NAISMITH BASKETBALL HALL OF FAME ANNOUNCES THE TOP 10 CANDIDATES FOR THE 2025 MEN’S AND WOMEN’S CENTER OF THE YEAR AWARD

– Fan Voting Begins Right this moment –

SPRINGFIELD, MASS. — The Naismith Basketball Corridor of Fame introduced the High 10 candidates for the 2025 Kareem Abdul-Jabbar Award and, in partnership with the Ladies’s Basketball Coaches Affiliation (WBCA), the High 10 candidates for the 2025 Lisa Leslie Award. 

The annual Kareem Abdul-Jabbar Award, named after the Class of 1995 Corridor of Famer and three-time NCAA Champion, celebrates its eleventh yr by honoring the highest facilities in Division I males’s faculty basketball.

The Lisa Leslie Award, now in its eighth yr, acknowledges the highest facilities in Division I ladies’s faculty basketball. It’s named after the three-time All-American, 1994 Nationwide Participant of the Yr, and Class of 2015 Corridor of Famer. 

*Gamers can play their approach onto and off the listing at any level within the 2024-25 season.

Followers are inspired to take part in Fan Voting in each of the remaining rounds beginning right this moment, February 7, on hoophallawards.com. The Fan Vote will depend as one committee vote through the finalist choice course of.

In March, the High 10 listing shall be narrowed to only 5, and in late March, the 5 finalists shall be offered to Abdul-Jabbar, Leslie, and the Corridor of Fame’s choice committees, the place winners shall be chosen. The Choice Committees for the Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Lisa Leslie Awards are composed of prime males’s and ladies’s faculty basketball personnel, together with media members, head coaches, sports activities info administrators, and Corridor of Famers.

The winner of the 2025 Abdul-Jabbar and Leslie Awards shall be offered on a to-be-determined date, together with the opposite 4 members of the Males’s and Ladies’s Beginning 5. Further awards being offered embrace the Bob Cousy and Nancy Lieberman Awards (Level Guard), Jerry West and Ann Meyers Drysdale Awards (Taking pictures Guard), Julius Erving and Cheryl Miller Awards (Small Ahead), and the Karl Malone and Katrina McClain Awards (Energy Ahead).

Earlier winners of the Kareem Abdul-Jabbar Award are Zach Edey, Purdue (2023-24), Oscar Tshiebwe, Kentucky (2022), Luka Garza, Iowa (2020-21), Ethan Happ, Wisconsin (2019), Angel Delgado, Seton Corridor (2018), Przemek Karnowski, Gonzaga (2017), Jakob Poeltl, Utah (2016), and Frank Kaminsky, Wisconsin (2015).

Earlier winners of the Lisa Leslie Award are Cameron Brink, Stanford (2024), Aliyah Boston, South Carolina (2020-23), Megan Gustafson, Iowa (2019), and A’ja Wilson, South Carolina (2018).

For extra info on the 2025 Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Lisa Leslie Awards and the most recent updates, go to hoophallawards.com and observe @hoophallu, #KareemAward, and #LeslieAward on X and Instagram.

In regards to the WBCA: 

Based in 1981, the Ladies’s Basketball Coaches Affiliation is the skilled affiliation for coaches of girls’s and ladies’ basketball in any respect ranges of competitors. The WBCA presents academic sources that coaches want to assist make themselves higher leaders, academics, and mentors to their gamers; supplies alternatives for coaches to attach with friends within the occupation; 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 every year and contribute to the development of the game. For extra info, go to us on-line: WBCA.org, observe @wbca1981, or name 1-770-279-8027.

In regards to 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 non-profit 501(c)(3) group devoted to selling, preserving, and celebrating the sport of basketball at each degree—women and men, newbie {and professional} gamers, coaches, and contributors—each domestically and internationally. The Corridor of Fame museum is dwelling to greater than 475 inductees and over 40,000 sq. ft of basketball historical past. Almost 200,000 individuals go to the Corridor of Fame museum every year to study in regards to the recreation, expertise the interactive displays, and check their abilities on the Jerry Colangelo “Court docket of Goals.” Greatest identified for its annual marquee Enshrinement Ceremony honoring the sport’s elite, the Corridor of Fame additionally operates over 70 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 observe @hoophallU.