A magical moment for Machine Gun Molly
From the ‘sands of time,’ the former Iowa Cornet is among the finalists for induction into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame
It’s awards season, when Hollywood’s beautiful people gather to celebrate each other. And when someone wins, the other beautiful people who didn’t win say it was an honor just to be nominated. And when that happens, all of us not-so-beautiful people pretty much have the same reaction:
Yeah, right.
Yet there is one person out in California who is thrilled with a recent nomination, and it is immensely easy to believe her.
On Friday, Molly (Bolin) Kazmer was announced as a finalist among the nominees for the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame. The Iowa legend known as Machine Gun Molly couldn’t be happier to just have her name out there no matter what happens from here. And that’s rather beautiful.
“It was really a shock. But it was a good shock,” Kazmer said Friday night after having watched the announcement on the NBA app on her phone. “They put my picture up there, and I almost dropped my phone. I was so shocked. I was like, ‘Oh my God, John [her husband], oh my God.’ And then I don't remember what I was saying, I just went numb.”
Kazmer, from Moravia, Iowa, played at Grand View when the Des Moines school was only a junior college, not the four-year university it is today. She didn’t play consecutive years, taking time off between seasons to get married and have a baby. In 1978, she was the first player to sign a contract (worth $6,000) with the fledgling Women’s Professional Basketball League (WBL) and played for the Iowa Cornets.
That trajectory is part of what has likely kept her away from Hall of Fame consideration over the years, Kazmer said. Other former WBL players who are in various halls of fame such as Ann Meyers, Nancy Lieberman or Carol Blazejowski were also college stars and Olympians, not a route Kazmer took.
“My entire accomplishment was competing in women's pro basketball in the WBL,” Kazmer said. “Luckily for me, I got to be on that stage with the first Wade Trophy winners and the national champions. And they made me raise my game and improve so I could compete.”
Yet she posted some pretty Hall of Fame numbers. She scored 55 points in one game, 38 in one half. She led the league in scoring with a 32.8-point average. She led the Cornets to two WBL championship appearances.
And with popular posters that she sold herself to supplement her WBL salary, Kazmer also became the face of the league. The WBL struggled financially but did secure TV games and draw crowds of 5,000 people or more in some markets. It wasn’t enough, though, and the league folded after three seasons.
By then, Kazmer had moved to California and from there tried to continue her playing career with other leagues that formed and failed. She then moved into managing and marketing the women’s game, including working in the 1990s with a Texas TV station on a made-for-TV full-court 3-on-3 women’s league not unlike the new Unrivaled league. The problem? Just as it was ready to debut, the television station was sold and two new women’s leagues, the American Basketball League and the WNBA, launched.
“We knew it could happen, we all believed it was just a matter of time,” Kazmer said of women’s pro basketball players of her era. “The timing was just off.
“But was it really?” she added. “Or were we the right people to move the needle to the next step?”
A big part of the thrill in the Hall of Fame nomination isn’t just personal for Kazmer. It’s the recognition of the WBL, the 1978-81 league that is considered the first women’s pro league.
While playing in the league was once the focus for Kazmer, her teammates and competitors, the focus now is in securing its place in women’s basketball history. She is co-founder of an organization called Legends of the Ball, with programming and appearances designed to teach people about women’s pro basketball before the WNBA.
“I call it unearthing out of the sands of time,” she said, “taking this WBL history and bringing it up to the surface so people will remember or know or find out about it.”
Kazmer isn’t without representation in two halls of fame, just not individually. In 2018, the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame honored the WBL in its Trailblazers section. In 1998, the Naismith hall debuted a temporary exhibit on the history of women’s pro basketball that included a life-sized cutout of Kazmer in her Cornets uniform. She donated several items, too, and some have remained on display over the years.
“When the Naismith asks for your stuff, you’re going to give it to them,” she said. “I was so honored because at that point my stuff had been going from garage to garage to garage.”
She hasn’t been to the Naismith Hall of Fame for several years but people had sent photos of her things on display and told her that she was near a case dedicated to Michael Jordan.
“I was definitely happy with that and thought that was going to suffice, just having that on display,” Kazmer said.
But it was the other LOB co-founder and organization president Elizabeth Galloway-McQuitter who has been Kazmer’s biggest cheerleader in wanting more for her friend.
“I was saying, ‘I've been down this road and had my heart broken too many times. I am not getting my hopes up,’” Kazmer said. “But Liz said, ‘No, this is it. This is our year. You’re going to make it.’”
All in all, Friday was a pretty good day for Kazmer, who is now a real estate agent in La Quinta, Calif. There was a Valentine’s Day dinner with John and an offer on a house listing after there had been 200 showings of it.
And over the years, she’s known she still has fans because they find her real estate listings on the internet and send photos, books or Iowa Cornets memorabilia to her company’s office for her to autograph.
“They’re always calling me from the office saying, ‘You’ve got more stuff in your box at the office, you need to come get it,’” she said.
Those fans from the past are being joined by new fans as the women’s game gains attention, which Kazmer believes played a role in her nomination.
“It could have gone on a lot longer before anything happened if it wasn’t for all the people that are bringing up the history again, because it’s hard when you’re buried in the sands of time,” she said. “So, yeah, that’s pretty cool.”
The Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame Class of 2025 will be announced on April 5 in San Antonio at the men’s Final Four. A complete list can be found here.
More about Molly
* Stephen H. Provost wrote a biography, “The Legend of Molly Bolin: Women’s Pro Basketball Trailblazer” that was released in 2019.
* The women’s basketball website The Next profiled Kazmer in 2022.
* Daniel P. Finney, a fellow member of the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative, wrote a wonderful Des Moines Register profile of Kazmer in 2020.
* In a 1980 televised WBL game between the Iowa Cornets and Minnesota Fillies at Veterans Memorial Auditorium in Des Moines, Kazmer (then Molly Bolin) scored 54 points. Video highlights survive on YouTube, with Iowa broadcasting legend Jim Zabel on the call.
Jane Burns is a former sports and features writer for the Des Moines Register, as well as other publications and websites. She’s a past winner of the Women’s Basketball Coaches Association’s Mel Greenberg Award for her coverage of women’s basketball. Over the course of her career she’s covered pretty much everything, which is why her as-yet-to-be-written memoir will be called “Cheese and Basketball: Stories From a Reporter Who Has Covered Everything.”
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Another golden moment in the Jane Burns library of important stories in Iowa women’s athletics.