How come Drazen Petrovic is in the Hof But Reggie Lewis is not in the hof

[Lexluthor]

They both died around the same time and Lewis had better overall stats than Petrovic . Why does Drazen get so much love and Reggie is forgotten about by most fans

[Warspite]

Its the Basketball Hall of Fame

The NBA has no HoF.

Drazen is from Europe. Different rules, committees and voters for international players and coaches (at the time).

[SHAQ32]

Because the NBA had an agenda to expand the game globally and always gave preferential treatment to players from other continents, particularly Europe. I mean, Dino Radja and Šarūnas Marčiulionis are in the hall.

[Jaivl]

For middle-aged european fans, Petrovic is Jordan.

[MiamiBulls]

There's 3 major committees for players to be able to get nominated and potentially inducted into the Hall of Fame.

1) The North American Committee: which is from a players' perspective the hardest to get into. This Committee primarily looks at a players' NBA career only or unique combination of their College+Pro Career(Grant Hill, Ralph Sampson)

2) Veterans Committee: Legacy Players who have been removed from the game of basketball for at least 35 years. These are players who have case for the Hall as an early pioneer representative of the NBA or any other basketball institutions CBA, ABA, etc. who might have been overlooked for years.(Dick Barnett) It's essentially an Honorary induction.

3) The International Committee: individuals who have made significant contributions to the game outside of North America. Players who made their names in Olympic, FIBA or any other international play for their respective countries. This is how Vlade Divac, Toni Kukoc, & Yao Ming were inducted into the basketball Hall of Fame. This is also how Drazen Petrovic was inducted in 2002.

Reggie Lewis doesn't fit the criteria of any of the 3 committees for possible induction.

It's a lot harder to make the basketball Hall of Fame than most people think. Especially as an NBA player exclusively, it took Sidney Moncrief 20+ years after eligibility to get inducted into the Hall. 6x All Star Shawn Kemp has never sniffed the Hall of Fame past the preliminaries & he's been eligible for over 15 years. Mark Price (4x All Star ; 4x All NBA) eligible for over 20 years. Tom Chambers, Brad Daugherty, Larry Nance easily passed over. Kevin Johnson has been eligible for over 20 years & he's still hasn't been inducted.

Hall of Fame has bias towards Championship Finals competing players(Final Fours, NCAA Championships, NBA Finals appearances, NBA Finals) whether that's just in NBA alone or combination of both NBA+College Basketball.

[gavran]

Its the Basketball Hall of Fame

The NBA has no HoF.

Drazen is from Europe. Different rules, committees and voters for international players and coaches (at the time).

Seriously, how many times does this need to be repeated, for it to finally land in people's minds?

[Ryoga Hibiki]

I don't think it's that difficult once you look at the totality of Drazen's career.
Moreover, even just looking at the NBA part, Petrovic has been extremely influential to what happened in the following decades.
What he did was actually extremely significant:
* he won everything in Europe, to the point he was arguably the best European player of all time at 24
* he moved to the NBA, out of his comfort zone, to come off the bench in Portland
* he managed to work his way up and become the first European star
* he died when he was at the top, when he got an All NBA selection
His narrative was way more than "good player dying at 28".

Little factoid, Kennard passed him last year, he had for the decades the highest 3pt% from the current NBA distance (Kerr and Davis padded their numbers when the line was shorter)

[trex_8063]

Its the Basketball Hall of Fame

The NBA has no HoF.

Drazen is from Europe. Different rules, committees and voters for international players and coaches (at the time).

Just to clarify (since the bolded makes it sound like [don't think this was your intent] it's solely on the basis of bias by these committees/voters)......

It should be noted that Petrovic had a MUCH more robust career/resume outside of the NBA than Lewis:

*Several years playing professionally in Europe.
*Multiple EuroLeague championships.
*FIBA Tournament champion and MVP.
*THREE Olympic medals (two silver, one bronze).

Etc.....

While Lewis's NBA career may be marginally better (just for having a couple extra years to it), the only thing he has outside of his six NBA years is a good college career at a relatively lesser basketball program (Northeastern University).

[falcolombardi]

There's 3 major committees for players to be able to get nominated and potentially inducted into the Hall of Fame.

1) The North American Committee: which is from a players' perspective the hardest to get into. This Committee primarily looks at a players' NBA career only or unique combination of their College+Pro Career(Grant Hill, Ralph Sampson)

2) Veterans Committee: Legacy Players who have been removed from the game of basketball for at least 35 years. These are players who have case for the Hall as an early pioneer representative of the NBA or any other basketball institutions CBA, ABA, etc. who might have been overlooked for years.(Dick Barnett) It's essentially an Honorary induction.

