FD's Undisputed Guide to Pro Basketball Historywill be officially released on October 26, but the celebration is beginning early. Inspired, and curated, by Brian Phillips of Run of Play, DREAM WEEK features some of your fastest and most favorite writers trying to crack the mystery of Hakeem Olajuwon and his Rockets.
Starting with the 1990-91 season, when he became more observant and changed his name, Hakeem strictly observed Ramadan, the Islamic month of fasting, which required him to forgo food and drink from sunrise to sunset. One of the enduring myths of his career is that his game actually improved during this time despite the fact that he played through hunger and often without drinking fluids. In 1997, for instance, he scored 32 points in a win over the Bulls in a game in which he didn't hydrate. In February 1995, he averaged 29 points per game and was named NBA Player of the Month, even though the entire month fell within Ramadan.
Hakeem himself thought he was better during Ramadan and has said in interviews that his statistics went up when he was fasting:
But it's true. When I was playing, we were travelling and all my team-mates were drinking water. To me, it didn't matter. It made me stronger and my statistics went up; I was better during Ramadan, more focussed… lighter.
At the beginning of my career, when my team-mates heard I was fasting during the season they thought it would affect my game and were concerned. But when they saw that it actually made me better there was a lot of admiration and intrigue: 'How can you play at this level without drinking water, when you must need water and must be thirsty' they would ask.
But did fasting actually boost his stats? Intrepid FD reader Eric Marsh ran the numbers, and the math says not really.
Except toward the very end of his career, when the fasting graphs tick up noticeably, Hakeem's Ramadan stats barely waver from his career averages. Which means that, by the numbers anyway, not eating or drinking didn't make him a better player. But it didn't make him a worse player, either, which is frankly impressive enough.
Dream Week takes a brief digression, as Jay Caspian Kang reaches out to one of the Dream's more notable teammates. Speaking of FreeDarko, check out our NYTimes Q&A (also in print), and if you absolutely can't wait till Tuesday, rumor has it that some big chain stores already have the book out for sale.
Yes, money and rings exist, but ugly is also hard, real. Naively, I reasoned your face was what forged your skills—the herky-jerky post moves, the busted jumper, the slowed-down fast-breaks. We eventually outgrow the need to turn our mothers into symmetrical ideas, but our favorite athletes suffer our meddling hands, our limitless scrutiny, until, one day, we discard the metaphor.
When you came to Chapel Hill and declared it a wine-and-cheese crowd, I was twelve and living on a block lined with dentists and perfectly spaced dogwoods. The dogwoods were all dying on account of an airborne pathogen. The dentists held coke-fueled orgies, to which my parents, of course, were never invited. Do I need to explain my allegiance to a brash, ugly man?
It worked. For years, really. When you were drafted, I went to the trolls in the hobby shop and traded my Dave Justice Leaf rookie for ten of yours. I’ ve since reached an age where I must acknowledge fiscal irresponsibility, but I still count it as one of the great moral coups of my lifetime. Houston proved me right, Minnesota, too. All the while, you and Popeye made all the top-five-ugly lists. Because I liked you for this, I assumed you liked you for this, too.
But then you were in Boston with no knees. The braggadocio had no more context—you barked and swore from the bench. Your khaki shirt was indefensible. At halftime, Charles called you Gollum. For the first time, I calculated the toll. Charles was defined by the rings you earned. Any man could have been made by your money. But there you were, holder of rings, money, stats, the hard evidence of a very-good-career, and your ugliness would still not deflate.
I can twist my selfish concern into the language of therapy and say: I wish you would talk about it. But, hard is hard, and, as they say, everything builds character. We are not friends, anyway. Instead, Sam, let me say this: we only notice the perfect teeth on the people we hate.
FD's Undisputed Guide to Pro Basketball Historywill be officially released on October 26, but the celebration is beginning early. Inspired, and curated, by Brian Phillips of Run of Play, DREAM WEEK features some of your fastest and most favorite writers trying to crack the mystery of Hakeem Olajuwon and his Rockets.
Jon Weinbach writes about sports business and West Coast news and hosts a video interview series for FanHouse. He recently completed producing and writing Straight Outta L.A. for ESPN's 30 for 30. Jon was previously a longtime staff reporter for the Wall Street Journal.
I’m no Dick Vermeil, but it doesn’t take much for me to shed a tear. Political speeches, soccer highlight videos and even (shudder) the first Sex and the City movie—they’ve all made me well up in recent years. It’s a little embarrassing.
But for all my apparent mushiness, I don’t cry over pro sports. Anymore, that is. The last time it happened was May 21, 1986. It was a Wednesday night, I wasn’t quite 10, and Ralph Sampson was responsible. The sinewy, 7-foot-4 Virginian torpedoed my beloved Lakers that evening. From our second-level seats of aisle 16 in the corner of The Forum, I had a clear view as Sampson, all socks and ’stache and Pumas, feathered a reverse set-pass into the basket as time expired to give the Rockets a 114-112 win. It was a spasm of volleyball-rific athleticism that would have made Karch Kiraly proud. And it was perfect in its awfulness: The shot beat the buzzer, it bounced tauntingly off the rim before going in, and, of course, it eliminated the Lakers—the defending champs—from the NBA playoffs on their home floor (see 4:35 mark).
