Hall of Fame

Next Friday, the 2010 Basketball Hall of Fame class will be inducted in Springfield, Massachusetts. This year's class is the largest in almost 40 years, as Jerry Buss, Cynthia Cooper, Bob Hurley, Dennis Johnson, Gus Johnson, Karl Malone, Maciel Pereira, and Scottie Pippen will be accompanied by the first two Olympic teams to be enshrined - the 1960 and 1992 United States teams. The 1960 team and Bill Russell's 1956 squad both won the gold medal, but that's where the comparisons end. Outside of Russell and K.C. Jones, the roster of the 1956 team was comprised mostly of semi-pro players who toiled in the AAU, and who remain largely unknown to casual fans (though I write about them in Rising Above The Rim). The 1960 team was loaded with future NBA stars - Oscar Robertson, Jerry West, Jerry Lucas, Walt Bellamy, and more.

Teams are now seldom recognized by the Hall; the racially ground-breaking Texas Western squad was admitted in 2007, five years after the not-so-ground-breaking Harlem Globetrotters in 2002 (whose founder, Abe Saperstein, was inducted 31 years earlier). However, from 1964-2001, no teams made the cut; after a flurry of inductees from 1959-1963 (New York Rens, Buffalo Germans, Original Celtics, and "The First Team") during the Hall of Fame's first few years of existence, the Hall focused exclusively on players, owners, and other contributors. I would like to see more teams given consideration, since basketball is, after all, a team game. There should be a place in the Hall for the USF Dons of 1954 through 1956 who won a then record 60 games in a row.