Bob Cusey (BOB COUSY) just turned 94 last month. The legend of the Boston Celtics believes that nearly half of his life was spent in Naismith Basketball Celebrity Memorial .
"I have held various positions on almost every committee," said one summer morning, "Hardwood Houdini" proudly, calling from his home in Worcester, Massachusetts, about an hour's drive east of Springfield Hall. The 13-time All-Star , six-time champion and 1957 NBA MVP was selected in 1971. Nearly two decades later, in 1989, Kusi became the first Hall of Fame member to be appointed Chair of the Hall - a short term he said was more honorable than actual operation.
Despite his involvement, Cousy admits he has a notable blind spot: how a man becomes a Hall of Fame member.
"Because of me or someone else's reasons," he said, "I never took the time to tell myself the voting process. There is a primer on the website of
Hall, but it does not provide the identity of the voter itself, in sharp contrast to the respective lobbies of professional hockey , soccer and baseball . So who is the voter? Who will pick them? Why the whole thing goes Cheng is shrouded in mystery?
These are one of Cousy's inquiries, and when those who voted (and largely want to remain anonymous) shared the details to ESPN with Cousy, he paused and then provided a long "hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm The latest class in the hall of
is a group of 13 members, including Manu Ginobili, Tim Hardaway, Bob Huggins, Swin Cash and Lindsay Whalen, among others, which will be dedicated to the birthplace of basketball this weekend. How exactly this class came about is unclear, as the Basketball Hall of Fame is probably the most opaque of any sport.
In fact, the election process of the basketball Hall of Fame is so secret that its final vote was destroyed.
Four Hall of Fame each has a similar membership in the program. There are requirements for eligibility, mainly based on years separated from the league itself, followed by a committee that screens out nominees and another committee that conducts the final vote. In all four aspects, the criteria for inclusion are high: nominees must receive 75% or 80% of possible votes to be enshrined. Some halls, such as hockey and basketball, have limited voting periods for voting committee members; others are open-ended.
But the Basketball Hall of Fame is different from its brothers in two compelling places. First, the other halls focus only on recruiting members from the sports professional team in North America, while Naismith covers all levels and genders throughout the sports globally: NBA, WNBA, college, high school, international, men, women - your name. This is still the case despite the fact that college basketball ( Kansas City ), women's basketball (Knoxville, Tennessee) and international basketball (FIBA hall in Madrid).
"I think it makes us unique," said Jerry Colangelo, who has served as the hall's chairman since 2009. "We represent basketball games on all levels. It doesn't matter if there are other Hall of Fame in the basketball world. It doesn't matter.
and then the vote.
For both hockey and football halls, voters' identities are listed online. In baseball where only writers vote, all 394 members of the American Baseball Writers Association who voted in the 2022 Hall of Fame Election are also listed online. (BBWAA voters want their votes to be published, and will also be listed online at a later date.
In the Basketball Hall of Fame, the only online description of anonymous voters is an internal reference, with two 24-person honors committees (one for North American men and one for women) composed of “Hall of Fame members, basketball executives and administrators, media members, and other experts in basketball games.”
"We are different from anyone else, and there is no major reason," Colangelo said. "It's just always the case because we want to protect those who vote, they're involved in the process, which eliminates a lot of what does happen, imagine in other sports, in terms of affecting those voters. If the names are in public, there may be integrity issues. We have active coaches, we have active general managers, we have media people all involved. We have Hall of Fame members involved. So, there is no requirement to disclose these names.
"What can this result?" "
Colangelo and John Doleva, who has been the hall's president and CEO since 2001, both said anonymity - Doleva said that as long as he remembers, anonymity has always been part of the voting process - has a greater purpose than transparency.
" All Hall of Fame are flawed to some extent because it's like it's in any vote. There is bias,” said a former voter. “One thing is that it has no corruption. No one - Jerry or anyone in the NBA - has ever leaned on me in any of these circumstances.
grants anonymity also allows the hall to take advantage of a deeper group of voters who have extensive experience in the game - if their votes are made public, they won't participate.
