The 2026 Naismith Basketball HOF class, which inducted eight individuals and one team on Saturday in Springfield, Mass., featured former WNBAers Candace Parker, Elena Delle Donne and Chamique Holdsclaw, the USA Women\u2019s 1996 Olympic gold medal squad, former NBAer Amar\u2019e Stoudemire, former NBA coaches Mike D\u2019Antoni and Doc Rivers, Gonzaga coach Mark Few and former NBA referee Joey Crawford.<\/p>\n
Holdsclaw: Having grown up in New York, Holdsclaw \u201cshared memories of the support she received from guys she shared courts with,\u201d including a fellow future basketball All-Star from her stomping grounds, former NBAer Metta Sandiford-Artest.D\u2019Antoni: D\u2019Antoni deferred his success to the \u201cfamily, friends, players and executives who trusted his vision for changing basketball.\u201dDelle Donne: One of the best shooters in WNBA history, Delle Donne started her speech by noting the presence of comedian Larry David and said she hoped to do a \u201cprettay, prettay\u201d good job.Parker: An emotional Parker \u201cpassed a basketball throughout her speech,\u201d dishing to her brother, Anthony, Allen Iverson, Dwyane Wade and Cheryl Miller.Stoudemire: Stoudemire thanked God and looked back on a childhood in which he \u201croutinely obeyed his mother as he sought a basketball career to lift his family out of poverty.\u201dThe 1996 women\u2019s national team: HOFers Teresa Edwards, Sheryl Swoopes, Lisa Leslie, Dawn Staley, Rebecca Lobo and coach Tara VanDerveer \u201creflected on the value of helping establish women\u2019s basketball\u201d (THE ATHLETIC, 8\/15<\/a>).Rivers mentioned the \u201ctrick\u201d to being a good coach. He said, \u201cIf you can coach your players hard, and they know it comes from a loving place, you can be really successful in the business\u201d (NBA.com, 8\/15<\/a>).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The 2026 Naismith Basketball HOF class, which inducted eight individuals and one team on Saturday in Springfield, Mass.,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":857662,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[574],"tags":[64,63,726,590,85,5941],"class_list":["post-857661","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-basketball","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-basketball","tag-nba","tag-sports","tag-wnba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/857661","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=857661"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/857661\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/857662"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=857661"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=857661"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=857661"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}