– Fan Voting Begins In the present day –
SPRINGFIELD, MASS. — The Naismith Basketball Corridor of Fame introduced the Mid-Season Prime 10 candidates for the 2026 Kareem Abdul-Jabbar Award and, in partnership with the Girls’s Basketball Coaches Affiliation (WBCA), the 2026 Lisa Leslie Award.
*Gamers can play their manner onto and off the checklist at any level within the 2025-26 season.
Followers are inspired to take part in Fan Voting in each of the remaining rounds beginning immediately, 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 checklist shall be narrowed to only 5, and in late March, the 5 finalists shall be introduced 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 high males’s and girls’s faculty basketball personnel, together with media members, head coaches, sports activities data administrators, and Corridor of Famers.
The winner of the 2026 Abdul-Jabbar and Leslie Awards shall be introduced on a to-be-determined date, together with the opposite 4 members of the Males’s and Girls’s Beginning 5. Extra awards being introduced 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 embrace Ryan Kalkbrenner, Creighton (2025), Zach Edey, Purdue (2023-24), Oscar Tshiebwe, Kentucky (2022), Luka Garza, Iowa (2020-21), Ethan Happ, Wisconsin (2019), and Frank Kaminsky, Wisconsin (2015).
Earlier winners of the Lisa Leslie Award are Lauren Betts, UCLA (2025), Cameron Brink, Stanford (2024), Aliyah Boston, South Carolina (2020-23), Megan Gustafson, Iowa (2019), and A’ja Wilson, South Carolina (2018).
For extra data on the 2026 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.
Concerning the WBCA:
Based in 1981, the Girls’s Basketball Coaches Affiliation is the skilled affiliation for coaches of girls’s and women‘ basketball in any respect ranges of competitors. The WBCA presents academic assets that coaches want to assist make themselves higher leaders, academics, and mentors to their gamers; offers 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 every year and contribute to the development of the game. For extra data, go to us on-line: WBCA.org, observe @wbca1981, or name 1-770-279-8027.
Concerning the Naismith Basketball Corridor of Fame:
Positioned in Springfield, Massachusetts, the town the place basketball was born, the Naismith Basketball Corridor of Fame is an impartial nonprofit 501(c)(3) group devoted to selling, preserving, and celebrating the sport of basketball at each stage—women and men, beginner {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. ft of basketball historical past. Practically 200,000 folks go to the Corridor of Fame museum every year to be taught in regards to the sport, expertise the interactive reveals, and take a look at their abilities on the Jerry Colangelo „Courtroom of Desires.“ 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 data on the Basketball Corridor of Fame group, its museum, and occasions, go to hoophall.com and observe @hoophallU.
