The Hall of Fame(Ish)

I posted this originally on a blog for my sportswriting class. You can read that here, and I highly recommend you do, there are some very entertaining pieces.


The Basketball Hall of Fame is fucking worthless.

Let's play a little game I like to call "Identify This Hall of Famer!" Ready? See if you recognize these names. Hortencia Marcari? Drazen Dalipagic? George Yardley? How about Joe Fulks? No? None of them? Me neither. Know why? NONE OF THEM ARE FAMOUS. And yet they all currently reside in the players section of the Basketball Hall of Fame, in Springfield Massachusetts. 

Take a look at how brainless that last paragraph was. Hortencia Marcari was a renowned Brazilian women's basketball player (no, she never played professionally in the states, but hey buddy, she was a LEGEND in Brazilian women's ball, you watch yourself.) Drazen Dalipagic was, I'm quoting here from his Hall of Fame info page, "one of the most decorated players in Yugoslavian history." From the same page, "Dalipagic...didn't start playing basketball until the age of 19." (Hey, do you live at home with your parents at the age of 19? Are you going nowhere with your life? Move to Yugoslavia, and you too can be a member of the Basketball Hall of Fame!) George Yardley was described, creatively enough, as a "scoring machine" by teammates, so if nothing else, he pioneered one of the most over-used basketball terms in history. Go George! But according to his numbers, he was nothing of the sort. He averaged roughly 19 points per game. Never fear, Elton Brand! Your career averages might still be enough to enshrine you! Yardley's teams never won a championship, not even in the watered down leagues of the 1950s, when there were only 11 teams even competing. Joe Fulks, I've never heard of. I know nothing about him. I have no idea what he looks like. As a matter of fact, neither does the Hall of Fame. Don't believe me? Go look at his page. His face appears to be drawn on, which means he could have been the ugliest bastard in human history, but he will be forever enshrined as a baby faced individual, staring upwards in a gaze of wonder. None of these players were famous. All of them are in the Hall of Fame.

All of which brings me to my point: if you are going to enshrine Drazen Dalipagic, WHY WOULD YOU NOT ENSHRINE REGGIE MILLER? 

Reggie Miller was eligible this year for induction. And the voters, in their infinite wisdom, didn't even include him on the ballot.

This is wrong on so many levels. For starters, he played in the fucking NBA. You know, the group of the most accomplished basketball players in the world. But i digress. His resume included 15 playoff berths and an 18 year career with the same team, as the alpha dog best player. He was, at the time, an unprecedented 3 point shooter, and a crunch time killer, the kind of player you dreaded playing against in a tight game. His legendary playoff battles with the New York Knicks were so full of drama and great story lines that ESPN made a documentary called "Winning Time: Reggie Miller vs the New York Knicks" (top that, George Yardley!). ESPN's Indiana Pacer-related blog is named Eight Points, Nine Seconds after one of Miller's most dazzling playoff performances, when Reggie absolutely detonated on the Knicks, scoring (you guessed it) 8 points in 9 seconds to win. He also had a famous performance in which he and legendary Knicks fan Spike Lee had an on-court verbal battle, yelling at each other throughout the game, finally culminating in Reggie draining a back breaking three pointer, staring straight at Lee, and putting his hands to his throat in the universal sign for "choke".

Miller was famous. He was talented. And he was incredibly memorable. New York City, widely considered the greatest basketball city in the country, will forever hate him. Indiana, widely considered the greatest basketball state in the country, will forever revere him. And any rational basketball fan would agree that Miller deserves a spot in Springfield more than the names I mentioned before, unless you are either a Brazilian woman or a lazy Yugoslavian teenager. I'd include fans of the NBA back in 1950's, but if you were around back then, I think you would have been too offended by the first sentence in this post to make it all the way to end.