If you saw that Ben Wallace was named one of 14 finalists for the Naismith Hall of Fame and your first thought was, “Will he get in this time?,” you’re asking the wrong question. The question should be, “How is Ben Wallace not already in the Hall of Fame?”
Well, grab a chair. Let’s talk.
The Naismith Hall of Fame is a more mysterious place than Area 51. Nobody knows who casts a ballot. Your best shot at entry is to be a college basketball coach. They get in before they’re qualified as a state pension participant. Win a national title in your 30s or 40s and you’ll likely spend more than half of your coaching career as a Hall of Famer. Much tougher if you’re an NBA head coach.
Tom Izzo, Bill Self and John Calipari are in the Hall of Fame; Gregg Popovich, George Karl and Rick Adelman – all with more than 1,000 career NBA coaching wins – are not.
And if you’re an NBA player, your best shot is to win a championship and score a lot of points. Ben Wallace won a championship – he was the first building block and the soul of the Goin’ to Work Pistons – but didn’t score a lot of points.
But he prevented a lot of points. A lot. Four times he won the NBA Defensive Player of the Year award. Nobody’s ever won it more times and only Dikembe Mutombo has as many on his mantel. Twice he led the league in rebounding, once in blocked shots.
For four years in a row, he led the league in defensive win shares and for a staggering seven straight seasons – the first six of them wearing a Pistons uniform – his defensive win shares was 6.0 or higher, including a preposterous 9.1 when the Pistons won the 2003-04 NBA title and Wallace was at the heart of arguably the greatest defensive team in NBA history. For comparative purposes, two-time DPOY Rudy Gobert’s best season was a 6.0 defensive win shares and reigning DPOY Giannis Antetokounmpo’s high is 5.5.
And if you’re thinking, well, that was a different era, think harder. Wallace would be a more valuable, more honored player today than he was during his heyday. He was about 15 years ahead of his time. Wallace went undrafted and brought to Summer League with the Celtics, who tried to convert him into a … shooting guard! Because, hey, what are you going to do with a 6-foot-9 power forward who doesn’t shoot, never mind center. (And 6-foot-9 was a stretch.)
The dominance of the 3-point shot in today’s game and the endless quest for shooters that require defenses to guard many more square feet would put an absolute premium on Wallace’s services. Switch 1 through 5? He could switch 1 through infinity.
One profound reason the Pistons were such a dominant defensive team – remember the stretch of five straight games holding opponents to less than 70 points? – was Wallace’s ability to render pick-and-roll plays impotent. Point guards who would salivate at the opportunity to attack the big man switched onto them would turn the corner, see Big Ben’s menacing Afro and get off the ball with great dispatch.
But players who build their resumes foremost on the defensive end always have a tougher hill to climb than scorers. It’s true in free agency, where scorers almost always cash in, and it’s true in Hall of Fame balloting.
If Wallace had won four scoring titles instead, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. He’d have been in five years ago when first eligible. But even given the bias against defense-first players, Big Ben was a four-time All-Star and five times was named an All-NBA player – regarded among the 15 best players in the game – including three times to the second team.
Something else that probably works against him is the total egalitarian nature of the Goin’ to Work Pistons. Rival coaches would debate who among them was their MVP and there was no right answer. But it was a defense-first team and there was no debate who was the driving force of that suffocating defense.
If the voters want to give more than lip service to the bromide that defense is half the game and that winning matters, Big Ben is a slam-dunk Hall of Famer on both counts. So does he have a chance to get in this time? Wrong question. How is he not in already?