Vince Carter and Chauncey Billups headline 2024 Hall of Fame class
Vince Carter amazed the basketball world for more than twenty years with his high-flying dunks. Chauncey Billups was a clutch guard and NBA Finals MVP for the Detroit Pistons.
Two icons of the 2000s basketball era are headed to the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame.
The 13-member class inducted Saturday includes former Lakers, Grizzlies and Warriors executive Jerry West, who had already been inducted as a player and as a member of the 1960 U.S. Olympic team. Also in the class: players Seimone Augustus, Michael Cooper , Walter Davis, Dick Barnett and Michele Timms, coaches Charles Smith, Harley Redin and Bo Ryan, broadcaster/coach Doug Collins and owner Herb Simon.
The Class of 2024 will be inducted into the Hall of Fame in August in Springfield, Massachusetts.
Carter, 47, was an eight-time All-Star and the 1999 NBA Rookie of the Year with the Toronto Raptors. He had the longest career in NBA history, playing 22 seasons for the Raptors, Nets, Mavericks, Grizzlies, Hawks, Magic, Kings and Suns, finishing with 25,728 career points, good for 21st in league history.
He played in college at North Carolina under coach Dean Smith.
The 6-foot-1 guard’s longevity in the game was legendary and he was a useful player well into his 40s, hanging out with players less than half his age. He averaged five points over 60 games at age 43 with the Hawks in his final season.
Billups, 47, was a five-time All-Star and won an NBA championship with the Detroit Pistons in 2004. He was also the Finals MVP that season and is now the coach of the Portland Trail Blazers.
Billups was the third overall pick in the 1997 draft by the Boston Celtics, but his professional career developed somewhat slowly. He eventually found a home in Detroit, where he made his first All-Star team in his ninth season.
Part of a balanced Pistons team that included Richard Hamilton, Rasheed Wallace, Tayshaun Prince and Ben Wallace, Billups averaged 21 points and 5.2 assists per game in the 2004 Finals. They defeated the Lakers in five games for the title.
West, 85, was inducted as a contributor. The fourteen-time All-Star was inducted as a player in 1980. He spent more than two decades as an executive of the Los Angeles Lakers – helping the franchise win eight championships in a span from 1980 to 2002 – and was also the general manager for the Memphis Grizzlies and an executive with the Golden State Warriors.
Augustus, 39, was a four-time WNBA champion with the Minnesota Lynx. The 6-foot-1 guard played in college at LSU and helped the program to three Final Fours. She is 13th in WNBA history with 6,005 career points.