Dennis Rodman, Chris Mullin Among 10 Who Enter Basketball Hall Of Fame

Yup, sounds like Rodman to me.

Most people just let the Hall of Fame list their accomplishments and move on. Dennis Rodman is not most people. Instead, he’ll be wearing his accomplishments, and so much more, on his feet.

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Teresa Edwards might not be the most well-known member of the 2011 Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame class, but the women’s basketball star certainly deserved the honor. Edwards owns 14 total gold medals from various international competitions while competing with Team USA, though the most impressive came while competing at the Olympics.

Edwards is currently in her first season as head coach of the WNBA’s Tulsa Shock after retiring from the league in 2005, but her basketball success spans a career much longer than the WNBA’s existence.

Winter was an accomplished coach in his own right before coming to the Bulls. After graduating college in 1947, he coached at Marquette, Kansas State and Washington for two decades. His most successful stint was with Kansas State, where he led the Wildcats to eight league titles and two FInal Four appearances. He was famous for his offensive system that allowed his undermanned teams to compete with the very best. In 1962, he wrote a book on that offense called The Triple-Post Offense, which caught the eye of the Chicago Bulls many years later.

The irony of Winter is that he was beloved by both Krause and Jackson, even though Krause and Jackson grew to loathe each other. In a way, that’s the story of Winter’s career. He was always a basketball purist, unwilling and unable to play the political game that coaches often need to play. That may have hampered his Hall of Fame candidacy in the past, seeing as the Hall is a very political process. Now, though, he will finally get his due as one of the most influential basketball minds this game has ever seen.

But what got Sabonis in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, where on Friday he’ll be officially inducted as a part of a 10-person class, was his international dominance. Sabonis spent the first 15 years of his pro career in Europe, playing for BC Zalgris in his native Kaunas, Lithuania, and later Spanish clubs CB Valladolid and Real Madrid. In these years he was named Europe’s Player of the Year eight times.

Even that club success was overshadowed by Sabonis’ mammoth impact on international competition at the Olympics and in continental championship. Most famously, Sabonis led the final Soviet team in Olympic history to the gold medal in 1988, beating the last amateur American team (starring David Robinson, Mitch Richmond and Danny Manning) in the semifinals and knocking off a stacked Yugoslavia team (led by Drazen Petrovic and Vlade Divac) for first place. That Soviet team was one of the best in international history, and Sabonis was clearly the best player on it.

The 2011 Basketball Hall of Fame’s induction ceremony will feature Dennis Rodman and Chris Mullin, among others, and should be an event worth watching -- particularly if there’s any speech delivered that comes close to Michael Jordan’s ethering of everyone in 2009.

The ten members of the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame’s class of 2011 will be enshrined in Springfield among many of the NBA greats. Rodman, Mullin, Artis Gilmore, Arvydas Sabonis, Tex Winter, Tara VanderVeer, Teresa Edwards, Tom “Satch Sanders, Herb Magee and Reece “Goose” Tatum all earned the necessary votes for induction this year and will be honored on Friday evening. As usual, each player will be presented, have their Hall of Fame bust unveiled and those who are able to will also give speeches.