Hall of Fame Picks

Candace Parker is going into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame in 2026, and the easiest way to see why is to start with the stack of hardware: two Women’s National Basketball Association championships, two league Most Valuable Player awards, and a Finals Most Valuable Player award. She also won a National Collegiate Athletic Association title at Tennessee, two Olympic gold medals with the United States, and retired in 2024 after 16 Women’s National Basketball Association seasons. (sports.yahoo.com) Parker’s career always felt bigger than one franchise because it stretched across three versions of women’s basketball stardom. She arrived as a Tennessee star under Pat Summitt, became the Los Angeles Sparks centerpiece who won league Most Valuable Player as a rookie in 2008, and later added titles with the Chicago Sky in 2021 and the Las Vegas Aces in 2023. (sports.yahoo.com) That arc helps explain why her Hall of Fame selection lands as a history lesson as much as an honor. The Women’s National Basketball Association spent years fighting for mainstream attention, and Parker became one of the players casual fans could identify on sight, whether they knew her from national television games, Olympic teams, or championship runs. (sports.yahoo.com) The 2026 class also reaches beyond star players and into the people who changed how basketball is played on the sideline. Mike D’Antoni made his name by speeding the game up, spreading the floor with shooters, and handing playmaking freedom to guards in a way that shaped modern National Basketball Association offense. (wvnews.com) D’Antoni’s most famous stretch came with the Phoenix Suns teams built around Steve Nash in the mid-2000s. Those Suns teams turned pace into a weapon, won regular-season games in bunches, and helped make ideas that once looked radical feel normal in today’s National Basketball Association, where quick decisions and three-point shooting dominate possessions. (wvnews.com) Mark Few represents a different kind of basketball influence. He never needed a major-conference logo to build his case, because he turned Gonzaga from a strong small-school program into a permanent national contender that reached multiple National Collegiate Athletic Association title games and became a fixture in March. (bonnercountydailybee.com) Few’s résumé is really a story about consistency. Gonzaga kept winning 25 and 30 games, kept producing National Basketball Association players, and kept earning high tournament seeds from a campus in Spokane, Washington, that used to sit far from the center of the college basketball map. (bonnercountydailybee.com) Put those three names together and the class starts to look less like a random collection of honorees and more like a snapshot of how basketball changed over the last two decades. Parker stands for the rise and visibility of the women’s game, D’Antoni for the offensive revolution in the professional men’s game, and Few for the way a college program outside the traditional power structure could become a national brand. (sports.yahoo.com) (wvnews.com) (bonnercountydailybee.com) Parker is still the emotional center of the group because her case is both obvious and overdue in the way great careers often are once the full record is laid out. A player who won at Tennessee, won in Los Angeles, won in Chicago, won in Las Vegas, and won for Team USA does not just belong in Springfield; she gives the class one of its clearest through-lines from women’s college basketball to the professional game to the Olympics. (sports.yahoo.com) The Hall of Fame has always been at its best when it honors more than statistics. The 2026 class does that by rewarding one player whose résumé spans nearly every level of women’s basketball and two coaches who changed what winning could look like, one by redesigning offense and the other by redrawing the college map. (sports.yahoo.com) (wvnews.com) (bonnercountydailybee.com)