The Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame has a problem. For a place meant to honor the game’s greatest, it has a glaring blind spot for one of the most dynamic and influential players of the 1970s and 80s: Marques Johnson.
There's not much to overthink here: Marques averaged 20.1 points per game over his career and was legitimately unstoppable for a solid five-year stretch. This is a player who could score from anywhere on the floor, defend multiple positions, and carried Milwaukee to some of their best seasons before Giannis Antetokounmpo was even a figment of his parents' imagination.
So yes, there is absolutely an argument to be made that one of Milwaukee basketball's most beloved media personalities in recent years also deserves a spot among the sport's best and brightest.
It is finally time to put Bucks legend Marques Johnson into the Hall of Fame
Johnson made five All-Star teams and was All-NBA First Team once. He was the best player on Bucks teams that actually mattered in the Western Conference, back when Milwaukee was competitive year after year.
At his peak in 1978-79, Marques averaged a career-high 25.6 points per game. Johnson’s offensive bag was built on a combination of brute strength, finesse, and an all-around skillset that was ahead of its time. He wasn't a traditional wing scorer who lived on the perimeter, but he had the handles and passing vision of a guard.
That's not even counting the 7.5 rebounds, and 3.7 assists a game that he put up with ease. This is just to say that he was a versatile small forward before that term was widely used, a point-forward who could score inside, shoot from mid-range, and facilitate for others. You could argue Johnson was one of the original positionless players, a true prototype. More than just a scorer, he was a complete player who elevated everyone around him, which is not something you saw much of in those days.
The argument against Johnson always comes down to longevity, but that simply holds no weight when you consider that his peak was absolutely elite. Plenty of Hall of Famers had shorter primes. Ralph Sampson got in with way less accomplished. Maurice Cheeks made it recently, and his numbers don't come close to what Johnson put up.
Admittedly, what really hurts Johnson's case is timing. He played in an era where the NBA wasn't as popular, before highlights went viral and storylines got magnified. If he was dropping 20+ points a game in today's media environment, we'd be talking about him completely differently.
Milwaukee fans know what Johnson meant to the franchise. He was their first real star after Kareem left, and was simply the one guy whose very presence kept them relevant when they easily could've fallen into a long era of mediocrity. The Bucks retired his jersey for a reason, and its time the sport as a whole take note.
Marques Johnson has been waiting in basketball purgatory for decades, and it's embarrassing at this point. The Hall of Fame keeps finding room for players with weaker resumes while one of the most dominant forwards of the late 70s and early 80s gets ignored.
It's time to stop overthinking this and just put the man in Springfield where he belongs.