Kevin Garnett Will Have To Wait Until 2021 To Be Enshrined In Basketball Hall Of Fame
BOSTON (CBS) -- Kevin Garnett, Tim Duncan and the late Kobe Bryant will have to wait a little longer to take their place in the Basketball Hall of Fame. The 2020 enshrinement ceremonies are being moved to 2021 due to the coronavirus pandemic.
The plan is for "The Big Ticket" and his counterparts to now be enshrined in the spring of 2021, Jerry Colangelo -- chairman of the board of governors for the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame -- told ESPN on Wednesday.
"It's going to have to be the first quarter of next year. We'll meet in a couple of weeks and look at the options of how and when and where," said Colangelo.
It's a bummer that we'll have to wait to hear Garnett's speech, but for a star-studded class like 2020's, the wait will be worth it. Plus, Garnett now has some extra time to fine-tune his speech, which will no doubt be pretty epic and entertaining. We all know that anything is possible when Garnett has his chance to speak.
That power trio -- along with former Rockets coach Rudy Tomjanovich, WNBA superstar Tamika Catchings, Baylor women's basketball coach Kim Mulkey, Bentley College women's basketball coach Barbara Stevens -- were initially set to take their place in the Hall of Fame in Springfield, MA in late August. Alternate dates of Oct. 10-12 were proposed as the pandemic began to grip the nation, but that weekend is no longer feasible either. The board considered moving the enshrinement ceremony to the MassMutual Center in Springfield, since it's 8,319 capacity would allow for social distancing, but that too was abandoned.
So now the class of 2020 will have to wait a little bit longer. Colangelo also told ESPN that the class of 2021 will have its own ceremony, separate from the ceremony for the class of 2020.