Springfield, Massachusetts. Home of the Basketball Hall of Fame. Where all NBA players want to end up when their careers are complete. And several Utah Jazz alumni are in the running for the 2025 class as nominees.
The Utah Jazz have several players in the Hall already, with Pete Maravich, John Stockton, Karl Malone, and Adrian Dantley all inducted in prior years. Coach Jerry Sloan is also in Springfield, and longtime Jazz announcer Hot Rod Hundley was inducted as a contributor.
More recent Jazz players like Deron Williams, Carlos Boozer, and Mehmet Okur could have chances at the Hall in future years, but one of their former teammates has an even better shot after being a first-time nominee in 2024.
Andrei Kirilenko
Andrei Kirilenko is among the International Committee's nominees for the class of 2025. His toughest competition is former Memphis Grizzlies center Marc Gasol. Both had decorated careers in the NBA and Olympic play. Kirilenko has a bigger body of work on the international stage, while Marc had a better NBA career.
"AK-47", as Jazz fans knew him, was a swiss-army knife on defense, guarding positions one through four with his disruptiveness in the passing lanes and at the rim. He had several 5x5 games, which is being returned to the NBA consciousness with another Euro player, Victor Wembanyama.
As a pioneering European player in the NBA, Andrei Kirilenko has a unique case for induction into the Hall of Fame and should make the grade someday.
Tom Chambers
While best known for his time with the Seattle SuperSonics and the Phoenix Suns, Chambers was a key contributor to the Utah Jazz in two seasons during the Stockton-to-Malone era, helping the Jazz reach the 1994 Western Conference Finals.
Chambers crossed the 20,000-point plateau for his NBA career as a member of the Utah Jazz during the 1994-95 season.
Chambers also has a piece of NBA history as the father of unrestricted free agency, something today's players take for granted. Back then, teams had to give up compensation if they signed another team's free agent. But in 1988, that all changed as Chambers moved from the Sonics to the Suns and kick-started a new era of player movement.
Overall, Chambers was a key member of five conference finalists and one NBA finals team (Phoenix, 1993) and made four All-Star game appearances as a high-flying, scoring forward in the 1980s and early 1990s. He's watched for years as other players got the attention, but getting nominated so many years after his career ended shows he still has a chance, like Walter Davis, who was inducted in 2024 after many years of waiting.
Jose Ortiz
Only the most die-hard Jazz fans remember Ortiz, who played two nondescript seasons in Utah from 1988 to 1990. But there's a lot more to know about this former Jazzman, who had a long and decorated 26-year career playing basketball.
At the age of 17, he debuted in the Baloncesto Superior Nacional league in Puerto Rico, and would go on to dominate and win league championships there.
While in college at Oregon State, he received the Pac-10 Player of the Year award in 1987 while a teammate to future NBA Hall-of-Fame member Gary Payton.
He would play professionally for many years with the Puerto Rican national teams, participating in four Olympics (1988, 1992, 1996, 2004) and four FIBA World Cups. Ortiz was inducted into the FIBA Hall of Fame in 2019 and has a varied body of work that will gain interest from Hall voters.
That's the list of Jazzmen in the running for the Class of 2025. The finalists will be announced Friday, February 14th at All-Star weekend.