In contrast to the
Soccer and the
National Baseball Halls of Fame, Springfield honors international and American professionals, as well as American and international amateurs, making it arguably the most comprehensive Hall of Fame among major American sports. From 2011 to 2015, seven committees were, and as of 2016, six committees are employed to both screen and elect candidates. Four of the committees screen prospective candidates: • North American Screening Committee (9 members) • Women's Screening Committee (7 members) • International Screening Committee (7 members) • Veterans Screening Committee (7 members), with "Veterans" defined as individuals whose careers ended at least 35 years before they are considered for election. Since 2011, the Veterans and International Committees also vote to directly induct one candidate for each induction class. Three committees were formed in 2011 to directly elect one candidate for each induction class: • Contributor Direct Election Committee • Other committees may choose to elect contributors. For example, the 2014 class included two contributors. • Early
African-American Pioneers of the Game Committee Individuals who receive at least seven votes from the North American Screening Committee or five votes from one of the other screening committees in a given year are eligible to advance to an Honors Committee, composed of 12 members plus rotating groups of 12 specialists (one group for female candidates, one group for international candidates, and one group for American and veterans candidates) who vote on each candidate. Each screening committee has a limited number of candidates it may submit to the Honors Committee—10 from the North American Committee, and two from each of the other committees. Any individual receiving at least 18 affirmative votes (75% of all votes cast) from the Honors Committee is approved for induction into the Hall of Fame. As long as the number of candidates receiving sufficient votes from a screening committee is not greater than the number of finalists that the committee is permitted to submit, advancement to the Honors Committee is generally pro forma, although the Hall's Board of Trustees may remove from consideration any candidate who "has damaged the integrity of the game of basketball". The waiting period had originally been five years, but was changed to four years in December 2015, and to three seasons in December 2017. The Hall has also been criticized for a tendency to enshrine active collegiate coaches and relatively obscure players while omitting some accomplished players and coaches. The Hall has received backlash for excluding such players, coaches, and innovators. For example, the 24-second shot-clock had two developers for the
National Basketball Association in
Leo Ferris and
Danny Biasone, but only the latter has been inducted into the Hall of Fame. Ferris was listed as an eligible nominee from 2017 to 2023.
Tim Hardaway is one player noted as being snubbed from the Hall for a long time, possibly due to his past negative comments on the
LGBT community despite support from peers involving his playing credentials; he was inducted in 2022. Nine of the ten
NCAA Division I head coaches who won 800 games are currently in the Hall of Fame, with
Cliff Ellis (909 wins) being the only exception.
Leta Andrews, the all-time winningest coach in the United States (1,416 wins), has been a finalist five times but never inducted. Most notably,
Eddie Sutton waited twelve years after his retirement to be inducted.
Ken Anderson, holder of the third-highest winning percentage for all college basketball coaches in history, has not been inducted. The Basketball Hall of Fame stands in contrast to its baseball and football counterparts, specifically for its induction and voting process. There are multiple different voting committees for the Basketball Hall: The International Committee, North American Committee, Women's Committee, Contributor Direct Election Committee, Early African-American Pioneers Committee, and Veterans Committee. Each committee makes their own individual selections for their inductees into the Hall. The members of these committees serve three-year terms. How the members get selected, and who they are, is virtually unknown to the public and is kept completely anonymous. Inductees do not know who inducted them, and those who inducted them supposedly never let them know. According to Mark Purdy, a sportswriter and selection committee member for the Baseball Hall of Fame, the Basketball Hall of Fame's selection process is quite non-exclusive. He argues that the Baseball Hall of Fame first started inducting individuals in 1936, and Basketball did not start inducting players until 1959, but the Basketball Hall as of 2014 had more members than the Baseball Hall. Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame President and CEO,
John Doleva, defends the exclusivity argument: "I'm used to explaining it and it's different than football and baseball," Doleva said. "Because football and baseball cover the men's game professionally, end of story. Naismith invented this game for everyone: men, women, high school, college, pro, coaches, players. We really represent the entire game, so we have a broader class". ==Inductees==