IStock Photo 6963594 © Denis Jr. Tangney

Boston Celtics fans who remember the glory days of the 1980s are delighting in the news that Dennis Johnson, the team's star point guard and a key architect of its 1984 and '86 NBA Championships, will be joining teammates Larry Bird, Robert Parish, and Kevin McHale in the Basketball Hall of Fame. But the news carries a tinge of sadness as well: Johnson didn't live to receive the honor; he died of a heart attack three years ago, at age 52. The odds a man 45 - 54 has had a heart attack are 1 in 27.86.

Coincidentally, those are almost the same odds an NBA player will make it to the Basketball Hall of Fame. NBA players have much better odds of being so honored than do their baseball and football colleagues:

• The odds an NBA player will be enshrined in the Basketball Hall of Fame are 1 in 28.5.

• The odds an MLB player will be enshrined in the Baseball Hall of Fame are 1 in 74.21.

• The odds an NFL player will be enshrined in the Pro Football Hall of Fame are 1 in 72.45.

• In hockey, the last of the US's "big four" team sports, the chances are similar to the NBA's: the odds an NHL player will be enshrined in the Hockey Hall of Fame are 1 in 25.77.

So the NBA and NHL honor a much higher proportion of their players than either Major League Baseball or the National Football League. Are these sports simply more generous with their honors? Or does having fewer players on a team mean that more of the players who make it to the top professional level are truly the crème de la crème?

The NBA has the smallest teams of the Big Four: just five on the court at a time and 15 total. An NHL team sends six onto the ice, with 23 players altogether. In the NFL, where players have much lower Hall of Fame odds, the teams are by far the biggest, with 53 active players allowed and 11 men on the field.

But in Major League Baseball, which has similarly low Hall of Fame odds, a team's active roster isn't much bigger than an NHL squad: 25 players, with nine in the starting lineup.

So a full explanation for the wide variation in Hall of Fame odds among the Big Four US team sports awaits further analysis. One thing's probably a safe bet, though: the odds of a player actually using the phrase "crème de la crème" are probably highest in the NHL. N'est-ce pas?