Amar'e Stoudemire, Doc Rivers, Candace Parker, Mike D'Antoni headline 2026 Basketball Hall of Fame class
The nine inductees will be officially enshrined in Springfield, Massachusetts, in August.
The Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame announced its newest inductees on Saturday at the Final Four, and the class of 2026 features four players, three coaches, one team and even a referee.
Amar'e Stoudemire is the lone men's player in this class, and he'll be inducted alongside WNBA legends Elena Delle Donne, Chamique Holdsclaw and Candace Parker. Headlining the group of coaches is Doc Rivers, currently in his third season with the Milwaukee Bucks. Rivers will be joined by Mike D'Antoni and Gonzaga coach Mark Few. Additionally, longtime NBA official Joey Crawford is headed into the Hall, as is the 1996 United States Women's National Team, which featured stars like Sheryl Swoopes, Dawn Staley and Rebecca Lobo and won gold at the Olympics in Atlanta while finishing with an 8-0 record and an average margin of victory of more than 30 points.
Stoudemire, the No. 9 overall pick in the 2002 NBA Draft, made his name with the Phoenix Suns. He made five All-Star teams there as a key member of the revolutionary "Seven Seconds or Less" Suns, reaching the Western Conference finals several times before ultimately leaving for the New York Knicks in 2010. He'd make one more All-Star team in New York before injuries ruined the rest of his career. He last played in the NBA in 2016 with the Miami Heat, and played internationally for several years afterward.
Rivers spent more than a decade in the NBA as a player, and though he made an All-Star Game in 1988, he will be inducted for his accomplishments as a coach. Rivers is the sixth-winningest regular-season coach ever with 1,191 wins to date. He won a championship with the Boston Celtics in 2008 and reached the Finals again in 2010. He has since gone on to coach the Los Angeles Clippers, Philadelphia 76ers, and, currently, the Milwaukee Bucks.
"It would mean the world to me," Rivers told reporters Tuesday in Milwaukee. "I've done a lot, the numbers are the numbers. But it's not, I swear, it's not why I got into this. It's the relationships, it's the people. From the day that I was nominated, the calls, I can't tell you. It's in the hundreds, the player calls. And some of the calls have been amazing because I thought they didn't like me anymore. You have falling outs with players, and you don't ever worry about it; it's just part of it as a coach. It's been amazing that they have reached out, and it's made me feel really good about just doing what I do. It's been great."
Parker is one of the greatest women's players of all time. She led Tennessee to consecutive national championships in 2007 and 2008, racking up every imaginable collegiate accolade in the process. She won two MVP awards in the WNBA and three championships, one each with the Los Angeles Sparks, Chicago Sky and Las Vegas Aces.
Delle Donne took an unusual route to the WNBA, leaving UConn for family reasons before playing volleyball at the University of Delaware. She eventually returned to the hardwood for the Blue Hens and emerged as a top WNBA prospect. She was selected No. 2 overall by the Chicago Sky, winning an MVP for them in 2015 before getting traded to the Washington Mystics and winning another MVP award there. She also won her lone WNBA championship for the Mystics in 2019.
Holdsclaw won three national championships at Tennessee from 1996-98 before an 11-year WNBA career that included six All-Star selections, a Rookie of the Year award, a scoring title and two rebounding titles. She was the first overall pick of the Washington Mystics in 1999 who averaged 16.9 points and 7.6 rebounds for her career. She also won an Olympic gold medal in 2000.
Few has spent his entire collegiate coaching career at Gonzaga, first joining as a graduate assistant in 1989 and working his way up to head coach a decade later. There, he built one of the most dominant programs in college basketball. In almost three decades as a head coach, Few has never missed the NCAA Tournament. He's taken Gonzaga to two championship games, losing both, and has won 23 regular-season West Coast Conference championships and 21 conference tournaments. He was the AP Coach of the Year in 2017 and was an assistant under Steve Kerr as Team USA won a gold medal at the 2024 Olympics.
D'Antoni, inducted via the Hall's "Contributor's Committee," began his coaching career in Italy before stints as a head coach for four different NBA teams -- the Phoenix Suns, New York Knicks, Los Angeles Lakers and Houston Rockets. Known for his up-tempo, space-and-pace style of offense, D'Antoni is credited with influencing the modern style of basketball, particularly offensive strategy. In all, he compiled 1,199 wins NBA wins and was twice named the league's Coach of the Year (2005, 2017).
Crawford served as an NBA referee for 39 seasons, beginning in 1977 until his retirement in 2016. His 2,561 games officiated rank second all-time behind Dick Bavetta. Crawford worked a record 374 postseason games and 50 NBA Finals games, including every Finals series from 1986 to 2015.
The nine inductees will be officially enshrined in Springfield, Massachusetts, in August.
