The Basketball Hall of Fame class of 2026 got enshrined in Springfield, and the headline is not up for debate: Candace Parker and Elena Delle Donne walked in together, with Doc Rivers, Mike D'Antoni and Amar'e Stoudemire sharing the stage. Two of the best women to ever play the game, going in the same night, in the same class as a championship coach and the man who rewired how the NBA plays offense. That is a hell of a group photo.

Parker's case reads like a career built to be read aloud. Two national titles at Tennessee, where she played for Pat Summitt and left as the most complete college player in the country. Rookie of the Year and MVP in the same WNBA season, which almost nobody gets to say. Then championships with three different franchises, in Los Angeles, in Chicago at home, and in Las Vegas at the end. Point guard skills in a forward's body, and a basketball brain that turned straight into a broadcast career the second she stopped playing.

Delle Donne's résumé is stranger and just as convincing. She walked away from UConn as the most coveted recruit in the country to go home to Delaware and be near her sister. Two MVPs, one in Chicago and one in Washington, and a title with the Mystics in 2019 that she played through a back injury that would have parked most people in street clothes. The shooting is the part that will outlive her: nobody has ever done what she did that season from the floor, the arc and the line.

The men's side of this class carries its own weight. Rivers won it all in Boston in 2008 and has coached more NBA games than most franchises have had head coaches. D'Antoni's Seven Seconds or Less Suns lost the series and won the argument, which is the rarest thing in sports, and his fingerprints are on every team that now shoots 40 threes without thinking twice. Stoudemire came straight out of high school in 2002 and was Rookie of the Year by the following spring, all shoulders and rim.

What comes next for these five is the fun part. Parker has a whole second act in the booth and in ownership circles. Delle Donne is young enough to build whatever she wants. Rivers and D'Antoni will keep getting phone calls until they stop answering.

I'll be watching whether this class's balance becomes the norm rather than the story.