The Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame’s class of 2026 includes Candace Parker, Elena Delle Donne, Doc Rivers and the legendary 1996 U.S. Women’s Olympic Team.
The Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame has announced its class of 2026, and the group is as celebrated as any in recent memory. Revealed today in Indianapolis during Final Four weekend, the nine inductees represent decades of excellence across women’s basketball, men’s professional basketball, coaching and officiating. The class will be officially enshrined on Aug. 14 and 15 in Springfield, Massachusetts.
The four players entering the Hall are 1. Candace Parker, 2. Elena Delle Donne, 3. Chamique Holdsclaw and 4. Amar’e Stoudemire. The three coaches joining them are 5. Doc Rivers, 6. Mike D’Antoni and 7. Mark Few. Longtime NBA official 8. Joey Crawford rounds out the individual inductees, and the 9. 1996 U.S. Women’s Olympic Team enters as a collective honoree on the 30th anniversary of its gold medal performance in Atlanta.
A historic class for women’s basketball
The announcement carries particular weight for women’s basketball. Parker, Holdsclaw and members of the 1996 Olympic team were all present at the women’s Final Four on Friday, where the Hall honored its incoming class for the first time at that event. For Parker, being enshrined alongside players who shaped her own career made the recognition deeply personal.
Parker is widely regarded as one of the greatest players in WNBA history. Her professional career, which spanned from 2008 to 2023, produced three WNBA championships with three different franchises, the Los Angeles Sparks, Chicago Sky and Las Vegas Aces, along with two MVP awards and seven All-Star selections. She is the only player in league history to win both the MVP and Rookie of the Year in the same season. Before turning pro, Parker won back-to-back NCAA titles at the University of Tennessee under Hall of Fame coach Pat Summitt in 2007 and 2008, and she is a two-time Olympic gold medalist.
Delle Donne took an unconventional path to the WNBA, leaving the University of Connecticut before eventually playing basketball at the University of Delaware. Selected second overall by the Chicago Sky in the 2013 WNBA Draft, she won the MVP award in 2015 before being traded to the Washington Mystics, where she claimed a second MVP and led the team to the 2019 WNBA championship. She is also the first player in league history to shoot above 50% from the field, 40% from three-point range and 90% from the free-throw line in the same season. Since 2025, Delle Donne has served as managing director of the U.S. 3×3 Women’s National Team.
Holdsclaw, one of the most decorated players in the history of women’s college basketball, won three consecutive NCAA titles at Tennessee from 1996 to 1998 before going on to an 11-year WNBA career that included six All-Star selections, a Rookie of the Year award and a scoring title. She was the first overall pick of the Washington Mystics in 1999 and earned an Olympic gold medal in 2000.
The 1996 U.S. Women’s Olympic Team, led by coach Tara VanDerveer, went 52-0 on a pre-Olympic tour before dominating in Atlanta, winning each game by an average of more than 28 points. The squad defeated Brazil 111-87 in the gold medal game, with Lisa Leslie scoring 29 points in the final. The team’s success is widely credited with generating the momentum that launched the WNBA the following year, beginning a streak of eight consecutive Olympic gold medals for American women’s basketball that continued through 2024.
The coaches and the lone men’s player
Stoudemire made history in 2003 as the first player to win NBA Rookie of the Year after entering the league directly from high school. He spent the first eight years of his career with the Phoenix Suns, earning five All-Star selections as a centerpiece of the team’s revolutionary up-tempo offense, before moving to the New York Knicks in 2010. He retired from the NBA in 2016 and went on to win two Israeli Basketball Premier League titles playing abroad.
Rivers enters the Hall with 1,191 regular-season wins, placing him among the top 10 coaches in NBA history. He guided the Boston Celtics to the 2008 NBA championship and also led the Los Angeles Clippers during their Lob City era before current stints with the Philadelphia 76ers and Milwaukee Bucks. As a player, Rivers spent 13 seasons in the NBA and was named an All-Star in 1988.
D’Antoni is credited with transforming offensive basketball strategy through his fast-paced, spread-the-floor approach. Across head coaching stints with the Phoenix Suns, New York Knicks, Los Angeles Lakers and Houston Rockets, he compiled nearly 1,200 NBA wins and was named Coach of the Year twice, in 2005 and 2017.
Few has spent his entire coaching career at Gonzaga, building one of college basketball’s most consistently dominant programs. He has never missed the NCAA Tournament as head coach and guided the Bulldogs to the national championship game in 2017 and 2021. Crawford officiated 2,561 regular-season NBA games and a record 374 postseason contests over 39 seasons before retiring in 2016.
Story credit: ESPN