NAISMITH BASKETBALL HALL OF FAME ANNOUNCES THE MID-SEASON TOP 10 CANDIDATES FOR THE 2026 POWER FORWARD OF THE YEAR AWARDS

– Fan Voting Begins Friday, February 6 –

SPRINGFIELD, MASS. — The Naismith Basketball Corridor of Fame introduced the Mid-Season Prime 10 candidates for the 2026 Karl Malone Award and, in partnership with the Girls’s Basketball Coaches Affiliation (WBCA), the 2026 Katrina McClain Award.

*Gamers can play their approach onto and off the record at any level within the 2025-26 season.

Followers are inspired to take part in Fan Voting in each of the remaining rounds beginning on Friday, February 6, on hoophallawards.com. The Fan Vote will rely as one committee vote through the finalist choice course of.

In mid-March, the Mid-Season Prime 10 record can be narrowed to simply 5, and in late March, the 5 finalists can be introduced to Malone, McClain, and the Corridor of Fame’s choice committees, the place winners can be chosen. The Choice Committees for the Karl Malone and Katrina McClain Awards are composed of high males’s and girls’s school basketball personnel, together with media members, head coaches, sports activities info administrators, and Corridor of Famers.

The winner of the 2026 Malone and McClain Awards can be introduced on a to-be-determined date, together with the opposite 4 members of the Males’s and Girls’s Beginning 5. Further awards being introduced embody the Bob Cousy and Nancy Lieberman Awards (Level Guard), Jerry West and Ann Meyers Drysdale Awards (Capturing Guard), Julius Erving and Cheryl Miller Awards (Small Ahead), and the Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Lisa Leslie Awards (Heart).

Earlier winners of the Karl Malone Award embody Johni Broome, Auburn (2025), Jaedon LeDee, San Diego State (2024), Trayce Jackson-Davis, Indiana (2023), Keegan Murray, Iowa (2022), Drew Timme, Gonzaga (2021), Obi Toppin, Dayton (2020), Zion Williamson, Duke (2019), Deandre Ayton, Arizona (2018), and Georges Niang, Iowa State (2016).

Earlier winners of the Katrina McClain Award are Aneesah Morrow, LSU (2025), Kiki Iriafen, Stanford (2024), Maddy Siegrist, Villanova (2023), NaLyssa Smith, Baylor (2021-22), Ruthy Hebard, Oregon (2018, ‘20), and Napheesa Collier, Connecticut (2019).

For extra info on the 2026 Karl Malone and Katrina McClain Awards and the most recent updates, go to hoophallawards.com and comply with @hoophallu, #MaloneAward, and #McClainAward on X and Instagram. 

Concerning the WBCA: 

Based in 1981, the Girls’s Basketball Coaches Affiliation is the skilled affiliation for coaches of ladies’s and ladies‘ basketball in any respect ranges of competitors. The WBCA provides instructional assets that coaches want to assist make themselves higher leaders, lecturers, and mentors to their gamers; supplies alternatives for coaches to attach with friends within the career; serves because the unifying voice of a various neighborhood of coaches to these organizations that management the sport; and celebrates these coaches, gamers and different people who excel annually and contribute to the development of the game. For extra info, go to us on-line: WBCA.org, comply with @wbca1981, or name 1-770-279-8027.

Concerning the Naismith Basketball Corridor of Fame:

Situated in Springfield, Massachusetts, the town the place basketball was born, the Naismith Basketball Corridor of Fame is an unbiased nonprofit 501(c)(3) group devoted to selling, preserving, and celebrating the sport of basketball at each degree—women and men, novice {and professional} gamers, coaches, and contributors—each domestically and internationally. The Corridor of Fame museum is house to greater than 475 inductees and over 40,000 sq. toes of basketball historical past. Almost 200,000 folks go to the Corridor of Fame museum annually to be taught concerning the recreation, expertise the interactive reveals, and check their abilities on the Jerry Colangelo „Court docket of Goals.“ Greatest recognized for its annual marquee Enshrinement Ceremony honoring the sport’s elite, the Corridor of Fame additionally operates over 150 highschool and collegiate competitions yearly all through the nation and overseas. For extra info on the Basketball Corridor of Fame group, its museum, and occasions, go to hoophall.com and comply with @hoophallU.