Somewhere between the Forum massive men’s room (1) and my Dad’s car, the trauma overwhelmed me after the game. The order of my universe had been turned upside-down. For the past four years—or roughly half my life, at that point—the Lakers had annually advanced to the Finals, twice winning titles. It was one thing to lose to the goddamn Celtics or the Moses/Dr. J Sixers—but the Rockets? (2) All the doubts about the Lakers’ toughness, about Kareem’s age, about Worthy’s mediocre rebounding, about Scott’s shaky confidence, about Magic’s value vis-à-vis Bird (3), they all came rushing back at once. And all I could envision was Bird, his ’86 mullet, McHale, frigging Jerry Sichting, unbearable Ainge and the rest of the goddamn Celtics beating Houston in the Finals and making life miserable again. (4) (Which is exactly what happened, of course.)
Worse yet, to my fourth-grade eyes it seemed like the Lakers might never get back to the top, even in their own conference. Houston was young, they were fearless, and, of course, they had Sampson and Olajuwon, the Twin Towers who made Kareem look decidedly feeble. Even their backup center, the knee-padded and hyper-active Jim Petersen, seemed tougher than Abdul-Jabbar, and the Rockets had made the Lakers look instantly old, soft and stale.
And so I bawled. More accurately, I probably sniffled through a few tears after stammering some passionate and totally sophisticated observation like “Byron just sucks!” I’m sure my older brother was whining even louder about the Lakers in the parking lot, which only made me more depressed and my dad more irritated. All I know is, we got to the car, I was definitely crying a little, my Dad said something along the lines of “Magic doesn’t cry when he loses, you never know if he’s ten points up or ten points down, so don’t be a poor sport." (5)
Then he probably put in Billy Joel’s Greatest Hits Volume I and II—or maybe a tape from the classic rock collection Cruisin’, which my brother had ordered off of TV and which remained in my dad’s car for YEARS—and I went to sleep.
What does any of this have to do with Hakeem, or as he was known then, Akeem? One of the oft-forgotten details about the Sampson game—like Robert Reid’s game-tying three with 12 seconds left and Granville Waiters’ sideline cheering—was that Akeem was actually ejected from the game. He got tossed through the fourth quarter, at a critical juncture when the game was tight and Akeem had already scored 30 points and was obliterating the Lakers. On an otherwise innocuous play, Olajuwon squared off in a brief but memorable fight with Lakers backup center Mitch Kupchak, whiffing repeatedly before being headlocked by the Lakers’ Maurice Lucas in the ensuing skirmish.
When we think of Olajuwon, we generally envision the even-keeled, shaking-and-baking, Ramadan-observing Hakeem of the Rockets’ championship years. But I will always recall—and with some fondness—the earlier, more predatory iteration of Akeem, the untamed soccer goalie who leapt at the slightest provocation, dunked with ferocity, and swung wildly at one-legged Kupchak that night in ’86.
“I’ll never forget [Akeem] coming out of the locker room after the game, half-naked, happy like his life had been saved,” says Bill Fitch, the Rockets’ former head coach, who’s still spry at 76. “I’m sure his whole life passed before him because he probably thought I was going to kill him for getting thrown out.”
It’s easy to forget, but Akeem was by far the less-heralded Tower, and was a fairly crude player—offensively and defensively—coming out of college. As Fitch reminded me and countless reporters over the years, Olajuwon had a limited grasp of basketball terminology and fundamentals when he debuted with the Rockets in ’84.
“If I said, ‘run the backdoor,’ he’d sprint toward the exit sign,” recalls Fitch, who still lives in the Houston area and has incredible recall of individual games. “Every time someone faked, he’d go for it. He’d get two to three silly fouls a ballgame.” After one particularly frustrating practice, Fitch scolded Olajuwon and implored him to stop getting baited on defense. “I told him, ‘goddamit, if you’d just stay out of the damn popcorn machine and stay down, you could became a pretty good defensive player.’ And of all the things I said to him, that stuck.”
When Olajuwon was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2008, Fitch came full circle with his critique. He bought Hakeem a full-sized, old-fashioned popcorn machine emblazoned with the Rockets logo. “People forget how much these guys can improve,” says Fitch.
Sadly, that night was Sampson’s one shining moment. At the time, that game felt like the tipping point for Sampson and Olajuwon, the launch date for a new NBA era defined by “Twin Towers” lineups that would alter the course of basketball history. In November of ’86, in Sports Illustrated’s NBA preview issue, the magazine ran a photo spread entitled “Twin Towers on the Rise,” spotlighting the trend toward double-center frontcourts across the Association. (Who can forget Joe Barry Carroll and Chris Washburn in Golden State? Or William Bedford and Buddha Edwards in Phoenix?) The feature opened with this unforgettable image, which I particularly love for the Etonic high tops worn by Akeem:
But it was never to be. Sampson's balky left knee, which had been problematic during his college career, gave out in early 1987, and he and Fitch feuded off-the-court. “Ralph would have been a much better player had he had two good legs,” says Fitch. “When he did have ‘em, he was great.” In December of ‘87, Sampson was traded to Golden State, where he endured more injuries and disappointment. He had brief stints with Sacramento, Washington and a team in Spain before retiring before retiring in 1992.
Akeem, of course, continued to improve, found Islam, added an H to his first name, and after several middling years in the late ’80s and early ’90s, became the NBA’s most valuable player after Michael Jordan retired for the first time.
