University of North Carolina Athletics
Lucas: Worthy Deserves Hall of Fame Invite
July 9, 2002 | Men's Basketball
July 9, 2002
By Adam Lucas
Tar Heel Monthly
Somewhere, there are some hanging chads waiting to be counted. All precincts must not have reported. Maybe there is a flaw in a voting machine.
Those are the only possible explanations for why, when the Basketball Hall of Fame's 2002 class is inducted, James Worthy will not be in attendance.
There will be a Carolina presence, as Larry Brown-who has asked Dean Smith to introduce him-will join the Hall. But until Worthy is enshrined in Springfield, the Hall's roster is not fully complete.
Worthy was selected as one of the NBA's 50 greatest players of all time in 1996. He is the only member of that illustrious group who is eligible for the Hall of Fame who has not been inducted.
History has rewritten the 1982 North Carolina season so much that Michael Jordan and his championship-clinching shot get most of the ink these days, but those old enough to actually remember those vintage Tar Heels know that Worthy was the soul of that team, in addition to being the most talented player on the floor that year. His one-handed swooping dunks were a staple of many a Carolina rout that year, and Sleepy Floyd is still having nightmares about Worthy dunking on him in the championship game.
Had ESPN been the worldwide phenomenon that it is today back in 1982, beaming highlights to everyone 24 hours a day, getting "Sleepy Floyded" would have entered the national lexicon. That season, the Gastonia native was the National Player of the Year and the Most Outstanding Player at the Final Four.
After leaving Chapel Hill, Worthy was the top pick in the NBA Draft by the Los Angeles Lakers. As a Laker, he was a key cog in the Showtime offense that propelled the NBA to the top of the national sporting scene in the late 1980's. Without him, Showtime would have been just a matinee. He won three world championships and was the MVP of the 1988 NBA Finals, when he recorded a triple-double in Game 7 against the Pistons.
Despite those honors, Worthy has been eligible for the Hall for three years and still not been inducted. The enshrinement process is shrouded in secrecy, with a 24-member anonymous committee handed the duty of voting on new members. Eighteen of the 24 members must vote for a candidate for him to be inducted.
However, no one even knows who the voters are, and a Basketball Hall of Fame spokesman would say only that they are "big names in basketball."
Like who, Manute Bol? Shawn Bradley? Ralph Sampson? You can see why they would want to remain anonymous after overlooking Worthy, who is the only one of seven Lakers who have their jerseys retired not to be inducted into the Hall.
The only possible logic for his exclusion might be that skeptics think his results were more a product of a great team than great talent. But Gail Goodrich, who was the third cog in the Jerry West/Wilt Chamberlain Lakers of the 1970's, is a member. Kevin McHale, who was a part of the great Celtics teams that provided a foil for Worthy's Lakers, is a member.
The other knock on the 6-foot-9 forward was that he wasn't a particularly strong rebounder-McHale averaged about two more rebounds per game over his career than Worthy. But as a member of the Lakers, with revolutionary point guard Magic Johnson contributing several rebounds per game, rebounding simply wasn't a part of his job description.
In fact, 2002 would have been a perfect year to send Worthy into Springfield, since Johnson is also a member of this year's induction class. With a lesser forward on the wing, many of those highlight-reel passes from Magic would have ended up in the arms of spectators.
For at least one more year, though, the former Tar Heel will have to sit on the sidelines. Which should give the NBA plenty of time to correct the flaws in their voting machines.
