As expected Saturday, Kobe Bryant, Tim Duncan and Kevin Garnett were named as the headliners of the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame Class of 2020.
The late Bryant, who played 20 seasons in Los Angeles with the Lakers, was a generational icon. Fourth on the all-time scoring list, he was an eighteen-time All Star, 5-time champion, and won 2 Finals MVPs, a regular season MVP, 11 times an All-NBA first team member, and 9 times an All-Defensive first team member. He also led the league in scoring twice and was MVP of the All-Star game 4 times, a record. Out of Lower Marion High School in Ardmore, Pennsylvania, Bryant was the second player of the modern age (Kevin Garnett in 1995 was the other) to make the leap to the NBA directly from high school. He would go on to have one of the greatest careers the league has ever seen, and left behind a legacy that few could.
Duncan, the #1 pick in the 1997 draft out of Wake Forest, was, like Bryant, a franchise mainstay for his entire career, spending all of it with the San Antonio Spurs. 5 championships, 2 MVPs, 3 Finals MVPs, the 2000 All-Star Game MVP, 15 All-Star games, 10 first-team All NBA, and 15 times in total an All-Defensive team member (8 first team, 7 second team). Duncan is the best power forward ever, with a calm outward demeanor that masked an amazing competitive fire. In the gauntlet that was the early-mid 2000s Western Conference, he won 3 championships, and won one more in 2014 over LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and the Miami Heat. He won his first Finals MVP at age 23 in 1999.
Garnett, when he made the jump from high school to the NBA in 1995, was the first player to do so in 20 years, since Darryl Dawkins and Bill Willoughby. The Big Ticket carved out a Hall of Fame worthy career over the next 21 seasons - 15 times an All-Star, an All-Star Game MVP in 2003, an MVP in 2004, a championship and Defensive Player of the Year in 2008, four times an All-NBA first team member, 9 times a first team All-Defense member, and four times a rebounding champion. He is the league's all time leader in defensive rebounds (Duncan is third), and is the only player in NBA history to amass at least 25,000 points, 10,000 rebounds, 5,000 assists, 1,500 steals, and 1,500 blocks. His 21 year career is tied with Kevin Willis and Robert Parish for 2nd all-time (Vince Carter is first). Garnett was one of the most versatile and complete players of all-time, and one of the most intense competitors the game has seen.
Aside from those three titans of the game, six more with great legacies in the game of basketball will join in Springfield. They are former Oklahoma State head coach Eddie Sutton, Baylor women's head coach Kim Mulkey, current Bentley University head coach Barbara Stevens, former NBA head coach Rudy Tomjanovic, former FIBA executive Patrick Baumann, and former WNBA great Tamika Catchings.
Sutton was most notably the head coach at Oklahoma State from 1990 until 2006, where he reached two Final Fours in 1995 and 2004. Over his career that started in 1966, he won 806 games. Stevens is just one of five coaches to reach 1,000 wins, and Mulkey is one of three women's coaches to win 3 national titles. having won in 2005, 2012, and 2019. Baumann, who passed away in 2018 at age 51, was Secretary General of FIBA since 2003, and prior to that was deputy Secretary General from 1995-2002. Tomjanovic was a player for the San Diego/Houston Rockets from 1970-1981 (a five-time All-Star), and coached the Rockets to back to back championships in 1994 and 1995. He coached the Rockets from 1992 until 2003 and coached the Lakers from 2003-2004. Catchings is one of the greatest WNBA players of all-time, a champion, Finals MVP, regular season MVP, and 10-time All-Star with the Indiana Fever. She was an all league first-team member 7 times, led the league in steals 7 times, 10 times was first-team all defense, and was Rookie of the Year in 2002. She is the league's all-time leader in steals, and is its playoffs all-time leading scorer, rebounder, and steals leader.
The eight person class is to be enshrined on Saturday, August 29 in Springfield, Massachusetts.
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