For what it’s worth, the fight in ’86 was the last moment of Kupchak’s playing career. It was a feisty end for the former North Carolina star, who unluckily shredded his knee in the days before ACL operations and “micro-fracture” surgeries became routine procedures. Kupchak, who came to the Lakers as a controversial and high-priced free agent from the Washington Bullets, insists he didn’t try to agitate Akeem in an attempt to get Olajuwon ejected. “Did I go into the game looking for trouble? No. It was a skirmish like many others.”
Kupchak, who now has presided over four titles since taking over as the Lakers’ GM in 2000, says it occurred to him on the drive home from the Forum that the tussle with Akeem would be his final NBA play. But he was more bitter about the way the season ended. “We did not have the chemistry, something was amiss, we were not firing on all cylinders, and I’m not sure there was anything that could have changed the outcome of that series—we were going to lose,” says Kupchak. “Then again, I retired and [the Lakers] won back-to-back titles, so maybe the problem was me.”
(1) It’s unthinkable now, but the Forum had ONE men’s room on each side of the arena to accommodate the urinary/defecatory needs of most of the fans. And you had to trek down a scarily steep set of stairs to get to the stalls and urinals. It’s amazing there weren’t more accidents/fights/chaos.
(2) I’m not sure if I knew then that the ’81 Rockets, led by Moses, beat the Lakers in one of the bizarre three-game “mini-series” the NBA used to have. I’m pretty sure I didn’t. I don’t think the memory of that loss would have made the ’86 defeat any easier to take.
(3) This was before Magic’s first MVP in the ’86-’87 season, when the prevailing wisdom among most NBA observers—and the few really fucking annoying Celtics fans at my Jewish summer camp in SoCal—was that Bird was by far the more valuable and clutch player.
(4) It really is incredible, and more than a little disturbing, to realize in retrospect how ALL of my venom of the Celtics was focused on their white guys. I think the white-on-white hatred of the ’80s Celtics by Caucasian NBA fans laid the groundwork for the Duke phenomenon in college hoops during the ’90s and 2000s.
(5) Contrary to my Dad’s assumed wisdom, Magic did cry after big defeats. After the Lakers lost Game 7 of the ’84 Finals against the Celtics, he cried in the shower alongside Michael Cooper and spent the night being consoled in his Boston hotel room by Mark Aguire and Isiah Thomas.
FD'sUndisputed Guide to Pro Basketball Historywill be officially released on October 26, but the celebration is beginning early. Inspired, and curated, by Brian Phillips of Run of Play, DREAM WEEK features some of your fastest and most favorite writers trying to crack the mystery of Hakeem Olajuwon and his Rockets.
We talk a lot about Hakeem Olajuwon in the context of his rivals. Olajuwon peaked during an era when the NBA was blessed with an abundance of Hall of Fame talent at the center position, and he was able to prove his superiority in head-to-head showdowns. During the 1994 and 1995 postseasons, Olajuwon's Rockets eliminated Patrick Ewing's Knicks, David Robinson's Spurs and Shaquille O'Neal's Magic. Each time, Olajuwon comfortably outplayed his rival to win the series' biggest matchup.
What has received less attention is the opponent Olajuwon never could top, his nemesis of sorts. You might assume that is a reference to Michael Jordan, but such a description would be unfair to Olajuwon, who never faced Jordan in a game with anything of consequence on the line after the 1982 Final Four, when both players were freshmen. He never got a chance to test himself against the Bulls in the NBA Finals. Instead, Olajuwon's true kryptonite was the Seattle SuperSonics, who owned him for an entire decade.
The numbers are striking, really. The Sonics' domination of Olajuwon and the Rockets was even greater than I remembered as a fan of the team growing up. From 1987 through 1996, the two teams squared off four times in the playoffs. The Sonics won every series, including season-ending defeats in 1993 and 1996 that bookended Houston's back-to-back championships. In 1996, the Sonics swept the two-time defending champs out of the playoffs. So much for the heart of a champion.
The 1996 sweep capped a two-year stretch in which the two teams played 12 times. The Rockets never won any of those matchups. All told, the Sonics put together a 13-game head-to-head winning streak that seems more appropriate for a series between a champion and a cellar-dweller, not two elite teams.
Now, I know what Houston fans are thinking. "What about 1997?" they counter. Well, that didn't count. Not because Shawn Kemp was on his way out of town amid rumors of his alcoholism, though that certainly did not help matters. (1) No, the problem is that the Rockets irreparably altered the landscape of the Western Conference by trading for Charles Barkley in the summer of 1996.
Up to that point, Houston, Phoenix and Seattle had been the conference's three elite teams, and they had an unusual relationship that can best be understood in the context of the game rock-paper-scissors. Each team had a matchup advantage over one of the others. The Sonics owned the Rockets, but struggled against Barkley and the Suns (who knocked them out of the playoffs in 1993 and won eight out of 15 head-to-head matchups from 1992-93 through 1994-95). Meanwhile, Houston always beat Phoenix. The Rockets won 10 of the 16 games between the teams from 1992-93 through 1995-96 and famously upset the Suns en route to both of their championships.
