We are only a few weeks away from the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame announcement to complete their Class of 2014, and it looks like there will be might be changes coming to the process in 2016.
Currently, the Basketball Hall has five categories where one individual will bypass the voting process and receive automatic induction. They are the Contributors, ABA, Early African American Pioneer, International and Veterans. This was instituted in 2010, with the intention of finding those who may have “slipped through the cracks”. This process helped induct Artis Gilmore, Mel Daniels and Roger Brown; who may not have not been selected, had not been amended.
This is not to say that this changes is set in stone; at this point it is mostly based on speculation based on recent comments of Jerry Colangelo, who is the current Chairman of the Hall of Fame in Springfield, Massachusetts:
“Let’s put it this way. This year, for the first time, we brought that up, to say, ‘You know, when we did this, we said it’s not forever.’ The concept was we felt people had slipped through the cracks. This was a catch-up kind of a thing, so we’re not locked in. We need now to review it each year, to say maybe we’ve taken care of what needed to be taken care of in this category or that category. But it’s just too early to say what we’re going to do.”
Colangelo indicated that if this were to take place; that it would not be next year.
This news did not receive much attention, which is an indicator of how little press the Basketball Hall of Fame receives. Much of this is due to the lack of knowledge in the general public as to what makes someone eligible for the Hall, and the watering down by putting an equal focus on collegiate accomplishments.
The potential changes do not mean that those people could not get inducted, as the proposal would place those people back to the previous platform where they would go through two ballots, but it would make the road to the Hall of Fame much more difficult.
We eagerly await to see what the Hall of Fame committee decides to do, though we know we are among the few who will be paying attention!
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