Basketball Hall of Fame inducts ‘greatest women’s class’
Sylvia Fowles Credit: Charles Hallman
UNCASVILLE, Conn. — Sylvia Fowles a few months ago had some practice conjuring up what she needed to say in her Hall of Fame speech. Last Saturday in Springfield, Mass. was the second such induction for her in nearly four months — Fowles in June went into the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame in Knoxville, Tenn.
“I feel like I’m going to play a game,” the retired WNBA legend told this reporter during last Friday’s Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame media availability at Mohegan Sun convention center.
Fowles, Maya Moore and Sue Bird are the largest WNBA players class to enter the Hall in the same year. All three were USA Olympic teammates, and Fowles and Moore were Minnesota Lynx teammates on two WNBA championships. Combined, they won 11 Olympic gold medals, 10 W championships, and countless individual honors.
“I think hands down, without a doubt, [this is] the greatest women’s class to go into the Hall,” declared Seattle Times beat writer Percy Allen. “This year’s class will stand the test of time for a long time.”
“It is very significant, especially knowing the history of the Basketball Hall of Fame,” explained Fowles. “There’s some years you don’t have women go in at all. So, to have all three of us…says a lot about the game, and it’s such an honor to be among those names.”
When a reporter asked her about being great, the usually humble Fowles said, “I never thought beyond doing my job. I’ve been watching myself [on film] the last six months and, being honest, I didn’t know I was that good.
Sylvia Fowles HOF photo Credit: Threads
“I was doing my job, but I was highly impressed watching me play,” said Fowles with a wry smile. “It was a joy to catch myself on film.”
A couple of days earlier Fowles and this longtime reporter spoke on Zoom. I first spoke to Fowles during her introductory press conference after she was traded to Minnesota from Chicago in the middle of the 2015 season. After that we regularly talked, whether for a story or just chit-chatting about life.
I asked her why we had such a player-reporter relationship and she said, “I’m very big on energy. I felt like you were probably one of the most honest ones that I can sit and have a heart-to-heart with without taking stuff and writing about it or putting it in the media.
“I always appreciated that about you, and when you showed me that I can trust you, then it was smooth sailing from there.” Fowles last weekend gave me a couple of her patented hugs that she always gives to people she likes. She said she likes me.
The Miami native is no different from most typical HOFers, openly admitting that getting into the Hall was far from her mind. “If I’m being honest, I just want people to understand that I’m all too human outside of all these great things that I did in the basketball world,” she said.
She recalled in her WBHOF speech that she was pushed into basketball because she was tall for her age as a pre-teen. “I just didn’t think I was good. The potential that I was showing other people, I couldn’t see it in myself. It took some time for me to really hone in on what I was really good at, what I can get better at, and how can I be a menace on the court.
“It took me a while to get there… It probably didn’t click for me until probably after my third, fourth year in the league where I was like, I can definitely play with this group of young women, and I can be better if I can just lock in and learn these things.”
Fowles’ post-athletic career of becoming a mortician still is on her radar: “Yes, we’re just on pause right now because we were in this wave of doing all these amazing things that’s in the moment.”
A couple of Hall of Fame inductions in 2025 can do it to her, I guess.
Charles Hallman welcomes reader comments to challman@spokesman-recorder.com.
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