3) The International Committee: individuals who have made significant contributions to the game outside of North America. Players who made their names in Olympic, FIBA or any other international play for their respective countries. This is how Vlade Divac, Toni Kukoc, & Yao Ming were inducted into the basketball Hall of Fame. This is also how Drazen Petrovic was inducted in 2002.

Reggie Lewis doesn't fit the criteria of any of the 3 committees for possible induction.

It's a lot harder to make the basketball Hall of Fame than most people think. Especially as an NBA player exclusively, it took Sidney Moncrief 20+ years after eligibility to get inducted into the Hall. 6x All Star Shawn Kemp has never sniffed the Hall of Fame past the preliminaries & he's been eligible for over 15 years. Mark Price (4x All Star ; 4x All NBA) eligible for over 20 years. Tom Chambers, Brad Daugherty, Larry Nance easily passed over. Kevin Johnson has been eligible for over 20 years & he's still hasn't been inducted.

Hall of Fame has bias towards Championship Finals competing players(Final Fours, NCAA Championships, NBA Finals appearances, NBA Finals) whether that's just in NBA alone or combination of both NBA+College Basketball.

I think people in basketball are so superstar focused they dont realize that a lot of the "weak inductees" people say dilute the HOF are actually mainly 6-10 time all star players who were considered at least fringe top 10-15 players (correctly or incorrectly but here we are going off mainstream view) at their primes

To say those guys are shameful or weak or dillute the hof is insane or being too baseball hof brained which is a whole other extreme

[penbeast0]

There's 3 major committees for players to be able to get nominated and potentially inducted into the Hall of Fame.

1) The North American Committee: which is from a players' perspective the hardest to get into. This Committee primarily looks at a players' NBA career only or unique combination of their College+Pro Career(Grant Hill, Ralph Sampson)

2) Veterans Committee: Legacy Players who have been removed from the game of basketball for at least 35 years. These are players who have case for the Hall as an early pioneer representative of the NBA or any other basketball institutions CBA, ABA, etc. who might have been overlooked for years.(Dick Barnett) It's essentially an Honorary induction.

3) The International Committee: individuals who have made significant contributions to the game outside of North America. Players who made their names in Olympic, FIBA or any other international play for their respective countries. This is how Vlade Divac, Toni Kukoc, & Yao Ming were inducted into the basketball Hall of Fame. This is also how Drazen Petrovic was inducted in 2002.

Reggie Lewis doesn't fit the criteria of any of the 3 committees for possible induction.

It's a lot harder to make the basketball Hall of Fame than most people think. Especially as an NBA player exclusively, it took Sidney Moncrief 20+ years after eligibility to get inducted into the Hall. 6x All Star Shawn Kemp has never sniffed the Hall of Fame past the preliminaries & he's been eligible for over 15 years. Mark Price (4x All Star ; 4x All NBA) eligible for over 20 years. Tom Chambers, Brad Daugherty, Larry Nance easily passed over. Kevin Johnson has been eligible for over 20 years & he's still hasn't been inducted.

Hall of Fame has bias towards Championship Finals competing players(Final Fours, NCAA Championships, NBA Finals appearances, NBA Finals) whether that's just in NBA alone or combination of both NBA+College Basketball.

I think people in basketball are so superstar focused they dont realize that a lot of the "weak inductees" people say dilute the HOF are actually mainly 6-10 time all star players who were considered at least fringe top 10-15 players (correctly or incorrectly but here we are going off mainstream view) at their primes

To say those guys are shameful or weak or dillute the hof is insane or being too baseball hof brained which is a whole other extreme

I think most of the guys that are objected to are from the 50s/early 60s or were put in by the veterans committee. Part of it is ignorance/distaste for early players; part of it is that those players were only competing against a much more limited player pool at the time.

[Warspite]

Its the Basketball Hall of Fame

The NBA has no HoF.

Drazen is from Europe. Different rules, committees and voters for international players and coaches (at the time).

Just to clarify (since the bolded makes it sound like [don't think this was your intent] it's solely on the basis of bias by these committees/voters)......

It should be noted that Petrovic had a MUCH more robust career/resume outside of the NBA than Lewis:

*Several years playing professionally in Europe.
*Multiple EuroLeague championships.
*FIBA Tournament champion and MVP.
*THREE Olympic medals (two silver, one bronze).

Etc.....

While Lewis's NBA career may be marginally better (just for having a couple extra years to it), the only thing he has outside of his six NBA years is a good college career at a relatively lesser basketball program (Northeastern University).

Per HoF rules at the time the Int committee could induct 2 people into the HoF. So for Drazen not to make the HoF you have to find 2 players that were better every year and that simply is not possible. Jerry Colangelo changed the rules a few years back to the current criteria to try to mitigate the influx of Int players into the NBA.