"I don't know," said Dominique Wilkins, who was inducted into the Hall last year. "I wish I had an answer for you, but here's a guy whose credentials speak for itself."

Yet some pick apart Dantley's body of professional work, pointing out that he never played on an NBA title team and was traded from Detroit to Dallas five months before the Pistons won the league's championship in 1989; noting that he bounced from team to team, and that the Jazz made the playoffs in only three of his seven years in Utah; and suggesting that his scoring-oriented game was rather one-dimensional.

Barry, for one, doesn't buy it.

"What would it be? That he's not a defensive stopper? I mean, how many guys are? He was an offensive machine," said the eight-time All-Star whose NBA career briefly overlapped with Dantley's. "He wasn't a big guy, and yet he'd take you inside and embarrass you. He was a great player."

One theory is that personality may play a part in impacting the decisions made by a 24-person selection committee that includes rotating voters, some of whom are Hall members and 18 of whom must agree on enshrinement.

Sacramento Bee columnist and veteran NBA reporter Marty McNeal recently wrote that Dantley and another Hall snub — Artis Gilmore, who actually scored more NBA points than Dantley — "perhaps not so coincidentally ... were perceived to be aloof and did not always have the best relationship with the media."

So what, some Hall members say.

"I don't really buy into that that much," Monroe said. "I think what you do on the floor speaks for itself. It should always speak for itself."

"I would hope that people would not be influenced by something like that," Barry added.

Yet Barry knows many are.

"I was concerned, to be honest, when I was put up (for selection)," he said. "And one of the things I did was thank the people who put me in for not taking all of the nonsense that was written about me and said about me, and just evaluated me based on my performance as a basketball player. Because that's what this is about.

"It's not are you a good person off the floor, do you give good interviews? I mean, what the heck does that have to do with it? Nothing," Barry added. "It has to do with your skill and your talent as a basketball player, and hopefully people will be able to put any of those prejudices that they have aside."

Dantley — whose fellow '07 finalists include former NBA star Chris Mullin, NBA coach Phil Jackson (who according to a report in Saturday's Los Angeles Times has been elected this year), college coaches Roy Williams and Eddie Sutton, and popular broadcaster Dick Vitale — certainly hopes so, if that indeed is the case.

"They've got different people — you've got secret ballots and votes — and whatever (are) their reasons for voting or for not voting, you don't know," he said.

But Dantley sure would love to.

"I mean, nobody (knows)," he said.

"You hear all the time ... 'How come this person didn't get in?' and why this person did get in," Dantley added, "but I guess there are so many people every year, it's very difficult to get people in there who people think should be in there."

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E-mail: tbuckley@desnews.com