Here’s one the player who created chaos on and off the court never expected: Hall of Famer. Rodman headlined the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame’s 2011 class announced on Monday, a group that includes former Dream Team member Chris Mullin and Lithuanian-born center Arvydas Sabonis.
“It’s just unreal,” Rodman said.
And somewhat unexpected, at least to the two-time NBA Defensive Player of the Year and five-time NBA champion who believed his extracurricular activities — including donning a wedding dress to marry himself and kicking a photographer in the groin — would overshadow his on-the-court accomplishments.
“I looked at the way I am, and I thought I wouldn’t get in,” Rodman said.
Also part of the class were: Longtime NBA and ABA star Artis Gilmore; Olympic gold medalist Teresa Edwards; Harlem Globetrotter Reece “Goose” Tatum; and Boston Celtic Tom “Satch” Sanders; coaches Tex Winter, innovator of the triangle offense, Philadelphia University’s Herb Magee and Stanford University’s Tara VanDerveer.
When informed of the honor last week, Rodman thought it was a joke. He thought there was no way the voters could get past his outlandish antics and focus on a career in which he became one of the best rebounders in league history.
“They looked past all the negativity and thought ‘wow, he actually did change the game a little bit,”’ said Rodman, who averaged 13.1 rebounds a game while playing for five teams. “I wasn’t a good scorer. I wasn’t the best athlete. But I was part of the machine.”
Even if he sometimes drew more headlines for his wardrobe than his ability to chase down missed shots at a remarkable rate. Rodman didn’t disappoint on Monday. While the rest of the inductees for the announcement donned suits for the occasion, he wore sneakers, jeans, a black ballcap, shades, tan vest with leopard and tan scarves, and his white shirt with gold sequined cuffs was unbuttoned and knotted at the waist, a la Julia Roberts in “Pretty Woman.”
Expect something off the wall when the class is formally inducted in Springfield, Massachusetts, in August. Rodman said his personal designer was going to “make a lot of crazy stuff.”
Mullin, a five-time NBA All-Star, will be making his second trip to the induction ceremonies in as many years. He was enshrined last summer as part of the 1992 US Olympic basketball team.
Sabonis was one of the greatest passing centers in basketball history. He was among the first European players to successfully transition to the NBA, spending nearly a decade with the Portland Trail Blazers. He also won Olympic gold and bronze for the Soviet Union and Lithuania, and was a two-time European player of the year.
Gilmore was elected by the Hall’s American Basketball Association committee. Gilmore was on the all-time ABA team and was a six-time NBA All-Star who scored more than 24,000 career points.
Edwards won four gold medals while playing on five US Olympic teams, Tatum, a winner of eight NBA titles in the 1960s, was elected as a contributor for developing the NBA’s rookie and player programs, and Goose was the original clown prince of the Globetrotters from the 1940s into the 1960s.
Winter refined the triangle offense and helped the Chicago Bulls and Los Angeles Lakers win nine NBA championships as an assistant to Phil Jackson until he retired in 2006. VanDerveer became the sixth woman to get 800 NCAA coaching victories in in December. Magee was the all-time, all-division NCAA wins leader with 922 career victories.
