Kobe Bryant, Tim Duncan, Kevin Garnett headline 2020 Hall of Fame finalists

The Hall's Class of 2020 will be announced during the NCAA Final Four in Atlanta on April 4, with the enshrinement ceremony that will be on August 29.

Tim Duncan, Kevin Garnett, and Kobe Bryant were among official finalists for the 2020 class of the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. Tamika Catchings, Kim Mulkey, Barbara Stevens, NCAA coach Eddie Sutton and former Houston Rockets coach Rudy Tomjanovich were also named as finalists.

The committee also suspended the Direct Election Categories for one year due to the enormity of the top names in this year’s class. “We’ve never had a class that strong at the top. And of course with Kobe’s death, it added more focus. We thought the way of dealing with it was eliminating some direct-elects on a one-year basis. We have that flexibility, fortunately, to do it because some people could get lost in the shuffle, really, in terms of getting their due,” Jerry Colangelo, chairman of the Hall nominating committee, has said.