The Naismith HOF Class of 20 Finally Makes it to to the COVID-19 Induction With WBB Greats Catchings, Mulkey and Stevens Among The Honorees

Guru’s Note: With yours truly having business in New York Friday with the WNBA opener for the Liberty in Brooklyn as well as being interviewed for an ESPN documentary, USBWA mentee Sam Cohn out of Temple stood in to report on the HOF presser for the class of 20 held virtually from the Mohegan Sun.

By Sam Cohn

On the opening night of the WNBA’s 25th season, three individuals who championed women’s basketball met with reporters ahead of their Naismith Hall of Fame inductions -- Tamika Catchings, Kim Mulkey and Barbara Stevens -- each a legend in her own right.

Each inductee will be presented during Saturday’s induction ceremony by another Hall of Famer with ceremonies to be held at the Mohegan Sun in Uncasville,Conn., in place of the normal activities in Springfield, Mass., home of the hall.

Catchings will be introduced by NBA champion Alonzo Mourning and South Carolina women’s head coach Dawn Staley. Mulkey. Will be accorded by NBA legend Michael Jordan, while Stevens woll be presented by UConn women’s head coach Geno Auriemma and former Notre Dame women’s head coach Muffet McGraw.

“It’s been many, many months of planning and we are so excited to get this event going,” President and CEO of the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame John Doleva said in his opening remarks at Friday’s press conference. “It is going to be, I think, the first time the family of basketball gets together since COVID shut us all down. The Hall of Fame is proud to host that.”

Catchings, considered by many to be one of the greatest female players ever, piled up an extensive list of accolades in her illustrious career. She collected a rookie of the year honor, four Olympic gold medals, a WNBA MVP trophy in 2011 and a league championship the following year with the Indiana Fever.

She currently serves as the Fever’s vice president of basketball operations and general manager. 

Prior to her professional career, Catchings spent four years playing collegiate basketball at Tennessee. It wasn’t until she was heading into her freshman year, in 1996, that the WNBA was first founded.

“They announced that there was this new league that was about to start and the WNBA was coming,” Catchings said. “For me, it was one of those things, I was like, ‘They heard about my dream and they heard about my goal.’”

Her dream of playing basketball at the highest level first grew out of watching her dad, Harvey Catchings. He played in the NBA with the 76ers and several other teams, as well as in Italy at the same time as Joe Bryant, father of the late Kobe Bryant, who starred at La Salle. 

Tamika and Kobe had intertwined, unique childhoods growing up in Italy, watching their fathers play overseas before moving back to the United States and starting careers of their own. 

More than two decades later, the two are linked by the same Hall of Fame induction class.

“We were just kids,” Catchings said. “I don’t think either one of us, at that point in time, would have ever dreamed about the role that we were in and the opportunities that we had. It wasn’t exactly the typical life of any child.”

She remembers years later watching the younger Bryant get drafted 13th overall in the 1996 NBA draft and calling her parents to ask if that was the same Kobe they were just in Italy with. 

Catchings’ one piece of advice to leave people with is to dream big. 

“It’s about having a goal, having a dream, always aspiring to reach them and going for it,” she said. “It’s going to take a lot of hard work but anything you dream, you can achieve.” 

As she stood at the podium in front of a curtain covered with Basketball Hall of Fame logos, it’s fair to say she is a great example of someone who took her own advice and was able to reach the highest pedigree of her profession.

As for Mulkey, she was both a tremendous athlete and head coach with six national championships on her resume. 

Her first two came as the starting point guard at Louisiana Tech in 1981 and 1982, next as an assistant coach at her alma mater in 1988 and three as she brought Baylor women’s basketball to prominence winning national championships in 2005, 2012 and 2019. 

The Louisiana native became the first person in NCAA women’s basketball history to win a national championship as a player, assistant coach and head coach. 

She remembers vividly missing out on an opportunity to go to her home state and fight for a national championship in New Orleans because of the cancellation of the 2020 NCAA Tournament due to concerns surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic. 

It was a rainy day and she stepped outside to take a phone call. 

Little did she know, the other side of that call was her notice that she was being inducted into the Hall of Fame. 

“I just cried,” Mulkey said. “I don’t even think I said thank you. I was so emotional. When I heard the other inductees’ names I thought, ‘pinch yourself, Kim. What are you doing in the company of these guys?’

“It’s just an honor that a little girl from Tickfaw, Louisiana, is in the Naismith Hall of Fame as a coach.”

The third member of the 2020 Hall of Fame induction class on the women’s side is legendary head coach Barbara Stevens. 

She coached at Bentley University from 1986 to 2020, leading her team to 10 trips to the Division II Fab Four including a National Championship in 2014.

Stevens is the only non-Division I coach to amass over 1,000 career victories.

The Massachusetts native got her start as an assistant coach at the Division III level at Clark University in 1976. Fresh out of college, Stevens approached the Women’s Athletic Director, where she inquired about open positions on the basketball team’s staff. 

“A week later she called me back and said, ‘I can give you an assistant women’s coaching position for $400,’” Stevens recalled. “And I thought I hit the jackpot.”

Years later, and after what she referred to as “a pretty good history of success,” Stevens saw a legitimate, exponential rise in the prominence of women’s basketball.

She believes one contemporary, notable factor that pushed it into the forefront of everyone’s minds was Oregon forward Sedona Prince posting a video on her social media exhibiting the inequities between the men’s and women’s NCAA Tournaments. 

Stevens added it was another way for women’s basketball to “stand up and stand out.” Something the players and coaches have been doing, battling prejudice and scrutiny, since the WNBA’s genesis 25 years ago.

“It’s been a sport that I think has just been waiting to finally burst onto the scene,” she said. “It’s been coming along, gaining more and more interest.”

Catchings, Mulkey and Stevens are each part of a star-studded enshrinement class who will be introduced as the Hall of Fame’s newest members Saturday afternoon on ESPN.

On Sunday, at 11:30 a.m., ESPN out of Springfield will broadcast the announcement of the Class of 21, whose inductions will occur in early September.