Sacramento produces its fair share of professional athletes, but few have separated themselves from the pack + been deemed worthy to enter the Sacramento Sports Hall of Fame — a place for venerated names like Summer Sanders, Tedy Bruschi, Kevin Johnson, and Dusty Baker.
Here are your 2024 Hall of Fame inductees:
Matt Barnes
Barnes attended Del Campo High School in Fair Oaks, where he earned All-American honors in both football and basketball. He would go on to have a 14-year NBA career with nine different teams — including his hometown Kings — and currently serves as a member of the Kings broadcast crew on NBC Sports.
James Donaldson
From Luther Burbank High School to Washington State University, and then the NBA, Donaldson towered over his competition — literally. His staggering 7'2" frame aided him in becoming WSU’s all-time career leader in five different categories: blocked shots, blocks average, single-season blocks, single-season blocks average + single-game blocked shots.
Nick Johnson
Before being taken by the New York Yankees in the third round of the 1996 MLB Draft, Johnson was an all-state baseball player for C.K. McClatchy High School. Across 12 seasons of professional play, Johnson had a .401 on base average, along with a .384 batting average with bases loaded. His uncle, Larry Bowa, was inducted into the the Sacramento Sports Hall of Fame in 2016.
Leon Lee
Hailing from Grant Union High School, Lee is considered one of the best athletes to ever play in Japan’s National Professional Baseball league (accumulating 269 home runs, 1,436 hits, and 884 RBI). Lee comes from a family of legends — he is the brother of fellow inductee Leron Lee, and the father of inductee Derrek Lee.
Jamie Whitmore
Valley High School’s Jamie Whitmore is one of the most-decorated female triathletes of all-time, winning six XTERRA national championships + one world championship. Following a cancer diagnosis that left her leg paralyzed, Whitmore went on to become a gold medal Paralympic cyclist at the 2016 Rio games.
