push to create an NBA-only Hall of Fame. How do you stock such a Hall, though? It seems like the other major sports have a pretty clear focus in their induction processes: baseball's hall is largely about longevity and statistical milestones, while football's hall is heavily focused on guys who won championships and/or changed the game.

So what should the NBA's angle be? I want to propose that this hypothetical Hall be about "relevance". As in, who were the relevant players in a given season or span of seasons? Who were the essential names? When you tell the Story Of The NBA, which players would it be inexcusable not to mention? If the Hall of Fame is about celebrating the history of the league, then including the guys that fundamentally shaped the narrative is a pretty good mandate. And if we can tell the NBA's story without mentioning a certain player, it's hard to argue that he belongs in the Hall.

The good news is that you can generate the majority of this list by setting up a basic checklist of requirements. But I want to know what you think those requirements are.

Off the top of my head, here's a basic list of requirements that capture the "relevant" players each season:

• Top 3 in each season's MVP voting
• Every Sporting News MVP
• Every season's 1st-team All-NBAers
• Every Finals MVP
• Top 3 players on each NBA champion
• Best player on Finals runner-up
• Best player on team with NBA's best record
• PER leader for seasons 2000-present
• Win Shares leader for seasons 2004-present

This is the list of players generated by those criteria:

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Since there's a certain primacy to players who required fewer "ballots" for Hall of Fame induction, here is everyone in the Basketball Hall of Fame who played in the NBA/ABA/BAA, sorted by the fewest years between their final NBA/ABA/BAA season and the HoF class in which they were inducted:

This is not necessarily a list of players with the shortest time between retirement from basketball and HoF induction. In most cases, "retirement from the NBA/ABA/BAA" and "retirement from basketball" are the same thing, but it's possible for a player to delay his eligibility by playing in a minor league after retiring from the "majors".

¹ - Cousy initially retired in 1963, which would have made him eligible for the Class of 1969. However, he returned to the NBA with the Royals for 7 games in 1969-70. After re-retiring, he maintained his earlier eligibility from 1969.
² - Inducted before HoF established the 5-year waiting period.
³ - Baylor played 9 games before retiring early in the 1971-72 season, so for the Hall of Fame's purposes he was eligible in 1977.

I was curious about which seasons saw the most Hall of Famers in action, so I set up a query to count how many HOFers (inducted as players) were active in a given season, both in the NBA and the NBA/ABA/BAA combined:

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Back in early May, I conducted a poll asking our readers to vote on who should be inducted into the inaugural Fantasy Basketball Hall of Fame class, and you responded very well, registering almost 1,000 votes. According to the rules of the HoF (based on the Baseball Hall of Fame process), a player had to be named on 75% of ballots to be inducted, which left us with two players (2 point guards, actually): Kevin Johnson, and Tim Hardaway. KJ was honored in July, so now it's time for the original king of the killer crossover...

Timothy Duane "Tim Bug" Hardaway
Position: Point Guard
Height: 6-0 ▪ Weight: 175 lbs.
Born: September 1, 1966 in Chicago, Illinois
High School: Carver in Chicago, Illinois
College: University of Texas at El Paso
Draft: Selected by the Golden State Warriors in the 1st round (14th pick, 14th overall) of the 1989 NBA draft.

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If you're a longtime reader of this blog, you know that Artis Gilmore is always the answer to at least one of our recurring questions: "Who is the very best (eligible) basketball player in history that isn't in the Hall of Fame?" In fact, sometimes it seems like we should just retire #6 on that Keltner List questionnaire, because it doesn't matter which player we're looking at... unless you're Artis Gilmore, the answer is "no". Gilmore owns #6.

And thanks to a hat-tip-worthy link by TrueHoop, I learned today that the A-Train has a blog, where he gives his perspective on various basketball topics (including an offer last week to help Greg Oden with his game). I was also pleasantly surprised to see a number of guest posts lobbying for Gilmore to be in the HoF, which we couldn't be more in favor of here at BBR.

So here's to our old favorite Artis Gilmore, one of the great centers of all-time and a player who, with the 6th-most combined ABA/NBA Win Shares of all time, desperately needs to be enshrined in Springfield.

When Scottie Pippen, Dennis Johnson, Karl Malone, & Gus Johnson get enshrined into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame this evening, it will represent not only the culmination of a lifetime's hard work and dedication by four great players -- it will also establish the greatest collection of winners to ever enter the HoF at once.

Or at least, according to my calculations it will. Recall that in posts like this, I estimated the W-L record of a player's team when he played thusly:

"...take the team's winning percentage in all games ... and multiply by the player's games played for wins, then subtract that from his games for losses."

It's a kludge, I admit, but in the absence of pre-1991 playoff gamelogs, it's the best we can do -- and it's not too inaccurate for such a simple solution. Anyway, according to that method (and combining regular-season + postseason wins), Malone, Pippen, & D.J. are all among the 20 winningest NBA players to ever lace up a pair of sneakers:

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Back in early May, I conducted a poll asking readers t0 vote on who should be inducted into the inaugural Fantasy Basketball Hall of Fame class, and you responded very well, registering almost 1,000 votes. According to the rules of the HoF (based on the Baseball Hall of Fame process), a player had to be named on 75% of ballots to be inducted, which left us with two players (2 point guards, actually): Kevin Johnson, and Tim Hardaway. Tim Bug will get his ceremony later in the summer, but today I think we'll give KJ the love he deserves as a charter member of the FBHoF...

Kevin Maurice "K.J." Johnson
Position: Point Guard
Height: 6-1 Weight: 180 lbs.
Born: March 4, 1966 in Sacramento, California
High School: Sacramento in Sacramento, California
College: University of California
Draft: Selected by the Cleveland Cavaliers in the 1st round (7th pick, 7th overall) of the 1987 NBA draft.

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Recently, it's come to my attention that the mere possibility of VC making the Hall of Fame apparently evokes an angry, violent, nauseous reaction on par with this. Then again, there's no doubting he's been one of the defining figures of the post-MJ era, for better or for worse. So what's the verdict? Hall or no Hall for Mr. Carter? Let's do this...

Vitals

Position: SG/SF
Height: 6-7 Weight: 215 lbs.
Born: January 26, 1977 in Daytona Beach, Florida
High School: Mainland in Daytona Beach, Florida
College: University of North Carolina
Draft: Selected by the Golden State Warriors in the 1st round (5th pick, 5th overall) of the 1998 NBA draft.

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Better late than never: ESPN has a source reporting that Dennis Johnson, the legendary guard who played a key role on three championship teams during the 1970s & '80s (2 with the Boston Celtics and 1 with the Seattle SuperSonics), has apparently been inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame this voting cycle. Johnson, who passed away suddenly at age 52 in 2007, had been long regarded as one of the HoF's most glaring omissions, given his championship resume and the fact that he made up half of one of the most famous plays in NBA history. It's a shame he couldn't live to see the honor, but congratulations are still in order to Johnson, one of the winningest players of all time.