The Basketball Hall of Fame
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The Basketball Hall of Fame is the most enigmatic of the three major sports, both because it covers the entire sport (which means a lot of entries no one has ever heard of, in part thanks to a rather generous policy toward contributors and coaches who simply were around a long time) and in part because no one has any idea the process by which people are selected. So it’s always far less a big deal than the NFL or MLB. Today, the Hall dropped its inductees and from the NBA, they were pretty weird.
Vince Carter was an obvious selection. I’m basically fine with Chauncey Billups; you probably should have someone off every title team and that Pistons team was the least star-dominant title team in my memory. Walter Davis….in some ways inspired in that he was the best player in the early history of the Suns and was a hell of a scorer, though the advanced metrics like Win Shares don’t really back this up. And then there is the case of Michael Cooper, who was like the 7th best player on the 80s Lakers and would not even be sniffing the HOF if he wasn’t on TV all the time. John Hollinger had a piece about this weird selection today and it does not make the Hall look good:
When it comes to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame — which had its most recent class unveiled Saturday — I’m getting worried that the way Springfield selects NBA players for induction has become extremely, shall we say, outlier-prone. In particular, it seems to be driven to an almost comical extent by Ringz culture, rather than people having honest discussions about the merits of player X versus better than player Y.
Saturday’s selection of Michael Cooper is a red-flag moment for this perspective. I’m sure there will be plenty of discussion about Cooper’s pros and cons. If you’re trying to impartially compare Hall of Fame candidates, however, I think it’s fair to say Cooper’s selection is an outlier with a capital, neon “O.” It is incredibly rare, in the annals of any team sport, for a zero–time All-Star to be voted in based solely on their playing career.
I also think there’s an obvious cause and effect here. Unlike baseball, voting for the Basketball Hall of Fame is done in private via an opaque process; we don’t even know who has a vote.
Because of that, there is near-zero public discussion about the candidates, especially relative to the National Baseball Hall of Fame. That’s what has led us to this place. It’s one where players who were the best or second-best players on 50-win non-title teams get kept out of the Hall or, at best, have to wait decades for entry (hello, Walter Davis!) … but anybody lucky enough to have Magic Johnson or Bill Russell as a teammate waltzes in.
….
Cooper, obviously, had a big role in them as L.A.’s go-to Larry Bird defender in the three NBA Finals series these teams played, two of which the Lakers won. He also was one of the first players to realize standing around behind the 3-point line could be a really useful offensive life hack. (Notably, Coop made six 3s in Game 2 of the 1987 Finals, at a time when that just wasn’t done.) Additionally, he was also … distinctive. For a good two decades, anyone on the playground wearing knee-high white socks was just called “Cooper.” (As in, “Yo, I’ll take this guy, and you guard Cooper over there.”)
So, yes, he was a significant player. But this isn’t the Hall of Pretty Good, nor is it the Hall of Warm Childhood Memories. We don’t need to commemorate that magical ’80s Lakers-Celtics era by inducting every single player from the 1984 Finals. We were already at NINE; I think that’s probably good (Bird, Magic, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Robert Parish, James Worthy, Kevin McHale, Bob McAdoo, Dennis Johnson and Jamaal Wilkes).
Additionally, screaming “HE GUARDED BIRD IN THE FINALS!” isn’t the burn you think it is, unless you want a flotilla of other wing defenders in Springfield. Cooper’s eight All-Defense selections are a notable feather in his cap, but no different from other specialists like Bruce Bowen and Norm Van Lier (and, likely, Jerry Sloan and a couple others if All-Defense voting been a thing before the late 1960s) and not hugely differentiating from others like Tony Allen or Metta Sandiford-Artest.
But when there is no public voting, nobody talks about this stuff. The secret vote strikes me as the core of the problem, because there isn’t really any thoughtful discussion out there about the distinctions between Cooper and the other players of his era who aren’t in the Hall.
