It’s a tale as old as time: Each year, like clockwork, we see debates that it’s preposterous that _______ is just now making it into the Basketball Hall of Fame when ______ should have been inducted years ago.
As clichéd as that exercise has become, there’s an airtight case that Chris Webber—who will be inducted Saturday, eight years after he first became eligible—should never have waited this long. Really, he deserved to be a first-ballot member, if only because of how futuristic he was—both in his playing ability and in terms of his size-17 cultural footprint on the game.