2021 Class of FIBA Hall of Fame: Tom Maher

MIES (Switzerland) – Six-time Olympian Tom Maher is being honored for his stellar coaching career by being enshrined into the FIBA Hall of Fame Class of 2021.

Maher is being inducted in the Class of 2021, along with fellow coaching greats Chuck Daly (USA – posthumously), Ettore Messina (Italy) and Tara Van DerVeer (USA), plus legendary players Haixia Zheng (China), Hana Horakova (Czech Republic), Panagiotis Giannakis (Greece), Stanislav Kropilak (Slovakia), Oscar Moglia (Uruguay – posthumously), Detlef Schrempf (Germany), Penka Stoyanova (Bulgaria – posthumously), Sergey Tarakanov (Russia) and Mathieu Faye (Senegal).

His accomplishments are headlined by those six consecutive trips to the Olympics with four different countries spanning 1996 to 2016. He represented his native Australia at the event, winning a silver medal in 2000 as he took his nation to a first-ever Final.

That improved on the Olympic bronze attained four years earlier – although that was also hugely significant, with Maher becoming the first person to mastermind a podium finish for Australia on the senior global stage.

He also coached New Zealand, Great Britain and China (twice) at the Games, as well as collecting a third-place finish with Australia at the FIBA Women’s Basketball World Cup in 1998 – a tournament he coached at no fewer than four times.

At the Continental level, Maher won the FIBA Women’s Asia Championship in 2005 with China, also lifting the Asian Games title a year later.

At club level, Maher was the first foreign coach to appear in the WNBA after taking the helm at the Washington Mystics in 2001, while also winning four Coach of the Year accolades in his homeland. It was therefore not a surprise when the playcaller was enshrined into the Basketball Australia Hall of Fame in 2006.