By Henry L. Liao

The FIBA Hall of Fame will induct the members of the Class 2026 in a ceremony to be held in Berlin, Germany, on April 21.

The members are:

• Legendary Dallas Mavericks star Dirk Nowitzki, who was the NBA Most Valuable Player in 2007 and romped away with an NBA title in 2011 while spending his entire 21-year NBA career with the Mavs. He was named the MVP of the 2002 FIBA World Cup and the 2005 EuroBasket. The seven foot German was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Hall of Fame in 2023.
• Turkey’s Hedo Turkoglu, a former Orlando Magic and Sacramento Kings shooting forward in the NBA.
• Wang Zhizhi, who made history by becoming the first homegrown Chinese player to suit up in the NBA with the Dallas Mavericks in
• Sue Bird, an American court general who won four FIBA World Cup titles and five consecutive Olympic gold medals from 2002 to 2020. The
• Retired women’s stars Celine Dumerc and Clarisse Machanguana, from France and
• Ludwik Mietta-Mikolajewicz, a long-time coach of Poland’s women’s national team.
• The late Ismenia Pauchard, a revered Chilean women’s hoops star who died in 2004 and is being inducted posthumously.

Wang Zhizhi is the only Asian member to be inducted.

I wonder why, until now, the late Masatomo Taniguchi of Japan and Shin Dong-pa of South Korea have yet to be named.

The six foot three, 81-year-old Shin once topped the FIBA World Cup, then known as the FIBA World Championship, in scoring, averaging 32.6 points for the South Koreans during the 1970 festivities in Yugoslavia.

Taniguchi, who died in May 2021 at age 75, was the leading scorer in the 1972 Munich Olympics with a 21.2 point average, edging Australia’s Eddie Palubinkas, who averaged 21.1 points per game.