"If I could show you this list, you would nod and say, 'Wow,'" Doreva said.
Doreva continued, "Why is there confidentiality? It's not because we want to keep it confidential. It's to protect you, voters, and give you the assurance that your vote and your comments won't be spread, so you find yourself in an uncomfortable situation.
It's an uncomfortable situation, like a legendary player on the screening committee saying that a qualified teammate is not worthy of the Hall of Fame, so there's no vote for them. Some voters say this particular situation has happened many times.
"It really gives me an extra respect and they value this game so much. The game,” a former voter recalled witnessing an incident like this.
Colangelo and some former voters noted that the lobby drew deeper voting expertise from it than some other Hall of Fame, with participants not only participating in the final voting committee, but also participating in the screening committee (the North American screening committee has nine members and the Women’s Screening Committee has seven members).
By comparison, baseball relies on media members to vote only.
“I don’t like the thing about baseball because it’s just a writer,” the former voter said. “They don’t know enough about the game. They were not involved in baseball.
However, the voting agency for hockey is composed of former players, executives, coaches and the media, whose identities are all public.
Still, Basketball Hall of Fame voters are reminded not to publicly disclose their identity as voters, nor to discuss how they end up voting. Otherwise, will you be punished? Doreva said he was not sure.
"To be honest, we have never encountered any violation of it in the media," he said.
NBA senior journalist Peter Vecsey is a former voter and he wants to say something.
"I wish everything I said was recorded," he began.
Like other voters , Vecsey vowed to keep his role as a voter secret.
"I never told anyone except you," he said. “So I played a little closer to the vest.
Vecsey and other voters first received a brochure containing the names and biographies of nominated individuals who were eligible for the selection of that year. In a typical year, this booklet contains 40 to 50 names. In early February, the North American Screening Committee, composed of nine members, gathered at the Manhattan headquarters (although the COVID-19 pandemic forced these meetings to go to Zoom call), debated and discussed names in the brochures, and eventually reduced the rosters of players, coaches and referees to no more than 10.
Each candidate must receive at least seven votes for the final screening and then mailed to the 24-member honors committee in the second week of March; members receive the list, indicate "yes" or "no" on each candidate, and then send the ballots back to the lobby. Then these final votes are counted by lawyers and eventually crushed, "so that there is no paper record that can go back and somehow find some people voting in some way - again, to protect the process," Doleva said.
was announced in April at the NCAA Men's Final Four, when anxious hopefuls waited by the phone, but the real tension throughout the Hall of Fame induction process came from the room where the screening committee gathered. The meeting may last for several hours and the level of debate about each candidate can be intense. For some attendees, the meeting marked the best part of being a voter: the great man who heard the game discusses teammates and colleagues in an unfiltered way.
"It got very, very intense and caused a heated debate - but in a good way, it's not disrespectful," said a former voter.
Another former voter said, "You know how serious it is to either reject someone or promote someone to the next level and enter the Hall of Fame. A lot of the time, it's just a thin thread to separate one from another.
Some people go into the room and run for people who play with them, coach, work together or cover as a member of the media. Vecsey said that when he became a voter, he was inducted for Dennis in 2011 when he became a voter in the years after he won Hall's Curt Gowdy Media Award in 2009. Rodman campaign. Other voters say they also run for certain members who qualify.
"Sometimes you have a strong feeling about a person, you may not even know much, but you just know the impact they have on the game," another former voter said. "It won't go the way you do it." But you respect why it doesn't.
Some attendees - including Colangelo and Doleva - were chatty, while others were less chatty. But there are many stories because players will share the game with qualified players, or the coach will share the feelings of the coach who coaches, and so on.
"There's a lot of room for pranks," said a joke Vecsey. But Wesey and all former voters who spoke with ESPN said they believe that despite any criticism they themselves have been given or that there should be transparency, the vote is ultimately fair.
"I think the vote is fair," Vecsey said. "Jerry has a say like everyone else in the room. But he has no more to say.
