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Kevin Pelton
The Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame will officially welcome its newest class of inductees this weekend. The announcement was made in April at the men’s NCAA basketball Final Four.
Although just two former NBA players will be entering the Hall of Fame, a small class by modern standards, Carmelo Anthony and Dwight Howard were important figures throughout the 2000s and 2010s, combining for 18 All-Star appearances and 14 All-NBA honors.
Meanwhile, the WNBA’s historic three-player class features some of the league’s all-time greats. Sue Bird, Sylvia Fowles and Maya Moore were all part of “The W25” during the WNBA’s 25th anniversary celebration and were ranked in the top 10 when ESPN ranked the best players in league history at that point.
Ahead of enshrinement weekend, let’s take a closer look at where this year’s class ranks on both the NBA and WNBA sides.
Anthony, Howard both clear-cut Hall of Famers
This year’s two-player NBA class is unorthodox compared to recent years under the direction of 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 2017, when George McGinnis and Tracy McGrady were inducted.
On the flip side, 2025 stands out for featuring players who should have made the Hall of Fame no matter the standards. Both Anthony and Howard topped 0.5 championships added by my method of evaluating NBA player careersputting them in the top 100 in league history. All but one class since 2017 has featured at least one player who came up short of that mark, and they top every player inducted in 2024 save Chauncey Billups.
That might surprise you in the case of Howard given how the back half of his NBA career was a disappointment, reflected in his inexplicable omission from the league’s 75th anniversary team chosen in 2021. But Howard deserved to make the Hall of Fame based strictly on his first eight seasons with the Orlando Magic.
Although that span did not result in a title, Howard racked up .8 championships added with Orlando, winning Defensive Player of the Year three times and making All-NBA first team every season in 2007-08 through 2011-12. As tempting as it is to dismiss those as a product of the league’s center drought, Howard also finished top five in MVP voting for four consecutive seasons, peaking at second in 2010-11 when he would have gotten my vote for the award that actually went to Derrick Rose.
Had Howard retired when he was first traded, he would rank 41st all-time in MVP award shares and 52nd in championships added. Howard didn’t add much to that total while playing with six different teams after leaving the Magic, including three different stints with the Los Angeles Lakers that finally resulted in a title, playing a key role off the bench in 2020. But he still finished top 40 all-time in championships added, putting him well ahead of Anthony.
As consistent a presence as Anthony was during his 19-year NBA career, which overlapped with Howard during their shared final season for the Lakers in 2021-22, his peak was never as high as Howard’s. Anthony finished top five in MVP voting just 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 never made All-NBA first team.
By virtue of his 10 All-Star appearances and six All-NBA nods, Anthony still ranks 66th in the awards estimate of championships added, and in the top 100 overall — an obvious Hall of Famer. And that’s just his NBA career. The first modern “one-and-done” prospect in an era where players such as Howard jumped directly to the league out of high school, Anthony’s Hall of Fame resumé also includes leading Syracuse to a national championship as a freshman, and his long legacy with USA Basketball. (More on that in a moment.)
Although Anthony and Howard can’t compare to classes made up entirely of inner-circle Hall of Famers such as 2020 (Kobe Bryant, posthumously, plus Tim Duncan and Kevin Garnett), just three classes since 2010 have surpassed this year in terms of average championships added.
Historic WNBA class
There’s no trade-off between quality and quantity among the three former WNBA players in this year’s class, the most ever. Fowles and Moore, who teamed up for two of Moore’s four championships with the Minnesota Lynxwere both MVPs, and Bird had perhaps the best career possible without reaching that level.
When I used the WNBA version of championships added to rank players during the 25th anniversary season in 2021all three players were in the top 14 all-time, with Moore (fourth) and Fowles (ninth) in the top 10.
In some ways, Moore’s career offers a more extreme version of my hypothetical Magic-only Howard career. She played just eight WNBA seasons, walking away from the game in her prime to work on social justice issues and help overturn the wrongful conviction of her now-husband, Jonathan Irons. Moore managed to pack seven All-WNBA appearances and four top-three finishes in MVP voting into her brief career, and she was second in all-time playoff wins above replacement player (WARP) by my metric when she retired.
Having Fowles, the four-time Defensive Player of the Year, go in alongside three-time NBA winner Howard is appropriate. Fowles was able to extend her dominance of the paint at both ends longer than Howard, earning the last of her Defensive Player of the Year awards in 2021 and making All-WNBA second team in 2022, her farewell season. That brought Fowles to eight All-WNBA appearances, tied for sixth most 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 missed due to injury) match Anthony despite the WNBA’s rules requiring Bird to play four seasons at UConn before being drafted No. 1 overall in 2002. Bird led the Seattle Storm to the last of their four championships with her playing point guard at in 2020. She remained an elite player into her 40s.
The WNBA’s all-time leader in assists, Bird also finished first in games played, minutes and All-Star appearances (13, a total affected only by the WNBA often foregoing All-Star Games during years featuring international competitions). Fowles, meanwhile, was the league’s all-time rebounding leader when she retired before being passed by Tina Charles last year.
As I noted back in Aprilthere’s no question this is the greatest class of women’s basketball players ever to enter the Hall. The closest precedents were 2021, when a pair of MVPs (Yolanda Griffith and Bird’s long-time Seattle teammate Lauren Jackson) went in together, and pre-WNBA duos in 1993 (Ann Meyers and Soviet star Uljana Semjonova) and 1995 (Anne Donovan and Cheryl Miller).
With the WNBA on the rise, we should eventually see larger classes become the norm. For now, however, the class of 2025 stands alone in terms of WNBA accomplishments.
Shared Olympic legacy
There’s a point of overlap between this year’s NBA and WNBA classes, and their Olympic gold medals. All five players won at least one gold, and Bird (five), Fowles (four) and Anthony (three) are all among the most decorated basketball players ever in Olympic play.
Only longtime teammate Diana Taurasi’s six gold medals surpass Bird’s total, and on the men’s side, “Olympic Melo” shares second place with LeBron Jamestrailing Kevin Durant‘s four gold medals.
In fact, Anthony and Howard are being honored by the Hall twice this year. Both will go in as part of the 2008 USA Basketball “redeem team” that won gold in Beijing after falling short in 2004 in Athens (Anthony’s first Olympics) and the previous two 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 historic nature of the class.
