Chris Webber belongs in the Basketball Hall of Fame. Stop snubbing him.

Chris Webber did not make the cut for the James Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame again in 2018, just as he didn’t in any of the previous six years. Webber will be watching three NBA stars who retired well after him — Steve Nash, Grant Hill, and Ray Allen — get in instead.

Webber’s relationship with the Hall of Fame has been sad and weird. In his first year of eligibility, no one even nominated him for consideration! That proved to be an inauspicious start. Webber didn’t make the first cut to become a finalist until last season; he did again this year. But the end result is the same: Webber remains on the outside looking in.

Nash is a two-time MVP who led the defining team of an entire decade. Of course he’d get into the Hall easily.

But the cases for Allen and Hill are interesting in comparison to that of Webber.

Allen played much longer (1,300 games to Webber’s 831) and has a signature claim — being the greatest three-point shooter of his era — to carry his case. He also has championships, though he wasn’t the best or (arguably) even second-best player on the teams that won it. Allen had 10 All-Star appearances to Webber’s five, which is a major difference. But in a more exclusive measure of excellence relative to peers, Allen had just two All-NBA honors in his long career. Webber had five.

Think about it: Allen was considered one of the best six guards in the league only twice in 18 years. Webber was voted as one of the best six forwards in the league five times in 14 full seasons. (He played nine games in 2007-08, but his career was already over.)

This carries over into other awards: Webber won Rookie of the Year, while Allen didn’t rank (and in fact was on second team All-Rookie). Webber finished in the top 10 in MVP voting five teams and in the top five once. Allen had one top-10 finish: No. 9 in 2004-05.

Allen will win out in many counting stats because of longevity, but Webber was more prolific on a per-game basis. Webber is a top-50 scorer all-time (20.7 per game), while Allen is closer to No. 100 in history. Webber won a rebound title in 1999 and sits No. 56 all-time in rebounds per game. In fact, Webber is currently top-100 all-time in five counting stats categories: minutes (No. 26), points (No. 49), rebounds (No. 56), steals (No. 97), and blocks (No. 70). Allen is up there in only minutes per game (No. 52) and points (No. 90). That’s it.

So the shake-out is that Allen played longer, won a ring, and had more All-Star appearances. At their respective 5-year peaks, Webber was better as measured by stats, All-NBA honors, and MVP voting.

Then there’s Hill, who really had two NBA careers: a high-ceiling sprint early on, followed by a long fade as a role player. Hill made seven All-Star teams, though one of those was by fan vote in a season in which he played just four games. (Remember when Grant Hill got the Yao Ming All-Star treatment? What a world.)

Like Webber, Hill made five All-NBA teams and won Rookie of the Year. Like Webber, Hill had five top-10 MVP finishes with one inside the top five.

He doesn’t rank in any of the all-time counting stats per-game lists because he was a low-stats defense-and-gap-filling role player for the second half of his 18-year career. Hill was top 10 in scoring twice in his career; Webber hit that four times. (Webber was also in the top 10 in rebounds per game five times.) Webber actually scored more total points over their respective careers than Hill despite Hill getting the longevity edge in seasons and minutes played. Hill (a magnificent passer — almost a proto-LeBron in that sense) has the edge in assists and a narrow edge in steals, but Webber is dominant in rebounds and blocks, as you’d expect given the size differential.

This is the argument about longevity that is hard to accept in these debates. Why is that such a strong element of a Hall of Fame given similar overall production? In fact, isn’t condensed production more impressive?

This is all to say that yes, Ray Allen and Grant Hill and Steve Nash are worthy Hall of Famers. So is Chris Webber. His peak was shorter and he didn’t transition into a role player to tack another couple of years on. (His body wouldn’t let him after microfracture surgery.) But he was just as good as peak Grant Hill and better than peak Ray Allen. The All-NBA honors and MVP votes prove that.

Of course, the Basketball Hall of Fame also considers college and international accomplishments in accepting or rejecting nominations. Hill led Duke to two national championships. Allen is considered one of the best UConn players ever, though he had little tournament success there with no Final Fours in three years.

Webber, uhh, never officially played college basketball.

In reality he did, of course: as the leader of the Fab Five, he revolutionized college basketball, led Michigan to two straight championship games in his two seasons in Ann Arbor, and was one very famous time-out call from winning the Wolverines a title. All of that was vacated because Webber took money from a booster, something I’m sure no other Hall of Fame player has ever done. (That’s sarcasm.)

Who votes for Hall of Fame status remains a secret, so we have no idea how many NCAA-linked voters there are and what they might be thinking about how to consider Webber’s college years in his case. The voting evidence — Webber not being a finalist for several years, and now missing the final cut two years straight while Hill and Allen walk in — leads to the conclusion that he isn’t getting any credit for those two years at Michigan. How ridiculous would that be?

The bottom line is that given his incredible peak, Webber is not getting the respect he deserves from Hall of Fame voters. Change that in 2019 and put C-Webb in.

Shouts to Basketball-Reference.com for the historical statistics.