The Basketball Hall of Fame announces its annual class every year at the Final Four, but we now know of several inductees headlining the class of 2026. Amar’e Stoudemire, Doc Rivers, Candace Parker and Elena Delle Donne have been chosen to join the Hall of Fame, according to ESPN. Gonzaga coach Mark Few will join them there, per CBS Sports’ Matt Norlander.
Stoudemire, the No. 9 overall pick in the 2002 NBA Draft, made his name with the Phoenix Suns. He made five All-Star teams there as a key member of the revolutionary “Seven Seconds or Less” Suns, reaching the Western Conference finals several times before ultimately leaving for the New York Knicks in 2010. He’d make one more All-Star team in New York before injuries ruined the rest of his career. He last played in the NBA in 2016 with the Miami Heat, and played internationally for several years afterward.
Rivers spent more than a decade in the NBA as a player, and though he made an All-Star Game in 1988, he will be inducted for his accomplishments as a coach. Rivers is the sixth-winningest regular-season coach ever with 1,191 wins to date. He won a championship with the Boston Celtics in 2008 and reached the Finals again in 2010. He has since gone on to coach the Los Angeles Clippers, Philadelphia 76ers, and, currently, the Milwaukee Bucks.
Parker is one of the greatest women’s players of all time. She led Tennessee to consecutive national championships in 2007 and 2008, racking up every imaginable collegiate accolade in the process. She won two MVP awards in the WNBA and three championships, one each with the Los Angeles Sparks, Chicago Sky and Las Vegas Aces.
Delle Donne took an unusual route to the WNBA, leaving UConn for family reasons before playing volleyball at the University of Delaware. She eventually returned to the hardwood for the Blue Hens and emerged as a top WNBA prospect. She was selected No. 2 overall by the Chicago Sky, winning an MVP for them in 2015 before getting traded to the Washington Mystics and winning another MVP award there. She also won her lone WNBA championship for the Mystics in 2019.
Few has spent his entire collegiate coaching career at Gonzaga, first joining as a graduate assistant in 1989 and working his way up to head coach a decade later. There, he built one of the most dominant programs in college basketball. In almost three decades as a head coach, Few has never missed the NCAA Tournament. He’s taken Gonzaga to two championship games, losing both, and has won 23 regular-season West Coast Conference championships and 21 conference tournaments. He was the AP Coach of the Year in 2017 and was an assistant under Steve Kerr as Team USA won a gold medal at the 2024 Olympics.
A total of 21 people were finalists for the class of 2026. Stoudemire, Parker, Delle Donne, Blake Griffin, Kevin Johnson, Buck Williams, Jennifer Azzi, Chamique Holdsclaw and Molly Bolin-Kazmer were eligible as players, Rivers, Few, Gary McKnight, Dick Motta, Jerry Welsh and Dušan Ivković as coaches, Tal Bordy and Mike D’Antoni as contributors, Joey Crawford as a referee and the 1996 United States Women’s National Team as a group.
