Who will be the Orlando Magic’s next Basketball Hall of Fame inductee?

Anfernee Hardaway

Anfernee “Penny” Hardaway’s Basketball Hall of Fame chances are not great – but his induction would not be unprecedented.

At his mid-90s peak, Hardaway was considered one of the best guards, if not players, in the entire NBA. His Magic teams, which also featured Orlando greats like Shaquille O’Neal, Nick Anderson and Horace Grant, regularly contended in a Chicago Bulls-dominated Eastern Conference.

Entering the league as a point guard, Hardaway helped revolutionize the position with his elite combination of court vision and scoring ability. Before the 90s, point guards were expected not to do much more than handle the ball and distribute, while scoring was mostly left to forwards and centers. Players like Dwyane Wade, Stephon Marbury, Russell Westbrook and James Harden took the template Hardaway helped develop and ran with it, eventually leading coaches to develop entire systems around their abilities.

He was a perennial All Star during his prime and even finished third in MVP voting in 1996. He became a basketball icon practically in the blink of an eye, but just as quickly, injuries forced him into a diminished role for the last eight seasons of his career.

Hardaway brought Orlando basketball into the limelight. His place in the Orlando Magic Hall of Fame is unquestionable. But the Basketball Hall of Fame is a different story.

Basketball-Reference gives him about a 28 percent chance of getting in. But that is a better mark than either Ralph Sampson or David Thompson had – both of whom had career arcs like Hardaway’s. Their peaks were high enough, their college careers impactful enough and their styles were influential enough that they were voted in anyways.

Sampson, in fact, was only the second player after Bill Walton to win three National Player of the Year Awards in college. Before injuries derailed his pro career, he was considered a generational talent and one of the best players in the game’s history. Because Basketball-Reference’s Hall of Fame probability algorithm does not include NCAA achievements, Sampson’s probability figure is skewed downward, so he really is not as much of an outlier as it might seem.

Sampson and Thompson had historically great amateur careers in addition to their limited but important professional impacts. Their Hall-of-Fame cases are absolutely legitimate. But of the three, Hardaway had by far the longest pro career. He has as many All-Star appearances, All-League placements, and MVP award shares as Thompson, and as many NBA Finals appearances as Sampson.

Although Sampson and Thompson had incredible college careers — rightfully earning their reputations as two of the best in NCAA history — Hardaway also had a strong college tenure and simply has a better NBA resumé than either.

Especially at his peak seasons, he grades very well in advanced statistics. In 1996, Hardaway produced the second-best win shares season of any 90s guard not named Michael Jordan.

They each brought something unique to the game. For Sampson, it was an unprecedented combination of height, length and touch in the frontcourt. For Thompson, it was his streetball-influenced flashiness and electric style that the NBA was sorely lacking in the 70s.

For Hardaway, it was scoring like hardly any point guards ever did before and giving hope and excitement to a franchise on the league’s periphery.

All three players had an undeniable impact on the game, despite unfortunate circumstances hampering and shortening their careers.

You can debate whether any of them deserve to be in the Hall of Fame, but if you agree that Sampson and Thompson deserve to be in, it is hard to argue against Hardaway’s potential candidacy.