During this stretch, matchups were key to the outcome of the Western Conference postseason. The two years Houston won championships, the Rockets managed to avoid the Sonics, who were ignominiously upset in the opening round in 1994 and 1995. From this perspective, Robert Pack and Nick Van Exel were just as critical to Houston's back-to-back titles as Jordan's retirement. (2)
While Barkley was able to neutralize the Sonics' traps by facing up and playing away from the basket, the Seattle pressure defense was almost perfectly designed to frustrate Olajuwon. Rudy Tomjanovich's offense was built on a simple principle: Defenses would have to choose between letting Olajuwon play one-on-one in the post or giving up open three-pointers to the Rockets' shooters. Only the Sonics, because of their long, athletic defenders, could cut off both heads of the Houston attack.
With their ability to switch, trap and throw two and even three defenders at the post, the Sonics created a chaotic game that was anathema to the predictability the Rockets needed for their offense.
"We just have to play basketball, because our system, the way we organize, the way we go by the book, won't work against this team," Olajuwon told the Seattle Times in 1996. "You can't run a set offense against this team. We can't just bring the ball down, throw it inside, then kick it out." (3)
None of this is to say the Sonics shut Olajuwon down. In fact, some of his greatest performances came in defeat against Seattle. In the deciding Game 6 of the teams' series in 1987, Olajuwon had 49 points and 24 rebounds in a double-OT game. Still, the Sonics won. In the 1993 playoffs, when the two teams played an epic seven-game series that ultimately hinged on Seattle sweeping the teams' two-game season-opening series in Japan (4) (the home team won every game, but the Sonics held home-court advantage by virtue of winning the season series), Olajuwon recorded a double-double in every game and topped 20 points six times in seven games. Still, Seattle won.
What stands out in my memory from that 1993 series was how rarely Olajuwon rested. He played at least 44 minutes in four of the seven games, including an even 50 in Game 7, which went to overtime. (2) Every time Olajuwon did go to the bench, there was immense pressure on the Sonics to build up a lead against Houston's second unit. Even against the team that stopped him better than any other, Hakeem loomed larger than life.
(1) In fact, despite low shooting percentages and eight turnovers in Game 7 at Houston, Kemp had a good series before sealing his fate in Seattle by demanding a trade.
(2) Pack was key to Denver's stunning Game 5 win at the Seattle Center Coliseum, which made the Nuggets the first eight seed ever to win a series. Van Exel torched the Sonics throughout the Lakers' first-round victory the following year.
(3) This quote came after Game 2. Things would get no better in that series.
(4) It was on the long flight to Japan where Olajuwon apparently repaired his relationship with then-Houston owner Charlie Thomas. In another fascinating point of Olajuwon-Sonics connection, one of the deals the Rockets considered for their star would have brought back Benoit Benjamin, Derrick McKey and a second-year point guard named Gary Payton from Seattle. Now that's an interesting "what if?" Would Olajuwon and Shawn Kemp have become the greatest frontcourt duo of all time, or would they have gotten in each other's way in the paint? Would Payton have become a star with Otis Thorpe and Benjamin on the receiving end of his alley-oops?
(5) Stunningly, Rudy T did not want to go to a 37-year-old Tree Rollins.
FD'sUndisputed Guide to Pro Basketball Historywill be officially released on October 26, but the celebration is beginning early. Inspired, and curated, by Brian Phillips of Run of Play, DREAM WEEK features some of your fastest and most favorite writers trying to crack the mystery of Hakeem Olajuwon and his Rockets.
Paul Flannery covers the Celtics for weei.com and teaches journalism at Boston University. He also occasionally writes for the Boston Phoenix. Follow him on Twitter @pflanns.
“Faze jhob,” Olajuwon says as he shakes his head and stares at the floor in his Houston apartment while recalling Whittenburg's shot that fell short of the rim and the subsequent dunk at the buzzer by the Wolfpack's Lorenzo Charles that clinched the 1983 national title. “The man give me severe faze jhob.” —Hakeem Olajuwon as quoted in “The Liege Lord of Noxzema” by Curry Kirkpatrick, Sports Illustrated, Nov. 28, 1983
Nestled roughly between Louisville’s Doctors of Dunk and Hoya Paranoia, the Phi Slamma Jamma-era Houston Cougars were a living, breathing highlight film of audacious jams and massive rejections. Their style of play could be described as ‘violent,’ but not in the Anthony Mason test-your-manhood sense of the word. Rather, PSJ combined sheer power with grace and charisma, and more than a little bit of crazy kamikaze, to create a basketball whirlwind that was beyond wonderful and even slightly dangerous.
Despite never winning a championship, this team has had a fairly sizeable impact on those from my generation. Chuck Klosterman devoted part of an essay in his book Eating the Dinosaur to the life and times of Benny Anders, who was probably the sixth-best player on the team. The others included: Clyde Drexler, Michael Young, Alvin Franklin, Larry Micheaux and, of course, Akeem Abdul Olajuwon.
This was a team for its time. They were above the rim when the dunk was reaching its artistic crescendo. They were an outlaw program when that still seemed charming, and for all of Clyde the Glyde’s greatness, Akeem was their signature player. It seems strange, then, that Olajuwon’s college career has been mostly relegated to the backpages of his history.
For all of their success—they went to three straight Final Fours with Akeem—Phi Slamma Jamma is better known for their losses, or more accurately, one loss to North Carolina State in the 1983 national championship game.
