April 6, 2025
Sue Bird, Sylvia Fowles, Maya Moore elected into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame
The Class of 2025 features three WNBA legends
The Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame have selected three WNBA legends as part of the 2025 class: Sue Bird, Sylvia Fowles and Maya Moore.
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This is the first time three women’s basketball players have been inducted into the Hall of Fame in the same class, according to ESPN.
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Before going the the WNBA, Bird won national championships in 2000 and 2002 with UConn, and averaged a 39-0 record with 26.8 points per game in the NCAA tournament. She was the national player of the year in 2001-02, per ESPN. The guard was selected as the No. 1 overall pick by the Seattle Storm in 2002.
The 13-time WNBA All-Star and four-time WNBA champion retired after the 2022 season with 332 wins — more wins than any player in the league. In total, she played 580 games over a span of two decades.
She also retired as the WNBA’s all-time leading assist leader, with 3,234 assists total in her career. In addition to this, the guard won five Olympic gold medals with USA Basketball.
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Moore, also a UConn alum, won back-to-back championships in 2009 and 2010 with the Huskies and was the Most Outstanding Player of the 2010 NCAA tournament. She was selected No. 1 by Minnesota in the 2011 WNBA Draft, and helped lead the franchise to their first-ever WNBA championship — defeating the Atlanta Dream.
The guard was also Rookie of the Year and went on to become a six-time WNBA All-Star (2011, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2017, 2018), three-time WNBA All-Star Game MVP (2015, 2017, 2018), seven-time All-WNBA Selection (First Team: 2013, 2014. 2015, 2016, 2017; Second Team: 2012, 2018), two-time All-Defensive Selection (Second Team: 2014, 2017), steals leader (2018), and scoring champion (2014), per the WNBA.
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Among her accomplishments are two Olympic gold medals (2012, 2016) and two World Championships (2010, 2014) with Team USA. Moore announced that she would be stepping away from the WNBA in 2019, and officially retired on January 16, 2023.
When watching both Moore and Bird’s careers unfold, UConn head coach Geno Auriemma told The Next, “You knew that there was something unique, something special, something different in how dominant they were in college, in the WNBA, and at the Olympic level. It absolutely gratifies me and it’s incredibly rewarding for me personally, because I know them as people, and they’re Hall of Fame basketball players, they’re Hall of Fame People, more importantly.”
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Fowles is a four-time WNBA Defensive Player of the Year and is known for her tremendous efforts on the court. Throughout her college career at LSU, the 6-foot-6 forward helped lead her team to a 125-21 record as well as four NCAA Final Four appearances. In 2008, she was selected second overall by the Chicago Sky, where she averaged 15.7 points, 9.8 rebounds and 2.0 blocks in 186 games in the Windy City.
Fowles was then traded to the Minnesota Lynx in 2015 and helped lead the team to two championships over the next three seasons alongside Moore. There she won Finals MVP and was voted league MVP in 2017. In 2021, she won Defensive Player of the Year and finished fourth in MVP voting. In 2022, her final season, she was an All-WNBA second-team pick as well as an All-Defensive first-team selection. Remarkably, Fowles also averaged 15.7 points and 9.8 rebounds per game with Minnesota in her eight years there, matching her Chicago per-game averages exactly.
In total, Fowles was a Rookie of the Year, a regular season MVP (once) and a Finals MVP (twice), an eight-time All-Star, an eight-time All-WNBA Team selection, an 11-time WNBA All-Defensive Team selection and a Defensive Player of the Year winner four times. She also won four Olympic gold medals.
Enshrinement weekend will begin at Mohegan Sun in Connecticut on Sept. 5 with the tipoff celebration and awards gala, as well as the Class of 2025 jacket and ring presentation and the annual Hall of Fame Awards. The enshrinement ceremony will take place Sept. 6 in Springfield at the Hall of Fame.
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