Metta World Peace Thinks He Should Be In The Hall Of Fame...Wait What?

There is no arguing that one of the most terrifying defenders the NBA has ever seen is Metta World Peace. Honestly if you’re looking for something to watch tonight you should watch his Showtime documentary that I blogged earlier this summer, it’s awesome. So why am I blogging about a guy who’s been retired for quite a while? Well, according to Metta World Peace, he should be in the Hall Of Fame because of that terrifying defense.

OK so everyone agrees that when he was in the league, you couldn’t do much better in terms of a wing defender. The man was a monster who played with zero fear and shut down essentially everyone he guarded. But here’s the thing, you could also say the same thing about someone like Tony Allen, and as much as I love TA nobody is saying he’s a Hall Of Fame caliber player. If you look at Metta’s resume you’ll see he was a 1x DPOY, 1x All Star, 1x All NBA team member, and made 4 All Defensive teams (2 1sts and 2 2nd). He’s 24th all time in steals, and 95th in defensive win shares with only 2 seasons in the top 20 in terms of defensive rating. As of now Basketball Reference has his HOF probability at 0.4% and as much as it scares me to say it because he’s terrifying, Metta World Peace isn’t a Hall Of Fame player. Should he live in the Hall Of Very Very Very Good Defensive players? Of course, and I get that almost everyone gets into the Hall of Fame these days in the NBA, but you have to draw the line somewhere.

If he had maintained that 2003-05 level of production he had in Indiana for his whole career maybe things are different, but his body of work simply doesn’t add up to what you expect of a Hall of Fame player. And there was that whole Malace an the Palace thing that I’m sure doesn’t help his case

So while I can see his line of thinking if all these great players and HOF talents are telling him he’s the best defender they ever faced that maybe he should be in, but sadly that’s now how things work. Metta World Peace was a really good NBA player for like 5 of his seasons, and the rest was a solid starting caliber player but never that true stud. I’m not really buying that he’s not in because the league didn’t like how he spoke his mind. Is part of me maybe a little salty of that three he hit in the 2010 Finals? Sure, but we can’t be having people in the Hall of Fame just because Reggie Miller said you were tough to score on.