Philadelphia Black Basketball Hall of Fame to induct a huge class

So, you ask Philadelphia Black Basketball Hall of Fame honcho Mo Howard, can he reveal who decides the inductees? Some other names on the selection committee?

“No, no,” Howard, himself a 2019 inductee, said over the phone Friday morning. “You’ve got to know, once we put out who the inductees are, it hits the fan.”

Meaning, there are a whole lot of potential inductees and they all can’t get in at once. And, this being Philadelphia basketball, everyone has an opinion and a general willingness to express it.

“One of the greatest lessons I learned from a Hall of Famer, Claude Gross: You’ve got to wait your turn,” Howard said.

Due to a couple of years of being held back by the pandemic, this Hall of Fame, started in 2017, is inducting a monster class of 2022 at a sold-out banquet late Saturday afternoon that is sure to last into the evening.

“We wanted to catch up,” Howard said.

A quick scan of the list shows the vast majority of inductees are recognizable to even casual local hoop fans. And Hall of Fame honchos clearly got it right getting in several longtime influential community contributors. Ricky Tucker goes in as the first to be both a player and a community contributor, while Bill Williams and the late Greg Wright going in shows the committee has a deep understanding of who spent decades providing grassroots opportunities.

There are bigger names, of course. Jerome “Pooh” Allen and Jerome “Pooh” Richardson, no-brainer icons, fantastic that they’ll go in the same year since one (Allen) picked up his nickname from the other (Richardson). Also, perfect that Ken Hamilton, Richardson’s legendary Ben Franklin High coach, is going in with his greatest player. Going back further, Wali Jones, from Overbrook High to Villanova to the NBA … Of course, yes.

Joe Bryant and the late Kobe Bryant are going in together. (No, Joe Bryant, pride of Bartram High and La Salle, won’t be there Saturday.)

“He doesn’t have to stand with Kobe,” Howard, the father of former La Salle coach Ashley Howard, said of Kobe’s father going in. “He stands alone.”

As for Kobe joining his father on the list, Howard said, “I don’t think Philadelphia basketball has honored Kobe. I don’t think they honored him in life or in tragedy. I thought it was a great opportunity to say, ‘Yeah, Kobe, you are one of us, and we miss you, and you’re one of our very best.’ "

Let’s get this out of the way, since it comes up. Why the need for a Black Basketball Hall of Fame? (You’re only allowed to wonder, in my opinion, if you also wonder why there is a Philadelphia Jewish Sports Hall of Fame and a National Italian American Sports Hall of Fame and an Irish American Hall of Fame and a German-American Hall of Fame and a National Polish-American Sports Hall of Fame, which all exist.)

“I want to be clear, while today Black players predominate in basketball, there was a time when we didn’t,” said Howard, himself a star at St. Joseph’s Prep and Maryland who went on to the NBA. “The genesis of this, we wanted to tell the stories of the men who were denied the opportunities that I got. The Tee Parhams, the Coach Chaneys.”

What he meant was that John Chaney was offered no Big 5 scholarships the year he was Public League player of the year, before going to college at Bethune-Cookman and going on to star professionally in the Eastern League at a time the NBA had quotas for the number of Black players on a team.

“We wanted to have some type of documentation and archive the history of Black basketball in the city,” Howard said. “We thought it was important that we control the narrative rather than have somebody say this guy is this or that. The other part of it is, it is a pathway for our young players to understand, there were players who did it, and had they not done it, we would not have known how to do it.”

Howard is talking about a community within a community, and he means for it to be an inclusive one. Two inductees, Joe Goldenberg and Speedy Morris, are being inducted as “Friends of …” Howard noted that Gene Banks, already in the Hall of Fame, is coming up from North Carolina to sit with Goldenberg, his West Philadelphia High coach, and Mike Bantom, also in already, is coming from New Jersey to sit with Morris, his Roman Catholic High coach.

“We call them ‘Friends of the Hall of Fame’ because they befriended us – they held the door open so that we could come through,” Howard said of the white inductees. “That was vitally important to the elevation of Black basketball in the city.”

He’s saying this isn’t about putting up walls. (Although this is meant to celebrate the city, not the greater region.)

“There is the Black community, and there is our basketball community,” Howard said, noting that the overall basketball community “is entrenched in this town. We know each other, respect each other. I dare say we love each other.”

Getting more women in has become a priority, Howard said, with inductees this year including Yolanda Laney, Marilyn Stephens, Linda Hester, and Debbie Lytle. No-brainers, all.

Also in, the 1977-78 Cheyney State team that won the college division national title, coached by John Chaney. The whole puzzle is coming together.

Howard is proud of the fact that a bit of revenue from T-shirts and hoodies has gone to some local players who needed a bit of help.

“Just enough money to make them smile and maybe make it through a day,” Howard said.

Another step, talked about from the start, is getting a little home somewhere, to put up some photos, to really tell the story.

“That’s part of the vision,” Howard said. “The bigger vision, somewhere down the road.”

2022 inductees:

Players: Jerome Allen; Joe Bryant; Kobe Bryant; Walter Byrd; Sean Colson; Dallas Comegys; Emmanuel “Vel” Davis; Kenny Hamilton; Shawn Harvey; Linda Hester; Wali Jones; Ollie Johnson; Yolanda Laney; Debbie Lytle; Pooh Richardson; Malik Rose; Marilyn Stephens, Larry Stewart; Hubie White.

Community contributors: Ricky Tucker; Bill Williams, Greg Wright.

Friends of the Hall of Fame: Joe Goldenberg, Speedy Morris.

Team: 1977-78 Cheyney State men’s national championship team.