Dick Raphael/NBAE via Getty Images[/caption]There were 12 finalists announced for election into the Basketball Hall of Fame on Saturday.
These included Mitch Richmond, Tim Hardaway and Gary Payton. Some of the coaches named were Guy Lewis, former boss of the Houston Cougars, Rick Pitino of Louisville and Jerry Tarkanian of UNLV.
Other former NBA players up for nomination are Spencer Haywood, Bernard King and Maurice Cheeks, while the rest of the coaches are Sylvia Hatchell of North Carolina and Tom Heinsohn, who has already been inducted into the hall as a player. Dawn Staley, who was a WNBA All-Star on five occasions, is also on the list.
The announcement of the Hall of Fame candidates was made at the beginning of the NBA’s All-Star weekend and the inductees are scheduled to be announced during the NCAA Final Four tournament in April.
Some members of the basketball fraternity were voted directly into the Hall of Fame. These people were Oscar Schmidt of Brazil, Russ Granik, the former deputy commissioner of the NBA, Roger Brown of the ABA, former player Edwin Henderson and Richard Guerin, who was a six-time All-Star. Granik is also a former USA Basketball president.
The Curt Gowdy Media Awards were also handed out and these went to Eddie Doucette, an announcer with the Milwaukee Bucks as well as writer John Feinstein. George Raveling, a former college coach, was the recipient of a lifetime achievement award.
Richmond, Payton and Hardaway all know each other well as they practiced in California together each summer and now have the chance of going into the Hall of Fame together.
Payton was named to the NBA All-Star squad nine times and ranks fourth on the league’s career steal list with 2,445. He played 17 years in the NBA, with 13 of them being in Seattle.
He’s currently trying to help the city acquire another NBA franchise, as it hasn’t had one since the SuperSonics headed to Oklahoma City in 2006. It’s believed the Sacramento Kings will relocate in Seattle if the NBA approves of the move.
Hardaway made the All-Star team five times and for four straight seasons he managed to average a minimum of 20 points per game. He’s 13th on the NBA’s all-time list for three-point field goals with 1,542 and for assists with 7,095. He was also a teammate of Richmond’s at Golden State.
The 90-year-old Lewis won 14 NCAA basketball tournaments with the Houston Cougars and made it to the Final Four on five occasions. He also had the chance to coach three current Hall-of-Famers in Hakeem Olajuwon, Elvin Hayes and Clyde Drexler.
Olajuwon and Drexler played for Lewis in the early 1980s. Houston made it to three Final Fours in a row, but never managed to capture the title. Drexler said that Lewis deserves to be in the Hall of Fame ahead of himself, Olajuwon and Hayes because he coached them into the players they eventually became.
Hatchell is now the third women’s coach in Division-I history to win 900 career games and he’s a three-time winner of the National Coach of the Year award. She guided the Tar Heels to the Final Four three times and won the title in 1994. She also earned three gold medals with the American Olympic women’s basketball team and took home the Player of the Year honors in college twice with Virginia.
