Introducing the SB Nation NBA Hall of Fame

If you ask a bunch of sports fans how someone gets elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame, they can probably tell you that an oddly large number of baseball writers votes on the honor. It’s the same with football, although the number is much smaller and not quite as supercilious as the navel-gazing moralists in the Baseball Writers Association.

This leads to its own issues, of course. Sportswriters have been known to settle scores with people they used to cover and come up with arbitrary entrance requirements that make sense only to them and maybe their dogs: No backward baseball hats, stay off the drugs and lots of lots of numbers that don’t make them do any math.

But if you ask people how someone gets into the Basketball Hall of Fame, all you get are blank stares. Casual fans have no idea, basketball fans have no clue, even people who have been around the sport their entire life are mystified by the series of procedures that get one elected to the hoops hall.

The short version: There are committees encompassing North American players and coaches, women, International players and coaches and veterans who were overlooked previously. Those committees send nominees to another committee called the Honors Committee who makes the final vote. Who’s on the various committees? No one knows. It’s a secret.

There are other committees formed in 2011 for ABA players, black pioneers and contributors that directly induct one member every year. Veterans and internationals also get one direct-elect each year. The voting results are secret, conducted by anonymous panels with oversight only from the Hall itself.

What’s the criteria? Good question! No one knows, although it does seem to help if you’re a college basketball coach with a gaudy winning percentage like Gary Williams and Nolan Richardson, who are getting in this year, as opposed to NBA lifers like Dick Motta or Bill Fitch who are passed over annually.

As for players, college and international accomplishments seem like they’re given strong weight along their pro accolades, but again, who can tell? The Hall of Fame committees are more secretive than Masons.

The coaches will be represented by Williams and Richardson, neither of whom have NBA ties. The Mighty Macs of Immaculata will be honored from the women’s side, leaving David J. Stern as the unquestioned headliner this weekend.

All of that is fine for what it is. Every person on the list had had a long and distinguished career and arguing about who gets into the Hall of Fame has long been a boring, dogmatic conversation. The Hall of Fame is supposed to be a celebration of everything that’s great about basketball, but it doesn’t seem like all that much fun.

This year, we want to celebrate the weird, the eccentric, and the things that just make us so damn happy to spend all of our free time watching, reading and writing about the sport.

Who voted on these honorees? No one! Well, we did, kind of. We just came up with ideas and exchanged emails. This is the Hall of Random Stuff We Liked. There are no plans for a physical building at this point, but we did consider setting up a makeshift shrine on Prada’s desk. Here now are the honorees for the inaugural class of SB Nation Hall of Random Basketball Stuff.

-- Paul Flannery

He. Passed. It. Off. His. Elbow.

It was so silly that the announcers didn’t notice it at the time. Dick Stockton was looking down to check the score and announced it only as “LAFRENTZ driving in and he is fouled.” Hubie Brown followed by calling the dish a “great move” because he “picked up the trailer.” Upon seeing the replay, Brown elaborated: “He knew the trailer was behind him, so keep an eye and look at he makes the move and kicks it to the trailer right back. Beautiful execution.” Brown may have been describing a chest pass.

The crowd also took a minute too because nobody could comprehend what Williams had just done. At least they gave the more the appropriate reaction once they saw it on the jumbotron.

By then, this pass had become Williams’ specialty. There was buzz that he pulled it off in practices, but this was the first time he used it in game action, so to speak. Little-known fact: he’s also pulled it off since.

But nobody else has, even though the league is more creative than ever. Perhaps it’s because it’s much more difficult than it looks. Perhaps it’s because it only really works on a tight 3 on 1 fast break unless the passer has a really powerful elbow. Perhaps it’s because the thought of even attempting an elbow pass is so ridiculous that only Williams himself would even bother attempting it.

Whatever the reason, current players essentially retired the elbow pass. And thus, as a means of giving it its proper due, we’ve inducted it into first Hall of Fame.

-- Mike Prada

But there was trouble lurking. Spree wasn’t happy about his contract, and Cassell wanted a new deal. By midseason, the Wolves were a .500 team and longtime coach Flip Saunders was replaced by Kevin McHale. It was against that backdrop that KG sat down for an interview with TNT’s John Thompson. Equal parts soul-baring confessional and teary therapy session, there has never been an interview like this before, or since.

Thompson recruited Garnett out of high school and the two clearly have a rapport, rare for a KG media session. This was the genius of TNT’s NBA coverage during this era. They didn’t just hire ex jocks and coaches looking for work, they added people who knew the game and more importantly, knew the players.

The first three minutes are typical interview banter and then things get real around the time Thompson says he wants a straight answer and asks about his health. “I’m beat up, John,” Garnett answers. “I’m beat up.”

Thompson: What’s driving you?

KG: That I’m losing. That I’m losing. I’m losing.

Here his voice catches and he sighs. “I’m losing,” he says again and holds his finger up to the camera to stop filming. It rolls for another 10 excruciating seconds before cutting off.

