During Sunday night’s All-Star Game, the Los Angeles Lakers’ Kobe Bryant suffered a broken nose and a concussion thanks to hard foul from Miami’s Dwyane Wade. Bryant, though, was back on the court on Wednesday, his injured schnozz covered by a plastic face mask. In 2005, Brendan Koerner celebrated the inventor of the protective basketball mask, a little-known orthotist named Gerald McHale who helped players like Chris Webber and a high-school-aged Bryant play through facial injuries. The original piece is reprinted below. You don’t have to be Wilt Chamberlain to get into the Basketball Hall of Fame. If you don’t have a sweet turnaround jumper from 18 feet, the best route to the Hall is fatherhood. Daniel Biasone, aka the “father of the 24-second clock,” made the cut. So did Ferenc Hepp, the “father of basketball in Hungary,” and Chuck Taylor, the father of Converse All Stars. But there is one very deserving father whom the hall has thus far neglected to enshrine: Gerald McHale, the man […]