In particular, we don’t really talk about those players who were the key stars on 50-plus win teams that didn’t get into the Finals. No class of player gets more overlooked, especially if they ever played for the Phoenix Suns. (Seriously, this is getting weird.) Marques Johnson, for instance, was either the best or second-best player on a series of awesome Milwaukee Bucks teams that made consecutive conference finals, made five All-Star Games and three All-NBA teams. Although he’s been a finalist multiple times, he has yet to be selected.
More glaringly, I mean … can we talk about Tom Chambers and Kevin Johnson? Start with the fact that the 1990 Suns smashed a Magic-Worthy Lakers team in five games in the second round with Johnson and Chambers leading the way. It’s not like this was some great outlier in their career arcs either; they only played in one Finals apiece, but nearly every team either of them played on was really good.
This is the gist of it–Hall voters shouldn’t be voting people in because they were marginal players on great teams. I liked Cooper–he was a hell of a player by a certain standard, but a Hall of Fame player? C’mon.
This led me down a bit of journey. Who are the best players not in the HOF? Basketball Reference ranks players by Win Shares and that’s good enough to start. Here’s the top 10 eligible players not in the HOF:
- Shawn Marion (47th overall)
- Buck Williams (51st)
- Horace Grant (52nd)
- Terry Porter (68th)
- Elton Brand (73rd)
- Larry Nance (74th)
- Detlef Schrempf (75th)
- Jeff Hornacek (76th)
- Otis Thorpe (82nd)
- Bill Laimbeer (85th)
As for the players who just were inducted:
- Vince Carter (45th)
- Chauncey Billups (48th)
- Walter Davis (186th)
- Michael Cooper (not in the top 250, placing him behind such legends as Jermaine O’Neal, Caldwell Jones, and Reggie Theus. In fact, he’s not even close. To be in the Top 250, you need 65.95 Win Shares. Cooper is at 52. He’s might be in the top 500.)
So the Cooper pick is truly ridiculous and the Davis is pretty marginal. Like, I never thought of Walter Davis as a Hall of Fame player.
The Carter/Billups really do reset the top of the Best Out market, with Jack Sikma’s recent induction doing much the same and he was right around there. I have to say that I was pretty surprised to see Shawn Marion as the best player by one measure not in the Hall. The Buck Williams/Terry Porter thing really bugs me though. Those were great players on perhaps the best team to not win a title in my lifetime, the early 90s Blazers. With one title, those guys are already in. Also, if they didn’t play their best years in Portland they are already in. It’s very frustrating as a Blazers fan. In fact, everything is frustrating as a Blazers fan, including that team not winning a title, but still, c’mon, there’s a lot of smaller marker guys who not only don’t get the respect they deserve when they are playing, but they never get that respect, even from people who know better.
I also assume by the Coop standard that Horace Grant is in very soon.
As for current players and not yet eligible retirees, the following meet are at least equal to Laimbeer and thus are either guaranteed or will be considered seriously (I assume Laimbeer would already be in if he wasn’t such a huge asshole as a player).
- LeBron James (2nd)
- Chris Paul (6th)
- Kevin Durant (20th)
- James Harden (21st)
- Dwight Howard (34th)
- Stephen Curry (38th)
- LaMarcus Aldridge (58th)
- Jimmy Butler (60th)
- Al Horford (63rd)
- Kyle Lowry (66th)
- Anthony Davis (67th)
- Russell Westbrook (69th)
- Damian Lillard (70th)
- Nikola Jokic (71st)
- Giannis Antetokounmpo (78th)
- Carmelo Anthony (80th)
Obviously a lot of these guys will continue to rise in the coming years. I am really curious about the Carmelo debate. One assumes he’s in because he’s famous. Hard to argue he was a great player if anything but shooting counts. Seeing Aldridge that high also surprised me somewhat, though at his best, he was no question outstanding.
Anyway, I always like a good HOF debate and it’s Saturday night and you might be watching the Final Four anyway. Hard to defeat an actual giant who can move a bit and has a nice touch, which is why I think Purdue will win the whole thing on Monday.