“These are tears of pain,” Garnett says as the camera comes back on. “Tears of pride too,” Thompson responds, smartly getting out of the way.

KG: I hate that I’m like this in front of you, man.

Thompson: No, no. I respect you for showing these emotions. I don’t disrespect you one bit for that.

Garnett elicits an unholy, guttural moan as he struggled to collect himself.

KG: Fuck! It’s killing me. I don’t really like showing emotion man, ‘cause it exposes you. But you feel me.

Thompson: Do you think that what you’re showing is weakness? It’s strength. You and I going to get in a fight right now. You’re showing strength.

KG: People watching this, I don’t want them to think that I’m weak but I do give a lot. I give two cent. It ain’t because I got to. It’s in me. I came out the womb man, this is how I am. I’m built like this.

There may not have been a more polarizing player than Kevin Garnett. Opponents hated him, teammates swore by him. He was a bully and a protective big brother. Unselfish to fault on offense and a brilliant superstar on defense who stubbornly refused to alter his game to please his critics. Say what you will about Garnett, but make sure you say that he cared, man. He gave two cent.

-- Paul Flannery

Player lore is never limited to on-court action. Legends are built from the perspective of viewers, always. How the media frames a player’s narrative, how fans embrace (or don’t) a star and how general perception of a player’s game develops -- that all matters when we assess careers and collectively rank the elite. It’s never just about stats. In fact, stats are more often used to build or reduce a case once we’ve made subjective decisions about who we love or hate.

And there’s no question that we -- basketball fans and media collectively -- all love Manu Ginobili. And while his style, his panache, his excellence and his humility all matter, so too does the singular thing that put Manu into the cultural lexicon: Charles Barkley yelling “GINOBILI!” over highlights.

Back in Manu’s rookie season, Chuck unleashed the world’s first broadcast “GINOBILI!” during the playoffs. It was well-deserved and would be repeated for more than a decade. It became such a touchstone that even broadcasters on the other networks -- like ESPN’s Jeff Van Gundy -- ape it. It’s literally the first thing any decent basketball fan says when watching Manu do something magical in real-time. Eurostep? GINOBILI! Pull-up three in transition? GINOBILI! Reverse lay-up in traffic? GINOBILI! No-look pass to a corner three? GINOBILI!

It’s the “STELLA!” or “ADRIAN!” for Gen X, Gen Y and the Milennials. All thanks to Chuck. Put “GINOBILI!” in the SB Nation Hall of Fame.

-- Tom Ziller

It’s a shame guys don’t get inducted into the Hall of Fame until they’re old. Lame, bloated people take the stage to receive honors for the times they were lithe and majestic. Similarly, we are here to award Tony Allen his Twitter Achievement Plaque way past his Twitter account’s prime.

@aa000g9 -- a handle with some meaning, by the way --these days produces mostly a stream of motivational quote retweets and straightforward messages with only the occasional spark of the signature Tony Allen charm. And that’s fine. Twitter accounts, like athletes, mellow with age. But we’re here to remember the peak-- the glorious run of cheeky observational humor peppered with avant-garde punctuation and #GNG encouragement unparalleled by any of Allen’s contemporaries. Gems such as these:

The real masterpieces came when Allen live-tweeted events, like a fender bender:

Or an All-Star Game:

Or, my absolute favorite thing to ever happen, a Disney on Ice show featuring several people in a horse costume:

I could keep listing examples forever, but the point is this: the Hall of Fame is for people who did what they did better and differently than all of their competitors. By that standard, Tony Allen deserves a huge plaque. One with a few random commas on it.

-- Seth Rosenthal

Who else would lather their own scalp in something resembling black shoe polish and hope no one notices? Who else yelled so loudly on the court it could be heard cleanly from the upper deck, if not the next block over? What other player would support his teammates so enthusiastically even while being benched during fourth quarters?

Pretend Crawford is Bulls fans and this is truly the perfect analogy for Boozer’s time in Chicago. Sad, painful and hilarious all at once.

-- Ricky O’Donnell

(via Flickr)

Growing up in the Vancouver, in the Pacific Northwest, there was one NBA team and only one NBA team: the Seattle Supersonics. The Sonics of the late 1970’s were a powerhouse, losing in the 1978 Finals to the Washington Bullets and then defeating the very same Washington squad the following year for Seattle’s first major sports championship.

Gus Williams had swag before the word even existed. He was as cool a player as you could get on the court. Cooler than cool. Ice cold. His game was about speed and quickness, pushing the ball and turning himself into a one-man Sonics’ fast break. He finished at the rim with a variety of finger rolls and always used a little English on the backboard. His pull-up jumper was money, even if it looked a little awkward, with Gus’s shooting elbow flaring out and his guide arm rocking the double green sweatband.

However, there was one thing Gus did on the court that was the coolest thing of all. In the days before cable sports, league pass and the internet, the rest of the nation probably never knew or noticed Gus’s on-court style. But if you grew up with the Supersonics in the Pacific Northwest, chances are that you tried to imitate Gus’s personal brand of cool.

