A day after watching his longtime friend and teammate Kevin Garnett go into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, longtime Boston Celtics star Paul Pierce joined him in Springfield, Massachusetts.
Pierce, along with two-time champion and 11-time All-Star selection Chris Bosh, five-time All-NBA selection Chris Webber, and four-time Defensive Player of the Year Ben Wallace, headlined the 2021 class. The honor was announced the day after Garnett, Duncan and the late Kobe Bryant were officially inducted as part of the 2020 class, which saw its entry delayed because of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
The other members of the 2021 Hall of Fame class are: longtime NBA coach Rick Adelman; two-time NCAA champion head coach Jay Wright; Bill Russell, who won two championships as a coach, for his time on the sidelines; WNBA legends Yolanda Griffith and Lauren Jackson; veteran's committee selection Bob Dandridge, international committee selection Toni Kukoc; college basketball legend Pearl Moore, by the women's veteran's committee; Clarence Jenkins, named to the Hall as an Early African-American Pioneer; former WNBA president Val Ackerman, longtime NBA coach Cotton Fitzsimmons and Howard Garfinkel, who created the Five-Star summer camp, as contributors.