A Rocket in the Hall
Secret panel of voters deny two-time champ Hall of Fame spot
Rudy T doesn’t get in, but ex-Rockets guard Tracy McGrady does.
GLENDALE, Ariz. — Rudy Tomjanovich had always said basketball had given him all he could want. He’d ask for no more.
Humility was overlooked, too, when the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame inductees were announced Saturday and Tomjanovich was excluded. But the clear snub of Tomjanovich and others with credentials that were built in the NBA reflected on voters, and not on them or their accomplishments.
This year’s secret panel of Hall of Fame voters got some things right. The long and inexplicable absences of Robert Hughes and Jerry Krause were corrected. Tracy McGrady was selected in his first season of eligibility.
But the members of the Hall of Fame committee embarrassed themselves. They stained their work meant to celebrate success with their failure.
Greatness was ignored, in some cases to honor celebrity.
As ludicrous — OK, make that stupid — as it seems, Tomjanovich would be in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame today if he wasn’t good at playing basketball.
As ridiculous as that is, that is not even the most inexplicable part of Tomjanovich’s snub.
In a vivid reminder of how tilted Hall of Fame voters are against NBA coaches (and NBA players, apparently, considering the exclusion of Chris Webber), had Tomjanovich not been a star player, he would have been a coach sooner.
If he was not an All-American at Michigan, if he was not a five-time NBA All-Star, if he did not play for 11 NBA seasons with the Rockets, overcoming a life-threatening, on-court injury, he would have spent more years as a coach. He would have had one career, the way college coaches that do get in must because they can’t spend much of their adult lives playing basketball, something the Basketball Hall of Fame of all places should not treat as a negative. Changed offenses
Tomjanovich would have done more than just win the championship of the world’s best basketball league. And win it again. And win an Olympic gold medal.
“I continue to be baffled by Rudy’s exclusion form the Hall of Fame,” said former Rockets coach Jeff Van Gundy, who has championed Tomjanovich’s qualifications. “To me, the process is flawed in that you don’t know who voted for who. Because it’s not a National Basketball Association Hall of Fame, you don’t know what criteria is being used.
“He’s been greatly underestimated in this process. He’s one of the great coaches. The execution, the spacing and the perseverance of his teams were hallmarks and why he should be in the Hall of Fame.”
Yet, if you put all that aside, as the voters apparently did, and consider the kinds of things that the panel should have considered that go beyond just reaching the top of the profession, Tomjanovich should have been honored for his innovation, influence and impact on the sport.
Tomjanovich’s use of range-shooting big men not only won championships but it changed the game. The way the sport is played on all levels can be traced to Tomjanovich then.
“Anybody who has played for or coached with or knows Rudy knows there’s nobody more deserving than him to be in the Hall of Fame,” said Matt Bullard, one of the first “stretch fours” Tomjanovich used to change NBA offenses. “For those people who didn’t play for him or don’t know him very well, this is a guy who was at the cutting edge of basketball, 3-point shooting, today’s current style.”
There were others, from Europe to Denver, that led to those changes, too. Mike D’Antoni’s Suns offense sped the revolution. But none of those innovators did what Tomjanovich did. He did it and won championships.
But he did not throw his jacket in television-friendly March Madness temper tantrums. He did not wear funny sweaters. He was not on camera, front and center, for the nation’s annual spring office-pool diversion from work where everyone from Jim in accounting to that idiot in the next cubicle can spell Krzyzewski.
One would think the panel of Hall of Fame voters would be better informed than to know only the contents of the CBS commercials. Apparently not.
NBA coaches must put the spotlight on their players. Tomjanovich, especially, deflected attention, not just in the way he downplayed his coaching contributions, but even in his coaching style that stripped away excess to get the ball simply and quickly to his best player, turning the Rockets from winners to champions.
Biggest stage
College coaches can be great. They have a different job to do than NBA coaches. Excellence at what they do should not go unappreciated because their players are basically unpaid apprentices who, with only limited exceptions, will never excel on the next level.
High school coaches can be great, too. It is difficult to imagine anyone more deserving of a spot in Springfield than Hughes, who played at TSU and coached at Fort Worth’s I.M. Terrell and Dunbar and will make the Hall a better place on the day he is inducted.
Yet, just as excelling as a player in the NBA is far more difficult than in your neighborhood, high school or college, so is achieving greatness as a coach. As wonderful a job as your music teacher might have done directing the school play, that does not make her Steven Spielberg.
Coaches in the NBA know the attention belongs on the players. Self-promoters don’t last. But those entrusted to consider their accomplishments should understand that greatness on the sport’s highest level should be a qualification for its highest honor.
Instead, the exclusion of Tomjanovich and others said nothing about their achievements and everything about the secret panel’s failure.