Basketball Hall of Fame

Back in March 2023, I took a long weekend trip to western Massachusetts and visit three museums. The first of these was the Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, MA. The Hall is famously built inside a round building shaped like a basketball and in the same city where James Naismith invented the game in 1891. Like other modern museums, the Hall combines artifacts with digital interactives, but its most unique (and potentially annoying) attraction is a full-sized basketball court with a variety of basket types in the center of the museum.

The experience begins outside with a statue of Naismith surrounded by happy children. Nearby benches commemorate Hall of Fame basketball coaches and staff. Once inside, the Tip Off Pavilion features lockers of beloved players, including Michael Joran, Larry Bird, and James Russell. A short film hypes people up to enter the rest of the museum but does not provide much actual information. Be sure to check out the bathrooms, which have customized hand dryers that look like basketballs. With this section completed, visitors head toward the elevator where a docent describes the system for navigating the museum. The elevator takes visitors to the top floor, also called Level 3, and they work their way down the three levels.

Level 3 completely surrounds the basketball court where children and adults bounce balls in an echoey space throughout the day. The noise is constant. Displays on this floor are largely concerned with the great size of basketball players with life-sized cutouts and metal basketballs molded with handprints. Level 2 attempts to tell the history of basketball, beginning with the 1891 gallery with a short video describing Naismith’s inspirations for inventing the game. At the time, a movement called Muscular Christianity connected religious beliefs to exercise, something touted by Naismith’s employer, the Young Men’s Christian Association. Playing sports were not just entertainment but a way of worshiping and building discipline. Basketball has changed a lot since its founding. My favorite artifacts in this section include vintage Celtics uniforms, the very first shot clock, the uniform and glasses of first basketball superstar George Mikan, a reference to Babe Didrikson Zaharias (whose museum I visited while living in East Texas), and a basketball signed by my favorite president Calvin Coolidge.

The museum did a great job incorporating the diversity of modern basketball into its exhibits. I learned about the National Basketball Players Association, which is a union protecting players, along with efforts to make the sport available to people of all abilities and backgrounds. Unfortunately, some of the videos were not playing, while others were connecting to an overly sensitive sensor and played whenever someone walked within twenty feet of the kiosk. This made the gallery very loud on top of the constantly bouncing balls. Other galleries commemorated the coaches and media staff. The most fun interactive was TNT’s Inside the NBA. The visitor sat at a replica of the TNT desk in front of a green screen and read from a teleprompter while well-known TV personalities appeared at the desk in the video. The most touching experience was the Kobe Bryant Experience, dedicated to a hall of fame player who died in a helicopter accident in 2020, which includes the Oscar award winning animated short film “Dear Basketball” featuring his voiceover. The Hall of Fame room at the end of the self-guided tour was admittedly a letdown, featuring a wall of names and kiosks for looking up individual players rather than the busts or plaques I was expecting.

The museum is open every day from 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. except for holidays and special events. Ticket prices are steep at $34 for adults, $20 for seniors ages 65 and up and students ages 13 and up with ID, and $20 for youth ages 5 to 12. Discounts are available for groups. The museum has plenty of free parking, as it is located in a mostly empty plaza. The businesses around the museum looked somewhat sad and empty. My main complaint was the lack off organization in cases, which might contain one old shoe from the 1920s, a modern shoe, a signed basketball from the 1970s, a cheerleaders pompom, and a dozen other artifacts with varying amounts of signage. And did I mention the constantly bouncing basketballs? If you are determined to visit all the national sports halls of fame, have a great love of basketball, or need something to do in the Springfield area, this museum fulfills those requirements. Otherwise, you may want to pass on this experience.