Artis Gilmore was finally elected to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame this year, and only two decades late! Gilmore, an ABA legend and the greatest center in Chicago Bulls history, was elected to the Hall after repeated snubs by the secret committee that decides who's in and who's out. It should be a joyous occassion -- one of the two dozen best big men ever is in after waiting way too long -- but it really just brings about a new level of frustration.
Artis Gilmore Hall Of Fame Election Reminds Us Why We Hate Hall Of Fame
Why did it take this long to recognize one of the best to ever play? The Hall -- it’s not an NBA Hall of Fame, mind you, it’s a basketball Hall of Fame that inducts international players, high school coaches and everything in between -- is remarkably macro in scope, yet narrow in its biases. Chief among those biases has been the ABA, where typically only those ABA stars who went on to do great things after the merger (Julius Erving, Rick Barry) or who had huge collegiate careers get the nod.
Gilmore is a primary victim of that bias, despite a huge NBA career after the merger. Artis was 27 by the time he moved from the ABA’s Kentucky Colonels to the NBA’s Bulls, and while he still put up eight double-double seasons (including two 20-10 seasons), he wasn’t the bold-faced superstar he had been in his younger days. The Hall’s inclusiveness is supposed to account for that, by recognizing college accomplishment, Olympic accomplishment and the like. Instead, that Gilmore spent five seasons in the ABA became a burden to his Hall case.
How broken is the Hall? Jerry Colangelo had to create a new committee -- the ABA committee -- to even make Gilmore eligible for election, according to Scott Howard-Cooper. Gilmore wasn’t made a finalist in recent years, knocking him off even the veterans committee ballot. Colangelo had to create a new committee just to get Gilmore back in the running; thankfully, at least 18 of the 24 anonymous voters saw where Colangelo was headed, and made the smart call.
It still shouldn’t have taken this long. The NBA needs its own Hall, and it needs to make sure the ABA is well-represented.
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