SPRINGFIELD, Mass. (AP) — Jay Wright used to sell tickets to games in the long-defunct United States Football League. Ben Wallace was passed over by every NBA team, some of them twice. Yolanda Griffith got a job repossessing cars so she could take care of herself and her infant daughter while playing community college basketball.
By TIM REYNOLDS SPRINGFIELD, Mass. (AP) — Jay Wright used to sell tickets to games in the long-defunct United States Football League. Ben Wallace was passed over by every NBA team, some of them twice. Yolanda Griffith got a job repossessing cars so she could take care of herself and her infant daughter while playing community college basketball. For all of them, those days are long gone. Basketball’s highest honor has come their way. Wright, Wallace and Griffith were part of a 16-person class that was announced Sunday as the 2021 inductees for the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. Longtime standout NBA forwards Chris Bosh, Paul Pierce and Chris Webber were among those selected, along with former coaches Rick Adelman and Cotton Fitzsimmons and three-time WNBA MVP Lauren Jackson. “It’s not anything you ever even dream of,” Wright said on the ESPN broadcast of the announcement. “It’s pretty cool.” The class even includes someone who has been a Hall of Famer for 46 years already — 11-time NBA champion Bill Russell, enshrined in 1975 as a player, has been selected again as a coach. Russell becomes the fifth Hall of Famer who will be inducted as both a player and a coach, joining John Wooden, Lenny Wilkens, Bill Sharman and Tommy Heinsohn. Fitzsimmons was selected as a contributor, as were former WNBA Commissioner Val Ackerman and Howard Garfinkel, the co-founder and longtime director of the Five-Star Basketball Camp that revolutionized how players were recruited and how many coaches taught the game. Toni Kukoc, a three-time NBA champion with Chicago and two-time Olympic silver medalist, was selected by the international committee.