Jim Valvano’s Wolf Pack were the team that made the NCAA Tournament what it is, and the final game served as their touchstone. There are those who say that Bird and Magic made the national championship game a must-watch event, and that’s probably true, but it was Valvano’s Pack that made the attainable-miracle aspect of the tournament into an institution.
A brief recap: NC State qualified as a six seed after a decent but hardly great year, and then beat Pepperdine by two, UNLV by one and Virginia (in Ralph Sampson’s final college game) by one to get to the Final Four. Houston, meanwhile, rolled in to Albuquerque as a No. 1 seed and then beat Louisville in a game everyone assumed was the game of the tournament. The set-up was beyond perfect and even my unformed little brain grasped the narrative. The Cougars were an unstoppable force with future pros lined up at every position, while the gritty, undermanned and undersized Pack were there on guts and Valvano’s coaching acumen.
We have seen this formula play out year after year in the college game, and it serves as proof to both NBA snobs and college romanticists alike that their version is vastly superior. NCAA basketball is, and always will be, a coach’s game. From Phog Allen to John Wooden to Dean Smith to Bob Knight and Mike Krzyzewksi. They are the stars in that world, and in Valvano and Guy V. Lewis, there was a 1980’s coaching-matchup equivalent of Coach K versus John Calipari, if Cal was a rumpled sideline raver instead of a dapper don stomping his designer loafers.
As it happened, Valvano’s genius has far outlived any of his player’s contributions to that championship squad. His decision to relentlessly foul the Cougars and slow the pace hit them right in their Achilles heels. The brothers from PSJ couldn’t dunk if they couldn’t run and they couldn’t run when they were constantly clanging free throws. Further, it must be said that Lewis played directly into Valvano’s hands with a set of curious decisions that undercut his team’s obvious talent advantage, such as leaving Micheaux, a power forward dubbed Mr. Mean, on the bench during the final play.
So it was that Akeem, which was the name that appeared on the back of his jersey, found himself all alone in the lane on defense with the game tied at the preposterously low score of 52-all and time ticking away. The next few seconds have been shown over and over, with Derrick Whittenburg lofting a 35-foot prayer while a land-locked Olajuwon watched helplessly as Lorenzo Charles stuffed home the final points.
Phi Slamma Jamma was beaten on a dunk, and a crude one at that. Charles’ slam was nothing like their artful aerial ballets and far more about luck than inspired brilliance.
Despite the loss, Olajuwon was named the MVP of that Final Four--the last player from a losing side to win the honor--but that is merely a trivial footnote compared to the iconic image of a wild Valvano running around the court hugging everyone in sight. On the opposite end, Lewis could only weep into his signature red-and-white checkered towel.
Good triumphs over evil. Fundamentals beat playground and superior coaching always prevails. Those are the fundamental selling points of March Madness.
That Olajuwon served as an unwitting foil in this hagiography is, of course, unfortunate. Here was a kid who arrived from Lagos, Nigeria with little to no knowledge of the game or the culture, yet he left college an erudite and purposeful man and transformed as a player from raw material to fine, if not fully polished, gem. From such humble beginnings, Olajuwon not only met the lofty ideals of athletics and academia, he surpassed them.
No matter. From the beginning, Akeem was viewed as a curiosity. There was his background, obviously, and his love of soccer, both of which struck early '80s America as vaguely sinister, or at least exotic. He bowed upon meeting his teammates, which made them laugh, and favored a rhinestone dashiki that he claimed was actually diamonds. He also roomed with Anders, the streetwise baller, who told SI's Kirkpatrick, “Dude be talking weird from jump street.” The two became fast friends.
In basketball terms, Olajuwon gave the Cougars an inside presence and a destructive shot-blocking force. In societal terms, he gave them slight refuge from their bandit image, as personified by Anders’ jheri-curl.
Perhaps if they had won that night, things would have been remembered differently, but Akeem’s contribution to college basketball as a foreign ambassador is mostly forgotten now. Maybe it’s because he was too good and didn’t leave much of an evolutionary curve for others to build upon. Possibly it was because he played at a school that didn’t stick around for the college basketball explosion that followed. Whatever the reason, whenever the replay from that fateful night at the Pit is shown, there’s a part of me that will always wonder what would have happened if Akeem had jumped.
FD'sUndisputed Guide to Pro Basketball History will be officially released on October 26, but the celebration is beginning early. Inspired, and curated, by Brian Phillips of Run of Play, DREAM WEEK features some of your fastest and most favorite writers trying to crack the mystery of Hakeem Olajuwon and his Rockets.
Sebastian Pruiti was the founder of NetsAreScorching, a blog dedicated to the New Jersey Nets, and currently runs NBA Playbook, a site that uses videos and images to examine the Xs and Os of the NBA. You can follow him on Twitter. Nate Parham covers Seattle-area basketball for SBN Seattle and manages SBN's women's basketball site Swish Appeal.com while fantasizing about the day the Golden State Warriors return to glory. He has previously written here about Allen Iverson and the NBA's treatment of MLK Day.
The video of Dwight Howard imitating Hakeem Olajuwon's moves was a chance to stretch the imagination for those in search of possibilities for Howard's still limitless potential.
But it was also a reminder of just how great Olajuwon was. At 47, he navigates the block more smoothly than many NBA hopefuls you'll see in the pre-season right now. Watching him articulate the logic of his game to Howard shows just how wide the gap is between the Dream and the guy who most people consider the best center in the NBA today.
