Top women’s players enshrined by basketball hall tonight
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UNCASVILLE, Conn. -- Dawn Staley and the 1996 Olympic women’s basketball team paved the way for the WNBA and players such as Candace Parker, Elena Delle Donne and Chamique Holdsclaw.
The team that started the Americans’ 30-year Olympic dominance will be enshrined in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame tonight along with Parker, Delle Donne and Holdsclaw. They will be joined by NBA player Amar’e Stoudemire, longtime NBA official Joey Crawford, NBA coaches Doc Rivers and Mike D’Antoni, and Gonzaga coach Mark Few in the Hall of Fame.
“It’s taken a long time for that particular team that set the stage for everything that’s happened since,” Staley said. “There were players that came before us that didn’t strike while the iron was hot. I thought we struck when the iron was hot and provided a way for us to see professional basketball come into existence after. Then for the last 30 years we’ve had it. ”
Parker and Delle Donne were young, but remembered that Olympic team and its importance.
“The ’96 (team) inspired an entire generation of women,” Parker said. “They were the catalyst for all of women’s sports to me and professional leagues to go around for an entire year, commit and understand that it’s like gold or nothing and for them to come away with the gold in the fashion they did with the great amount of eyeballs.”
It’s the second consecutive year that a stellar class of women will be enshrined in the Hall of Fame as Sue Bird, Maya Moore and Sylvia Fowles were inducted in 2025. Parker won three titles in the WNBA with three different teams: Los Angeles, Chicago and Las Vegas. She is the only player in league history to win both the MVP and Rookie of the Year in the same season.
She also won two titles while playing in college for Tennessee under Hall of Fame coach Pat Summitt, plus two Olympic gold medals and two WNBA MVP awards.
Delle Donne won two league MVP awards in 2015 and 2019, the second of which came when she led the Washington Mystics to their lone WNBA championship. Delle Donne became the first player in league history to shoot more than 50% from the field, 40% from behind the 3-point line and 90% from the free-throw line.
Holdsclaw won three straight titles at Tennessee from 1996-98, the first team to accomplish that. The 1998 championship was Tennessee’s first undefeated season at 39-0 and the Vols also set an NCAA record for the most wins in a season. Holdsclaw went on to have an 11-year WNBA career.
The Sparks’ Candace Parker, right, blocks a shot by the New York Liberty’s Epiphanny Prince in their WNBA game on Aug. 4, 2017, in Los Angeles. (AP file photo)