Lakers' Michael Cooper Thought He Was Being Pranked When Told He Made Hall of Fame

The eight-time All-Defensive Teamer was an outside-the-box inclusion this year.

Oct 13, 2024; Uncasville, Conn, USA; Class of 2024 inductee Michael Cooper speaks during the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame Enshrinement at Symphony Hall Springfield. Mandatory Credit: David Butler II-Imagn Images / David Butler II-Imagn Images

When Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame chairman Jerry Colangelo called former Los Angeles Lakers Showtime-era legend Michael Cooper on April 1 this year to inform him he had made the Hall, the 1987 Defensive Player of the Year was convinced he might be the victim of an April Fool's Day Prank, he tells Broderick Turner of The Los Angeles Times.

“First of all, I got the call on April Fool’s Day, April 1st, and I thought it was a joke at first,” Cooper chuckled. “I was sitting next to my wife [Yvonne] and I had the call on speakerphone and I was like, ‘Right. OK. This is a cruel April Fool’s joke.’ They said, ‘No, Coop, you got in.’ I was kind of staring and my wife said, ‘Babe, they said you got in.’ So, yeah, I didn’t really expect it because the time they called before I didn’t get in. But they said I was in. I was elated. I got up and started yelling, ‘I’m in the Hall of Fame!’”

It was only because Cooper was speaking with Colangelo himself that he ultimately became convinced of the veracity of his induction.

As Turner notes, Cooper's longtime Lakers teammate Magic Johnson, a member of the Class of 2002, had often advocated for Cooper's enshrinement in Springfield.

“I heard Mr. Colangelo’s voice so I knew it was real because the other times they had called me he was never on the line,” Cooper said. “It was always somebody else saying, ‘Hey, Coop, listen, the consideration went in. You were real close, but not this year.’ But now, I’m in the Hall of Fame!”

The eight-time All-Defensive Teamer may have been an outside-the-box inclusion this year, but that doesn't mean he wasn't any less deserving than his Showtime teammates like Johnson, center Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, forward James Worthy, forward Jamaal Wilkes, and head coach Pat Riley.

The 6-foot-7 New Mexico product, an LA-born Pasadena native, never made an All-Star team nor scored more than 12 points a year during his 12 seasons with the Lakers, but he was a perennial perimeter menace on defense, the best-such performer of his era. Cooper averaged a fairly pedestrian 8.9 points on 46.9 percent shooting from the field and 83.3 percent shooting from the foul line, 4.2 assists, 3.2 rebounds, 1.2 steals and 0.6 blocks a game across his 873 regular season contests, all with Los Angeles. But his achievements defensively for five historically good championship teams certainly warrant his inclusion among basketball's all-time greats.

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