As Hakeem explains the logic of his game, the Dream Shake that we all remember him for is revealed almost as one part of a process of keeping the defense completely off balance, one that starts with a jump hook and "ends" with playing mind games with opponents' understandings of gravity. This was a guy who approached his face up game as a positional shift from center to small forward. A guy whose footwork was far more thoughtful than instinctual. As such, the Dream Shake was one part of a repertoire that was as gracefully cerebral as that of any player who has ever played the paint.
Of course, it's unfair to compare Howard to an idealized vision of Olajuwon at his best. But as long as we are, though, let's take it a step further: what - if anything - could Howard's Magic learn from Olajuwon's championship Rockets teams?
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Thus far, most of Dream Week has has focused on the Rockets' 1994 championship team. But it's the 1995 Rockets might be seen as the template for today's Magic - with the trade involving Clyde Drexler for Otis Thorpe, the championship trio of Drexler, Olajuwon, and Robert Horry seeems like a stronger comparison to the Magic's trio of Howard, Vince Carter, and Rashard Lewis.
At least on the surface, it would be reasonable to suggest that the Rockets pioneered the Magic's strategy of surrounding a dominant interior presence with three point shooters to space the floor, as John Hollinger described: "Tomjanovich...set a series of 3-point shooting role players around Olajuwon and relied on Hakeem's dominant low-post skills to do the rest."
The 1995 Rockets led the league in three point attempts, well ahead of the field in both the regular season and playoffs. In their classic Game 1 victory in the 1995 Finals, they combined with the Magic for a record-breaking number of three-point attempts, with Kenny Smith setting a record for threes in a Finals game at that time, including a clutch three to send the game into overtime.
That perimeter shooting prowess certainly contributed to the "Clutch City" nickname that the Rockets acquired (though is not, as some might assume, its origin) and has clearly shaped their legacy. However, sports legacies also have a tendency to congeal around those defining moments, washing away some of the fine grain details.
Just as the Howard video reminds us of the full nuance of Hakeem’s game, revisiting the 1995 Rockets reveals a far more dynamic and versatile team than the more methodical legacy we might normally credit a "4 out 1 in" team with. Tomjanovic described their strategy as simple - and to some extent it was.
"We wanna run every opportunity we get," Rudy Tomjanovic told Doug Collins at the time. "We want to post Hakeem or Clyde and when we get doubled we want to shoot the three."
For the Rockets, shooting threes was low on the list of priorities, somewhere behind scoring off turnovers, scoring in the early offense of rebounds, and posting Olajuwon or maybe even Drexler. Yet as "simple" as it was, part of pulling that off to win a championship was that there weren't really pure "specialists" in the Rockets' playoff rotation — skills were distributed evenly across the roster, meaning that all of those players standing around the perimeter were capable of doing more than launching threes.
But when comparing the 1995 playoff Rockets to the 2010 Orlando Magic, you have to start with the centers - not only were they the centerpieces of their team, but each was arguably the best center their respective eras.
Similarities
The biggest similarity comes at the defensive end, as both centers anchor their team’s defense, primarily doing it with blocked shots. During his two championship winning seasons, Hakeem Olajuwon averaged 269.5 blocks each season. Dwight Howard’s block numbers weren’t as high as Hakeem’s, averaging 229.5 blocks during that span. However, they get their blocks in very different ways.
Hakeem patrols the paint, relying on good position. He doesn’t really get sucked out of the lane, and usually finds himself in perfect position. In the first clip from the 1995 Finals, Hakeem spends most of the possession denying Shaq, and when the ball handler attacks the lane, Hakeem simply slouches off of him.
In contrast, Howard relies more on his athleticism than positioning. He can quickly get from one spot to the other, and this leads to a ton of help side blocks. In the clip, he is following his man, but once Darko starts posting up, Howard gets in help position in time to send the shot flying out of bounds.
Differences
Both big men led their respective teams in scoring the years that we are looking at. But Hakeem was the focal point of the Rockets offense, while Dwight Howard was part of a balanced scoring effort. This showed in the way that the scoring was broken down. Olajuwon scored an average of 2094.5 points a year during his two title winning seasons (25.0% of the team’s points); Howard, 1563.5 points a year during the past two seasons (18.9% of the team’s points).
This difference in scoring responsibility is due in large part to the difference between what the two teams tried to establish. The Rockets pounded the ball inside to Hakeem whenever they got into their halfcourt offense. In 93-94 Olajuwon took 1694 shots or 21.2 attempts per game (most in the NBA, more than double the Rockets’ #2), and in 94-95 he attempted 1545 or 19.5 attempts per game (more than double the Rockets’ #2).
During the 1995 Finals, there were instances where the Rockets entered the ball into Hakeem 5-10 consecutive possessions, including a number of re-posts.
Howard doesn’t get nearly the offensive touches as Olajuwon did. Howard was actually 3rd on his team two years ago with 979 shots (or 12.4 a game). Last season, Dwight was 2nd on the Magic in shot attempts with 834 (or 10.2 attempts per game). A lot of it has to do with the fact that Olajuwon might be one of the best offensive centers ever while Howard is slightly below average currently, to put it lightly. However, another reason for Howard getting less shots is that the Magic focus more on three point shots. Dwight does get touches inside, but the clear purpose is to set up three point shots rather than to let Dwight Howard work in the post or set up another posting opportunity:
More specifically, the lack of reposts is a result of Howard's teammates spotting up for shots when the ball gets dumped inside instead of putting themselves in position to make a catch and dump the basketball back in the post (like how the Rockets do in the first clip).
