Sometime soon, Arizona will unveil the name JERRYD BAYLESS in the McKale Center Ring of Honor.
Really.
Jerryd Bayless is in. Al Fleming, who departed in 1976 as the UA’s career leader in scoring and rebounding, remains out.
It’s baffling.
Even though Bayless was on campus for only a few months in the 2007-08 season, he qualifies for the Ring of Honor because he has played 10 seasons in the NBA. It is the same rule that applies to Sean Rooks, Jud Buechler, Richard Jefferson, Channing Frye, Andre Iguodala and Luke Walton.
In some ways, it is the loophole rule, one that recognizes former Wildcats more for what they have done outside of Tucson than at McKale Center, although few would quibble with any of those names being in the Ring of Honor.
Rooks, Buechler, Frye and Walton were first-team All-Pac-10 players who spent four (or more) seasons at Arizona and were at the center of some of the most worshiped moments in school history.
They belong, no doubt.
Iguodala’s pro career, which includes MVP of the 2015 NBA Finals, far eclipses his two Arizona seasons in which he averaged just 9.6 points. Jefferson was never an all-conference player in Tucson — he isn’t among the 51 players to score 1,000 career points — but he was a big factor in the 2001 Final Four season, plus he donated about $3 million to the school to help build the practice facility that bears his name.
There’s no quibbling with Iggy or RJ.
Bayless’ 10-year NBA career has been a modest one: 8.5 points per game and just 93 career starts. It wouldn’t be much of a surprise if a future UA administration tweaked the “10-year rule” to made qualification to the Ring of Honor more selective.
Moreover, Bayless will be the 25th name in the Ring of Honor. In the current configuration, there appears to be space for only a few more.
Given the proliferation of one-and-done names in the rafters and those who qualify under the less-demanding conference “Freshman of the Year” rule — especially one-and-doners Stanley Johnson and Aaron Gordon — the Ring of Honor is losing some of its prestige.
It’s no longer a fraternity that honors the truly elite names in UA basketball history.
To restore that definition to the Ring of Honor, the school must first review Al Fleming’s worthiness and do the right thing by honoring him as soon as possible. At almost any other school, Fleming’s name would live in posterity.
But at McKale, he’s mostly forgotten, largely because he played in the Fred Snowden years, and there are fewer and fewer advocates for Fleming, who died of cancer in 2003, as the years whiz by.
One of the six criteria to qualify for the Ring of Honor is to be a career statistical leader in three or more categories for at least five years. Technically, Fleming qualifies:
1. He has held the UA’s career rebounding record, 1,091, since 1976. How good is that? No one who played for Lute Olson or Sean Miller had more than 879 rebounds.
2. He is the only UA player in McKale Center history to average a career double-double: 15.5 points and 10.4 rebounds.
3. He was the UA’s career-leading field-goal percentage shooter, 58.3 percent, for eight years, 1976-84.
Fleming remains No. 10 on Arizona’s career scoring list (1,765 points), which is more than 18 of those in the Ring of Honor.
Yet there is an unspoken separation from the Snowden-to-Olson years, and Fleming’s memory has been diminished by it. It’s sometimes treated as if it were Triple-A baseball.
But as one who covered WAC basketball during Fleming’s career, 1972-76, I will forever insist the WAC of the ’70s was a better basketball conference, with better coaches, than the Pac-10 of the 1970s and 1980s.
Nor was Fleming an unknown with no pedigree, a role-player who built statistics via longevity.
Arizona successfully recruited Fleming when he was Indiana’s 1972 high school player of the year, the equivalent of today’s 5-star, Parade All-American. Louisville and Purdue were thought to be in a two-team race to get the 6-foot, 7-inch power forward.
But when UA assistant coach Jerry Holmes arrived in Michigan City for an in-home visit, he introduced himself to Fleming’s mother and something magical clicked.
“I’m Jerry Holmes,” he said. “Nice to meet you.”
“Thank you, coach,” she replied. “I’m Arizona Fleming.”
To this day, the man who left Tucson as the UA’s career-leading scorer and rebounder, a man whose mother is named Arizona, is not in the Ring of Honor. It is incomplete without him.
