The lack of transparency of the Basketball Hall of Fame is again in focus with the new inductees (video)

The NBA does prestige better than anyone and that extends to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, with induction night on Sunday sure to be full of viral moments, laughs and tears. Vince Carter, Chauncey Billups, the late Walter Davis and Michael Cooper headline this year’s class, along with the recently passed Jerry West being honored in the contributor category.

But does anyone know exactly how the candidates 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 is never… final. 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 rims.

The Hall got that part right because the NBA wanted it to, 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 room, 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 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. Their draft lottery, though held 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 at this point. The media can touch the ping-pong balls and feel that they don’t weigh any differently than the others, and anyone there can touch the actual machine that the ping-pong balls are thrown into, so we can see that there is no funny business.

It’s become a made-for-television moment during the conference finals, a half-hour spectacle where the lucky few are held hostage, unable to communicate with the outside world as they watch the process of large envelopes with logos of the teams that are discovered.

It’s edgy and annoying, but it’s fun in a way, and while one assumes anything can happen in gerrymandering with a certain outcome, at least we feel like the league is doing its part to satisfy the conspiracy theorists and prove that everything is up to par. line

The NBA season awards process, while it turns into a bit of Group X thinking, lets all voters know that their selections will be made public once all the awards are revealed. There is accountability 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 against it, it’s done more good than harm.

And even from a historical perspective, the NBA told the world exactly who was on the voting committee for its 75th (actually 76) players list for its 75th anniversary, once again , a moment full of all the luxury in which the NBA wants to bathe. , most of the top 76 are together in one room reminiscing and connecting in a way that will be chronicled forever.

That committee was full of 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 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, why Barry Bonds isn’t in it, and they’ll go for it. We can see who reaches the 75 percent threshold, how close some are to finally getting in, while others are far, far away.

In football, it feels even more intimate. Writers go into a room and openly discuss and present cases for candidates to enter. Now this may seem a little twisted because the relationship between the media and the player is often seen as antagonistic, but when it comes to pure athletic excellence, these minor gripes, if any, can be brushed aside. of merit In this case, it could be a TV moment, but for the sake of the process, let’s just imagine how these discussions go.

None of that happens in basketball, and it’s frustrating. Is it just a popularity contest? What is the criterion? who is in the room hell, is is there a room According to a 2022 ESPN report, the final ballots are destroyed.

Now, it’s not about facing Michael Cooper, an integral player for the Showtime Lakers in their five NBA championships during the NBA’s greatest period of on-court growth and off-court popularity, but in what world is a safe 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 court and the NBA has come to devalue defense, so it’s refreshing to see Cooper honored as he was the Defensive Player of the Year and an eight-time All-American. – Defensive. team

But we looked at Cooper, as he was playing, and we said, “Is that a Hall of Famer?” If anyone 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 look at a long, strong player, is he really a Hall of Famer or just someone who stood out, someone you had to deal with?

There is supposed to be an exclusivity that comes with being in the Room. Unfortunately, some good players who have left a mark on the game have to be left on the outside looking in, it shows how special it is, how hard it is to get into.

It seems 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 coaching career in the WNBA compared to her on the floor. career that ended in 1990, or whether we as a collective basketball community have changed our minds about the importance of certain players relative to the conventional thinking of the past.

Maybe that’s the case. And if so, it should be explained instead of leaving the audience to assume why a player gets in, because there are certainly a few who have had fantastic cases, but we never hear them talk even tangentially, and this seems to us a bad service. .

There is no basic set of rules that determine a Hall of Famer. It is in the eyes of the fans and the media. Some sang when Tracy McGrady entered, a champion scorer who never seemed to fulfill his great potential, some of them unlucky. In fact, most of it was bad luck.

The same was true of 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 to argue from here about these guys, but it’s understandable that those with higher standards would have questions that needed answering, considering the Hall is extremely difficult to break into.

Billups was a catalyst for a good team to become a great one in Detroit, winning a Finals MVP in 2004 and helping the Denver Nuggets to their best success before Nikola Jokić’s recent run. Basketball-Reference.com has him listed as an 84.4 percent probable Hall of Famer, better than recent inductee Tim Hardaway, better than Joe Dumars (2006 inductee) and Dennis Rodman.

Carter’s basketball referral probability is even higher at 94.5 percent, higher than Kawhi Leonard, Tony Parker and James Worthy. Carter didn’t have the singular success of the playoffs, but he had franchises and was a main face for a decade, with his play deserving of all the attention. He wasn’t just a highlight reel, he was a superstar player.

And again, if McGrady is a model, Carter compares favorably, even before he began his career as a reliable vet off the bench or as a starter. And that doesn’t take into account his stellar career at the University of North Carolina.

Cooper’s odds? 0.9 percent.

The Basketball-Reference model isn’t perfect, and you need context beyond the numbers, so it has more to do with it. But a Hall case, an unassailable case?

This is not calling for the NBA to part ways with the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. It’s a great event that tells stories about integral figures at every level, from the international level, to the women’s side, to the contributors and coaches who have helped shape this wonderful game.

It would feel a little better if we knew who made the selections, why the selections were made, and the arguments for them.

The players deserve it, and the Hall itself deserves it.