Lindsay Whalen To Be Inducted Into Basketball Hall Of Fame

MINNEAPOLIS (AP/WCCO) - WNBA star Lindsay Whalen is among is the 2022 class of Basketball Hall of Fame inductees.

The honorees were announced Saturday in New Orleans at the site of the NCAA Men's Final Four.

Whalen, a Minnesota native, will be first Lynx player to be elected into the Hall of Fame on their first year of eligibility. She is the third elected all-time, following Katie Smith and Teresa Edwards in 2018 and 2011 respectively.

The four-time WNBA champion has 323 career victories and 54 postseason wins. She is the WNBA's winningest player of all time, averaging 11.5 points on 46.1% shooting, 3.8 rebounds and 4.9 assists in 480 career regular season games.

Whalen, of Hutchinson, payed six seasons with the Connecticut Sun before returning to her home state to play for the Lynx. She also won gold in the Olympics in 2012 and 2016. Now, she is the head coach of the University of Minnesota women's basketball team.

Also selected this year were former WNBA champion and two-time college national champion Swin Cash; former NBA coach George Karl; long-time college coach Bob Huggins; NCAA national championship coach and former WNBA Coach of the Year Marianne Stanley, former NBA official Hugh Evans, along with stars Manu Ginobili and Tim Hardaway.

The class will be enshrined into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Massachusetts, on Sept. 10.

Ginobili spent his enitre 16-year NBA career with San Antonio, winning four NBA championships and twice receiving All-Star nods.

Hardaway played 15 NBA seasons and was a five-time All-Star in the 1990s. Huggins is currently coaching at West Virginia.

Cash, who already has been elected to the Women's Basketball Hall of Fame, is currently an executive with the NBA's New Orleans Pelicans. She won two NCAA national titles with Connecticut and a WNBA title with Detroit. She also worked as an executive with the WNBA's New York Liberty.

Karl played in the NBA for five seasons in San Antonio before coaching for 27 years, during which he won 1,175 games — placing him sixth all-time. He was named NBA Coach of the Year in 2013.

Huggins has more than 900 NCAA wins in a college coaching career that began in 1977 and is currently at West Virginia.

Stanley, who is currently a WNBA head coach with Indiana, has spent 45 years in coaching, including 22 years at the college level with Old Dominion, Pennsylvania, Southern California, Stanford and California. She was WNBA coach of the year in 2022, when she also was elected to the Women's Basketball Hall of Fame.

Evans officiated more than 1,900 regular season games, along with 170 playoff games, 35 NBA Finals games and four NBA All-Star games from 1973 to 2001. He also was the NBA's Assistant Supervisor of Officials for three years after stepping away from on-court officiating.

(© Copyright 2022 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)