The Wizard rocked the simple Nike Blazer model of the day, white with that Sonic green swoosh. Pretty standard shoe game for the time period. But Gus then did something that no other player did which was one of the coolest things ever. He tied his shoelaces at the back of his Nike’s.

What started out as a case of Gus’s laces being too long to tie properly and then extended into a superstition as the Sonics made their title run, also became the defining shoe fashion look for young hoopsters throughout Seattle, Vancouver and parts unknown from one end of the Pacific Northwest to the other.

I started tying my laces in the back in high school. If I couldn’t wear Gus’s trademark number 1 (which was illegal in FIBA rules), I was always going to tie my laces in the back. Because I had game and I had on-court style and Gus Williams was my guy.

I continued to wear my laces in the back through college. Nike Blazers lead to a pair of Nike Franchise, but my laces stayed tied in the back. Gus Williams was one of the top five guards in the league through the late 70’s and early 80’s and was first team All-NBA in 1982. But in my books, he was always the top point guard and definitely the coolest.

The Sonics retired Gus Williams’ No. 1 jersey in 2004. I was lucky enough to be in the Key Arena that evening. My old Nike high tops came out of storage that night, tied in the back, paying tribute to my favorite Sonic of all-time. The original point guard of cool: Gus Williams, the Wizard of Aaahs.

-- Doug Eberhardt

The poor basketball teams will always be with us. The dysfunctional collections of misfit toys, the rebuilding projects rising unsteadily on wobbling coltish legs only to be dunked on by Marc Gasol. Ostensible playoff teams wracked and wrecked by one Murphy’s Law aftershock after another. Somebody has to lose.

But we will not soon see a team lose as the ‘98-99 Los Angeles Clippers did. I will never witness a team lose in the way I watched this one do it, anyway -- on a tiny television in my dorm room amid the yeasty fart smell of Mickey’s Malt Liquor, which I was drinking on purpose, as Bill Walton sarcastically hymned Michael Olowokandi as an emerging superstar and Ralph Lawler put a brave face on an offense that ran primarily through Maurice Taylor and a stupendously uninterested Lamond Murray.

It was my decision to adopt this team -- the alternative were the smug, unlovable pre-dynasty Lakers -- and I made it with my eyes open, in full knowledge that it would involve more of an end-stage Sherman Douglas than anyone should’ve watched. There was some fan-delusion, as there usually is; there was some discussion at the Clippers online community I joined about giving Maurice Taylor a max deal when his contract expired. But this team could never have been anything but what this team was. Caring about them was entirely our fault. We all asked for that.

But if the death-urge pull in fandom isn’t going anywhere, no one will suffer a team quite like the Clippers again. These were the last years of anonymous infamy for Donald Sterling, who would spend the next decade-plus approaching his eventual Stiviano supernova, and this was perhaps the most Sterling-ian team he ever leered at and lorded over.

In that lockout-shortened year, the Clippers appeared to have been caught fully unawares by the season’s opening tip. As a result, they ran out a team that looked (and mostly played) like a panoramic history of the franchise as painted by Brueghel, except the weird awful things happening in the corners of Brueghel paintings were happening in the middle of the game, and also they were all Michael Olowokandi kicking a ball out of bounds. The roster was jagged with the doughy shrapnel of past draft lottery implosions, studded here and there with oddballs like Keith Closs and James “Hollywood” Robinson. The coach, Chris Ford, looked like a walrus in an advertisement for a double-strength anti-depressant. Together, they more or less described the same arc towards the same downcast postgame handshakes, one game after another. Eric Piatkowski and Tyrone Nesby were, by the numbers and in my Mickey’s-scented memory, the best players on the team.

It was not that these Clippers were worse than other bad teams -- they lost 41 of their 50 games, by an average of nearly nine points, neither of which are wildly out of keeping with general Awful Team standards. (The 17 consecutive losses to start the season were, admittedly, a nice touch; the team was, at one point, 1-22.) Mostly, though, it was how unscientifically, inertly bad they were. The Clippers were not rebuilding, or building. They were not unlucky, and they had not miscalculated. It would appear to be a team created by accident, but was actually the purest expression of Donald Sterling’s who-gives-a-shit ethos. The whole season was a butt-text, an iPhone photo of the inside of a pocket, a recording of Donald Sterling saying “eh, whatever” that played on an infinite loop and had somehow learned how to miss long two-pointers.

There is nothing to miss or mourn, here. What makes this particular lousy team worthy of SB Hall of Fame induction is its historical significance, not anything having to do with the basketball it played. A team cannot be this aimless and uncaring and inert anymore; no team that I can remember has been since. There is, even in the most hopeless reaches of the NBA, at least one point of hope, a Giannis or Andre Drummond to dream on or a DeMarcus Cousins to appreciate, or at least the sense that someone -- maybe not someone you’d like, maybe not someone whose decisions seem all that good -- in some office has a plan. It may not work. Teams will always lose. But we will never lose like this again.

-- David Roth