Chris Paul Hall of Fame Probability

Stephen Curry might have made his way to Top-3 point guards of all time but is still behind The Point God somewhere.

6’0 Chris Paul and 6’3 Stephen Curry are two of the best point guards in the NBA of the past decade. In fact, both of them are in the Top 5 of most people’s all-time great point guards list.

Just the 2022 Playoffs, though, made a significant impact on both their careers. In contrast with his 15th and 16th postseasons, his 17th year brought a significant hit to The Point God’s image.

Whereas, Curry, despite having one of his most inefficient personal seasons, made a case for himself as the GOAT point guard after leading the Warriors to their fourth Championship within 8 years.

Also read: Odell Beckham Jr, who asked Stephen Curry for a 10-day Contract, was bewildered by number of Max Contracts in 2022 NBA Free Agency

But there was a certain development after the recent conclusion of the 2022 Hall of Fame ceremony, which is a little disturbing even if you’re a neutral fan and do not belong to the Dub Nation.

Chris Paul has a better chance to make it to the Hall of Fame than Stephen Curry

Both the point legends are going to be first-ballot HOFs whenever they call it a day on their respective magical careers. They have a 100% chance of making it there.

And if somebody disagrees, they are delusional or are in dire need of attention. One of those things might be the case here with Basketball Reference, which is the Mecca of statistics.

Chris Paul Currently Has A Higher Hall Of Fame Probability Than Stephen Curry: “This Is Unbelievable” #StrengthInNumbers #DubNation #GoldenStateWarriors #Warriors https://t.co/JwStF99uXP

— Warriors Fans (@warriorsviews) September 14, 2022

There is no sense in discussing why a 4x NBA Champ, 2x MVP, as well as a Finals MVP has a lesser chance at making it to the Hall of Fame than a person who has won none of those things.

Maybe because of All-Star and All-Defensive Team numbers where CP3 has bested Steph and most other point guards in the history of the game.

Who is greater among the two is a different discussion, but here we can conclude they both deserve to have a 100% chance at HOF selection. As whatever they do from here will not worsen their resume.

Also read: 30 Days Till #30 Stephen Curry and The Warriors Kick-Start the 2022-23 NBA Season

• Chris Paul
• Stephen Curry

About the author

Akash Murty

An Electrical and Electronics Engineer by degree, Akash Murty is an NBA Editor at The SportsRush. Previously a Software Engineer, Murty couldn’t keep himself away from sports, and his knack for writing and putting his opinion forward brought him to the TSR. A big Soccer enthusiast, his interest in basketball developed late, as he got access to a hoop for the first time at 17. Following this, he started watching basketball at the 2012 Olympics, which transitioned to NBA, and he became a fan of the game as he watched LeBron James dominate the league. Him being an avid learner of the game and ritually following the league for around a decade, he now writes articles ranging from throwbacks, and live game reports, to gossip. LA Lakers are his favourite basketball team, while Chelsea has his heart in football. He also likes travelling, reading fiction, and sometimes cooking.

[HOF Probability] - Active NBA Players with 50% chance or greater of being inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame - Per Basketball Reference from nba

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This past season alone, there were over a dozen players who performed at what we would have considered MVP-level in the past. You're likely to run out of fingers and toes if you try to count up the number of guys who have a case for the Hall of Fame.

Plenty are no-brainers.

LeBron James is a fixture in GOAT debates. Stephen Curry is the greatest three-point shooter of all time. Kevin Durant and James Harden are two of the greatest scorers the game has ever seen. Russell Westbrook is coming off three straight seasons averaging a triple-double.

The list could go on, but an attempt to find an objective answer to the question in the headline, impossible as it may seem, is in order.

How many current NBA players will be in the Basketball Hall of Fame?

There are a few ways to tackle this, the most obvious being Basketball Reference's "Hall of Fame Probability" model:

"Players receive points for appearing on leaderboards, receiving 10 points for leading the league in a category and 1 point for finishing 10th. This seems like a fair way to award credit for both black and gray ink. The eligible statistical categories include PTS, TRB, AST, MP, STL, BLK. The list of predictor variables is:

Height (in.)
NBA Championships
NBA Leaderboard Points
NBA Peak Win Shares
All-Star Game Selections...

Although it can be risky to make predictions for active players, you can think of these probabilities as answering the question, 'If this player retired today, what is the probability he would be elected to the Hall of Fame?'"

With that in mind, let's take a look at the top 25 for active Hall of Fame probability:

Hall of Fame Probability (If Retiring Today)RankPlayerHoF Prob1.LeBron James100%2.Dwyane Wade*100%3.Dirk Nowitzki*100%4.Kevin Durant100%5.Chris Paul99.99%6.Stephen Curry99.87%7.Russell Westbrook99.74%8.James Harden99.54%9.Dwight Howard99.3%10.Carmelo Anthony98.18%11.Vince Carter94.55%12.Pau Gasol93.35%13.Anthony Davis76.78%14.Kevin Love67.58%15.Kyle Lowry65.19%16.Paul George62.16%17.Kyrie Irving61.46%18.Blake Griffin51.27%19.LaMarcus Aldridge50.89%20.Joe Johnson50.56%21.Klay Thompson47.74%22.Rajon Rondo40.68%23.Damian Lillard36.37%24.Kawhi Leonard29.63%25.John Wall29.36%Basketball Reference

Dwyane Wade and Dirk Nowitzki aren't technically active anymore, but taking them out still leaves us at 18 players with at least a 50 percent shot at getting into the Hall, according to this model.