Other than touches, another big difference between the two players was their technique in establishing post position. While Hakeem was a master at getting position to set up his moves before even touching the ball, Howard struggles to receive the ball in a position where he is comfortable scoring.
Look at where Olajuwon makes the catch on this post up: right outside the lane on the block, which is as close as you can get while avoiding the three second call. This gives Olajuwon the ability to make his move from a comfortable distance, and knock down turnaround jumpers (like the one in the above clip) with relative ease.
Howard on the other hand, makes his catches way too far away from the paint. This catch away from the lane is what really hinders his post game. When Howard makes his move, he is too far away from the basket, which puts him outside of his comfort zone to finish. He usually establishes very good initial post position, but he gives it up between the time when the ball is passed and when it arrives, mostly because he relaxes and stands tall instead of staying low and maintaining the position).
The final thing to look at when comparing Hakeem and Dwight’s post game is the actual post moves. . Hakeem's footwork and the vast array of post moves that he described to Howard made him nearly impossible to stop and are the major point of separation between the two.
One of the things that made Olajuwon so difficult to defend is that he could turn to either side and use either hand to finish at the rim. Rather than having a set direction or predetermined moves when he goes to receive the ball, he reads the defense exceptionally well. In the two above clips, Hakeem makes the catch in almost identical spots, but he turns towards the middle on one play and towards the baseline in another.
Beyond the post, Olajuwon's shooting ability made him a very tough guard. As described by Tomjanovic, Olajuwon wasn’t the only post threat – Drexler was a strong second option against many guards in the league. From 10-15 feet out, Olajuwon was more than capable of receiving kick outs in that "reverse" high-low game.
But it was Hakeem's fantastic turn around jumper along the baseline side makes him almost impossible to double. When he makes his catch along the baseline, the only place a double can come from is up top, basically forcing Olajuwon into one of his best moves.
While Olajuwon can select from a vast number of post moves to keep defenders off-balance, Howard basically has two that he relies upon heavily and perhaps more methodically than Olajuwon. The first, is a face up hook move that utilizes his athleticism and speed:
Howard's quickness allows him to be so successful with this move. He also has a pretty nice touch with his hook shot using either hand. Dwight’s second go-to move works off of the hook:
Dwight likes to act as if he is going to go towards the middle, then spin towards the baseline quickly (again using his speed to his advantage), and catch the defense off guard. However, the problem with this move is that it leads to more turnovers since Dwight is putting the ball on the floor more than he really should be:
Yet perhaps a more subtle difference between the two centers that had a significant impact on their teams' performances is their assist rate.
Olajuwon posted an assist rate of 17.2% during the 94-95 season, while Howard posted an assist rate of just 8.7% last season. Given the Magic’s inside-out approach, this might come as a surprise. Yet when Dwight kicks it out, he usually gets a "hockey assist" rather than a true assist:
In the above clip, Dwight Howard kicks the ball out to a player that swings it instead of shooting. So it is often the second pass with the defense recovering wildly that gets the assist on a wide open three.
In contrast, Hakeem was able to pick up assists a number of different ways.
On this kick out, Robert Horry pump fakes, takes one dribble, and knocks down the easy jumper, meaning an assist for Olajuwon. With the Rockets not relying as exclusively on finding three point shots as Orlando does in their 4-out, 1-in style, Hakeem has a number of assist opportunities on the inside.
Plays like that begin to explain what separated the Rockets from the Magic as a unit. Just as Olajuwon's passing ability was what made him such a dangerous first option in the post, what might define their supporting cast as unique is their all-around efficient ball movement.
Comparing point guards
The point guard tandem of Smith and Sam Cassell didn't necessarily do anything spectacular as playmakers. During the 1995 Finals, the point guard rarely penetrated past the three point arc, instead taking a few dribbles and quickly getting the ball either into the post or to another perimeter player. Even though Cassell definitely looked to drive to the basket more often, the role of the Rockets' point guards was generally limited to getting the ball up the court and initiating the offense.
However in not holding the ball long, the Rockets tandem also didn't make a whole lot of mistakes despite appearing less dynamic than the Magic's tandem of Jameer Nelson and Jason Williams. In addition, they made very good decisions with the ball as distributors and scorers, particularly with Smith's three point shooting. The result is that they were statistically efficient enough to fill the roles they played within the Rockets' system.
Even more interesting is that when the Rockets were at their best in the 1995 Finals, they were hardly the three point shooting half court team that their legacy suggests. In their most dominant runs beyond Game 1, this was a team that fed off their defense - both creating turnovers and Olajuwon controlling the defensive glass - and looked for fast break points and early offense before they even looked to post anyone up. In Game 2, they established a double digit lead without even making a three until Cassell hit one with 9:15 left in the second quarter.
Comparing complementary perimeter players
In addition to an emphasis on transition, part of what allowed them to rely less on their point guards once they got into the half court was outstanding ball movement, not only as the logical outcome of having a strong post passer in Olajuwon surrounded by shooters, but also due to very efficient ball handling and playmaking from Drexler, Mario Elie, and Robert Horry. Much more efficient, in fact, than the Orlando Magic's perimeter rotation.
