Hall of Fame 2025: Melo and Howard lead, Bird, Fowles and Moore in the WNBA

The Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame Class of 2025: A Tribute to Basketball 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. While 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 during the 2000s and 2010s, combining for 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 ranked among the top 10 when the best players in the history of the league were classified. Before the consecration weekend, we’ll take a closer look at how this year’s class is ranked in both the NBA and WNBA.

Anthony and Howard: Clear Hall of Fame Members

This year’s two-player NBA class is unorthodox compared to recent years under Hall of Fame chairman Jerry Colangelo, who has rapidly expanded the player pool in the Hall. The last time a class featured so few former NBA players was in 2017, when George McGinnis and Tracy McGrady were inducted. On the other hand, 2025 stands out for featuring players who should have reached the Hall of Fame regardless of standards. Both Anthony and Howard surpassed 0.5 championships added, placing them among the top 100 in league history. Almost every class since 2017 has featured at least one player who did not reach that mark, and they surpass all players inducted in 2024, except Chauncey Billups. This might come as a surprise in Howard’s case, given that the second half of his NBA career was a disappointment. However, Howard deserved to enter the Hall of Fame based strictly on his first eight seasons with the Orlando Magic.

Although that period didn’t result in a title, Howard accumulated 0.8 added championships with Orlando, winning the Defensive Player of the Year award three times and being part of the All-NBA first team in every season from 2007-08 to 2011-12. As tempting as it is to dismiss that as a product of the league’s shortage of centers, Howard also finished in the top five in MVP voting for four consecutive seasons, reaching second place in 2010-11.

If Howard had retired when he was first traded, he would rank 41st all-time in MVP votes and 52nd in aggregate championships. Howard didn’t add much to that total while playing for six different teams after leaving the Magic, including three different stints with the Los Angeles Lakers that ultimately resulted in a title, playing a key role off the bench in 2020. But he still finished in the top 40 all-time in aggregate championships, which puts him well ahead of Anthony.

As consistent as Anthony was during his 19-year NBA career, which coincided with Howard during their last shared season with the Lakers in 2021-22, his peak was never as high as Howard’s. Anthony finished in the top five in MVP voting only once (a third-place finish in 2012-13, when he led the New York Knicks to their only 50-win season between 2000 and 2024) and was never part of the All-NBA first team. Due to his 10 All-Star appearances and six All-NBA recognitions, Anthony still ranks 66th in the aggregated championship awards estimate and among the top 100 overall, a clear Hall of Famer. And that’s just his NBA career. The first modern “one-and-done” prospect in an era when players like Howard jumped straight to the league from high school, Anthony’s Hall of Fame curriculum also includes leading Syracuse to a national championship as a freshman, and his long legacy with USA Basketball.

Although Anthony and Howard cannot be compared to classes entirely composed of Hall of Fame members from the inner circle like that of 2020 (Kobe Bryant, posthumously, plus Tim Duncan and Kevin Garnett), only three classes since 2010 have surpassed this year’s in terms of average championships added.

A Historic WNBA Class

There is no trade-off between quality and quantity among the three former WNBA players in this year’s class, the most in history. Fowles and Moore, who teamed up for 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 players were ranked during the 25th anniversary season in 2021, the three players were among the top 14 of all time, with Moore (fourth) and Fowles (ninth) in the top 10. In a way, Moore’s career offers a more extreme version of Howard’s hypothetical career with just Magic. She played only eight seasons in the WNBA, leaving the game at her peak to work on social justice issues and help overturn the wrongful conviction of her now-husband, Jonathan Irons. Moore achieved seven All-WNBA appearances and four top-three finishes in MVP voting in her short career, and was second all-time in wins above replacement player (WARP) according to my metric when she retired. Having Fowles, the four-time Defensive Player of the Year, alongside Howard, a three-time NBA champion, is fitting. Fowles was able to extend her dominance of the paint on both ends for longer than Howard, winning the last of her Defensive Player of the Year awards in 2021 and being part of the second All-WNBA team in 2022, her farewell season. That led Fowles to eight All-WNBA appearances, tied for sixth in league history with (among others) Bird. Bird’s career spanned more than two decades, and her 19 seasons as an active player (not counting two absences due to injury) coincide with Anthony despite WNBA rules that forced Bird to play four seasons at UConn before being selected No. 1 in 2002. Bird led the Seattle Storm to the last of their four championships with her point guard play in 2020. She remained an elite player until the age of 40. WNBA’s historical leader in assists, Bird also finished first in games played, minutes, and All-Star appearances (13, a total affected only by the WNBA often forgoing All-Star Games during years with international competitions). Fowles, for her part, was the league’s historical rebound leader when she retired before being surpassed by Tina Charles last year. There’s no doubt that this is the best class of basketball players to ever enter the Hall. The closest precedents were 2021, when a pair of MVPs (Yolanda Griffith and Bird’s Seattle teammate, Lauren Jackson) entered together, and pre-WNBA duos in 1993 (Ann Meyers and Soviet star Uljana Semjonova) and 1995 (Anne Donovan and Cheryl Miller). With the rise of the WNBA, we should eventually see larger classes become the norm. For now, however, the 2025 class 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, and it’s 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, a longtime teammate, surpass Bird’s total, and on the men’s side, “Olympic Melo” shares second place with LeBron James, behind Kevin Durant’s four gold medals. In fact, Anthony and Howard are being honored by the Hall twice this year. Both will be inducted as part of the 2008 U.S. basketball “redemption team” that won gold in Beijing after falling short in 2004 in Athens (Anthony’s first Olympics) and in the two previous FIBA Basketball World Cups. 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.