The Basketball Hall of Fame Class of 2025: A Tribute to NBA and WNBA Legends
The Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame will welcome its new class of honorees this weekend. The announcement was made in April, during the NCAA men’s basketball Final Four.
Although only two former NBA players will enter the Hall of Fame, a reduced class by current standards, Carmelo Anthony and Dwight Howard were important figures in the 2000s and 2010s, accumulating 18 All-Star appearances and 14 All-NBA honors.
On the other hand, the historic three-player class of the WNBA features some of the greatest of all time in the league. Sue Bird, Sylvia Fowles, and Maya Moore were part of “The W25” during the WNBA’s 25th-anniversary celebration and were ranked among the top 10 when a ranking of the best players in league history was made.Carmelo Anthony and Dwight Howard: Undisputed Hall of Famers
The NBA class of this year, with only two players, is unorthodox compared to recent years. The last time a class featured so few former NBA players was in 2017.
Both Anthony and Howard surpassed 0.5 championships added, placing them among the top 100 in league history.
Dwight Howard, despite the final stretch of his NBA career being disappointing, deserved to enter the Hall of Fame based solely on his first eight seasons with the Orlando Magic.
During that period, Howard won the Defensive Player of the Year award three times and was on the All-NBA first team in every season from 2007-08 to 2011-12. If Howard had retired when he was first traded, he would rank 41st all-time in MVP award valuation and 52nd in aggregate championships.
Carmelo Anthony, although he was a constant presence during his 19-year NBA career, never reached Howard’s peak. Anthony only finished in the top five in MVP voting once and was never named to the All-NBA first team.
However, Anthony still ranks 66th in the aggregate championships estimate and among the top 100 overall, making him an obvious Hall of Fame member. In addition, his resume includes leading Syracuse to a national championship as a freshman and his long career with USA Basketball.A Historic WNBA Class
There is no compromise between quality and quantity among the three former WNBA players in this year’s class, the most in history. Fowles and Moore, who joined forces to win two of Moore’s four championships with the Minnesota Lynx, were both MVPs, and Bird had perhaps the best possible career without reaching that level.
When the player rankings were conducted during the 25th anniversary season in 2021, all three players were among the top 14 of all time, with Moore and Fowles in the top 10.
Moore’s career offers a more extreme version of a hypothetical Howard career with only the Magic. She played only eight seasons in the WNBA, retiring at her peak to work on social justice issues. Moore achieved seven All-WNBA appearances and four top-three finishes in MVP voting in her short career.
Fowles, a four-time Defensive Player of the Year, was able to extend her dominance in the paint on both ends for longer than Howard, winning the last of her awards in 2021 and being named to the second All-WNBA team in 2022, her farewell season. That led Fowles to eight All-WNBA appearances.
Bird’s career spanned more than two decades, and her 19 seasons as an active player equal Anthony, despite WNBA rules requiring Bird to play four seasons at UConn before being selected No. 1 overall in 2002.
The WNBA’s historical assist leader, Bird, also finished first in games played, minutes, and All-Star appearances. Fowles, for her part, was the league’s historical rebound leader when she retired.
There’s no doubt this is the best class of women’s basketball players entering the Hall. The closest precedents were 2021, when a pair of MVPs entered, and pre-WNBA duos in 1993 and 1995.
With the rise of the WNBA, we should eventually see larger classes become the norm. For now, however, the class of 2025 stands out for its achievements in the WNBA.A Shared Olympic Legacy
There’s a point of convergence between this year’s NBA and WNBA classes: their Olympic gold medals. The five players have won at least one gold medal, and Bird (five), Fowles (four), and Anthony (three) are among the most decorated basketball players in Olympic history.
Only Diana Taurasi’s six gold medals surpass Bird’s total, and on the men’s side, Anthony shares second place with LeBron James, behind Kevin Durant’s four gold medals.
In fact, Anthony and Howard will be honored by the Hall twice this year. Both will be inducted as part of the “Redemption Team” of USA Basketball from 2008 that won gold in Beijing after falling short in 2004 in Athens.
Bird and Fowles were also gold medalists in 2008, while Moore joined them in 2012 and 2016.
None of this year’s five honorees needed their Olympic success as part of their cases, but it strengthens the historical nature of the class.
