WNBA all-time leading scorer Diana Taurasi, Toronto Tempo coach Sandy Brondello and former Washington Mystics coach Mike Thibault headline the six-member 2027 Women's Basketball Hall of Fame class, which was announced Thursday. The class will be inducted June 26 in Knoxville, Tennessee.
Taurasi, who won three NCAA titles with UConn and three WNBA titles with the Phoenix Mercury, retired after the 2024 season, her 20th in the league. She scored 10,646 points, was the 2009 MVP and was a two-time WNBA Finals MVP. Taurasi was on the All-WNBA first team 10 times.
Playing for the U.S. national team, Taurasi won six Olympic gold medals and three golds in the FIBA World Championship. She also was a six-time EuroLeague champion.
Brondello, who played five seasons in the WNBA, just finished her 14th season as a head coach in the league. As Mercury coach, she won a WNBA title with Taurasi in 2014, then led the New York Liberty to their first title in 2024. She took over the expansion Tempo this season. Brondello is also the longtime coach of the Australian women's national team, having led the Opals to a bronze medal in the 2024 Olympics. As a player for Australia, she won three Olympic medals.
Thibault coached the Connecticut Sun for 10 seasons, then spent 10 with the Mystics, whom he guided to the 2019 WNBA championship. Thibault is second all time in WNBA coaching victories (379).
Longtime referee Dee Kantner will also be inducted, along with former UCLA administrator Dr. Judith Holland and player Molly Bolin Kazmer.
Kantner worked 26 women's NCAA Final Fours, then became one of the first two women officials hired by the NBA. She also officiated at the 2000 Olympics and was a supervisor of officials in the WNBA. She is a women's basketball rules analyst for ESPN.
Holland was the architect of UCLA women's athletics in the 1970s, was president of the AIAW and chaired the NCAA women's basketball committee.
Bolin Kazmer played in the WBL, a women's pro basketball league in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Known for her prolific scoring, Bolin averaged 32.8 points in the 1979-1980 season.