LeBron and Durant are both at 100 percent, which should surprise no one.

LeBron is first all time in career box plus/minus, has averaged 27.2 points, 7.4 rebounds and 7.2 assists over 16 seasons and has three titles. Durant has two titles and the sixth-best career scoring average in league history.

Most of the others over 90 percent are obvious as well. Perhaps the last few years might motivate some to question the candidacies of Dwight Howard or Carmelo Anthony, but both built strong resumes prior to their recent downturns.

Melo is 19th in career points scored. Howard is 14th in rebounds and 17th in blocks. Another decent season or two from either would just be gravy at this point.

For most of the players around or under 50 percent, there's still time to climb the leaderboard. Klay Thompson, Damian Lillard and Kawhi Leonard all have at least a few prime years left.

That leads to another point, though. Basketball Reference acknowledges that the model only answers the following: "If this player retired today, what is the probability he would be elected to the Hall of Fame?"

That leaves out a big chunk of players who've only played a few seasons. For example, 2019 MVP Giannis Antetokounmpo is 30th among active players with an 8.2 percent chance to get in. He'd have to fall off a statistical cliff or suffer some severe injury setbacks to get off a trajectory to the Hall.

Another way to look at this question utilizes players' averages for career win shares per 48 minutes. If you take the 145 players who are already in the Hall and divide their combined win shares by their combined minutes and then multiply by 48, you get 0.156.

Here's the complete list of active players who are averaging at least 0.156 win shares per 48 minutes for their careers (minimum 5,000 minutes):

Active Players with .156 WS/48RankPlayerWS/481.Chris Paul.2472.LeBron James.2353.James Harden.2244.Kawhi Leonard.2195.Rudy Gobert.2186.Kevin Durant.2177.Anthony Davis.2148.Nikola Jokic.2149.Stephen Curry.20710.Clint Capela.20411.Hassan Whiteside.19812.Karl-Anthony Towns.19613.Dirk Nowitzki.19314.Jimmy Butler.18415.Dwight Powell.18216.Brandan Wright.18117.Kevin Love.17918.Jonas Valanciunas.17719.DeAndre Jordan.17320.Dwight Howard.17221.Blake Griffin.17122.Pau Gasol.16923.Damian Lillard.16924.Giannis Antetokounmpo.16825.Russell Westbrook.16426.Kyrie Irving.16327.Andre Drummond.16228.Dwyane Wade.16229.Al Horford.16030.Joakim Noah.16031.Kenneth Faried.15932.LaMarcus Aldridge.157Basketball Reference

You may be scratching your head upon seeing the likes of Hassan Whiteside, Dwight Powell, Brandan Wright and a handful of other bigs. Win shares is a number that tends to favor that kind of player.

Perhaps that's where some combination of the two numbers may come in handy. If we eliminate every player from the win shares table who has a sub-1 percent chance based on Hall of Fame probability, the list is whittled down to 22. Let's consider those, as well as Melo and Vince Carter, our good bets.

But even that doesn't feel like a satisfactory answer.

It leaves out players such as Nikola Jokic, Karl-Anthony Towns and Rudy Gobert. And it's way too early to talk Hall of Fame, but players such as Luka Doncic, Ben Simmons and Joel Embiid are off to hot starts.

Perhaps the best we can do is a ballpark estimate. If you factor in the younger players and a few other outliers who weren't caught by either statistical exercise, you can easily imagine the number exceeding 30.

If it stretches to 40, that's nearly 10 percent of the NBA on the way to the Hall of Fame.

"You see these old, broken-down NBA players talking about their era and how great they were back then and the players today are not as good as they were back then," Larry Bird said in an acceptance speech for the 2019 Lifetime Achievement Award. "That's crazy, man. ... I mean, it's just amazing how these guys are playing the game today."

Bird is right. This is a glorious era of NBA basketball. But as was predicted up top, providing an objective answer for which active players will get in the Hall of Fame is probably impossible. At least we can now give an educated guess, though.

Below, you'll find that educated guess, sorted roughly by how much of a lock each player is to get in. As you'll see, the bottom of the list is mostly youngsters. They just need much more time to build their resumes before climbing any higher:

Who's Getting In?PlayerCareer BPMLeBron James9.1Dirk Nowitzki3.1Dwyane Wade4.5Kevin Durant5.1Stephen Curry6.5Chris Paul7.3James Harden7.1Russell Westbrook6.6Vince Carter2.8Carmelo Anthony0.9Dwight Howard2.4Kawhi Leonard6.1Klay Thompson0.2Anthony Davis4.8Giannis Antetokounmpo4.5Pau Gasol3.5Blake Griffin4.1Joe Johnson0.4Kyrie Irving3.8Kyle Lowry3.8Al Horford3.2Nikola Jokic7.6Draymond Green3.7Jimmy Butler4Paul George3.8Damian Lillard4Marc Gasol3.4Kevin Love2.7LaMarcus Aldridge1.4Rudy Gobert5.1Karl-Anthony Towns5Ben Simmons4.3Joel Embiid3.3Luka Doncic4.1Paul Millsap3.2Andre Iguodala2.9Kemba Walker2.5Donovan Mitchell0.8Deandre Ayton0.2Devin Booker-1.1Trae Young-1.1Andy Bailey

Yes, that's 41 players. And those are just the guys we can forecast getting in with some confidence. The list could swell even more if it included everyone who has a realistic chance.

You can stack up the talent in this era against any other. That includes Bird and Magic Johnson's 1980s, Charles Barkley and Michael Jordan's 1990s and Tim Duncan and Kobe Bryant's 2000s.

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