Of note in the numbers above is that even though the Rockets' perimeter players had higher turnover percentages, their assist ratios were significantly higher at comparable positions, meaning that they offset mistakes with successful plays quite well.
Drexler was a much more efficient passer than we might remember him for, capable of both setting up others in transition and kicking out of the post efficiently. Carter most closely approximates Drexler, but while both are probably underappreciated passers Drexler was much more adept at using his athleticism to attack the offensive boards.
Although Horry has become much more well known for this clutch three point shooting, comparing him to Rashard Lewis as "stretch fours" reveals another rather wide gap. In addition to being a more efficient passer and offensive rebounder, Horry's athleticism on the defensive end drew some comparisons to Scottie Pippen. Regardless of how hindsight looks upon the Pippen comparison, Horry was far more dynamic on the wing than Lewis, especially on the defensive floor where he seemed to be everywhere.
The Magic's bench rotation might give them more depth around the perimeter than the Rockets had, but none of them approximate either Elie's playmaking efficiency or his free throw rate. And while Pietrus could certainly replicate what Elie brought on the defensive end, Elie was a better offensive rebounder than every Magic perimeter players except Matt Barnes.
It's also worth noting that one of the most significant reasons for their amazing playoff run as a sixth seed was significantly improved ball control. After finishing the season at 18th in turnover percentage (15%), they were 2nd in the league during the playoffs (11.5%) while also maintaining the league's second highest playoff pace at 92, not exactly markers of a deliberate half-court offense. During the Finals, their turnover percentage dropped to 8%.
The skillset of the complementary players around the two centers separates these two teams as much, if not more than, the individual differences in the post. The Magic simply don't approximate the passing ability of the Rockets as a unit. The Rockets' higher free throw rates at point guard and around the perimeter demonstrates a bit more aggression going to the basket than the Magic – free throws don't often occur from standing around the arc and waiting for kick-outs. With players all over the court capable of getting to the rim and passing to cutting players, the Rockets were not rigidly locked into an inside-out game. Their strength as a unit was to keep the defense off-balance by having remarkably diverse scoring options.
A better comparison?
This begins to bring some clarity to what the Magic lost in Hedo Turkoglu, if that wasn't already obvious. Although comparing Carter, Howard, and Lewis to Drexler, Horry, and Olajuwon appears to make more sense on the surface, the playmaking ability of Turkoglu - and even that of Courtney Lee - made that Magic team far more comparable as a unit in terms of being able to knock down perimeter shots and creating scoring opportunities with ball movement.
Looking forward to 2010-11, perhaps the even better vision for the current Magic might be that 1995 Magic team that challenged the Rockets - they were second in three point attempts during the playoffs that year and far more reliant on their three point shooting. Yet even with that comparison, a young Shaq was a much more effective offensive player than Howard. But if we're looking for attainable goals, it's a much more reasonable short-term bar to reach because Shaq was not near the passer or mid-range scorer of Olajuwon. But that still puts the pressure on Howard.
The clash of two teams with centers surrounded by perimeter scorers was effective because those two interior focal points were lethal scorers in ways that Howard is not yet. Perhaps one could interpret that in one of two ways – either Howard is not a player to utilize as a focal point or the NBA is just a very different place now. One thing’s for sure, though - he's not the only person who would have to step up his game to approximate the 1995 Rockets.
FD'sUndisputed Guide to Pro Basketball Historywill be officially released on October 26, but the celebration is beginning early. Inspired, and curated, by Brian Phillips of Run of Play, DREAM WEEK features some of your fastest and most favorite writers trying to crack the mystery of Hakeem Olajuwon and his Rockets.
Brown Recluse, Esq. is a founding member of the FreeDarko collective and one of the authors of The Undisputed Guide.
One of Jacob’s illustrations in the new book shows Michael Jordan’s immense shadow looming over the other stars of his generation, including one Hakeem Olajuwon. Bomani made the argument earlier this week, but were it not for Jordan, Olajuwon would likely be remembered as the towering figure of the 1990s NBA. Jordan haunts almost every aspect of Olajuwon’s legacy, in specific ways, as well as the more abstract, such as the way that Jordan's hegemony over the league altered our standards for greatness. A key aspect of Jordan's legend is the series of momentous game winners he made, including The Shot (indeed, it’s the jumping off point for an essay in the new book), The First Shot (in the 1982 NCAA Championship Game), The Final Shot (over Byron Russell in the 1998 Finals), or any number of instances where Jordan stepped up and hit a jumper to clinch a victory in the game’s final minutes. Those shots have come to define not only Jordan, but greatness itself. Kobe and every other aspirant to the throne live for those moments where they can prove that they too are clutch, for they realize its centrality to the mission.
A recent NBA.com article listed the top six clutch players of today, which essentially doubles as the biggest stars in the League, defining them as "those players taking most of the last shots." When the stat geeks crunch the numbers to determine who is the most clutch, they look for "game winning shot opportunities".* And when hoops observers rank the most clutch players of all time, they list Dream’s former associate Robert Horry, but not Olajuwon, because Big Shot Rob's clutchness also fit this definition.
A look back at the Rockets' two title runs reveals a great many clutch moments of the Jordan variety. Horry was responsible for some, but certainly not all, of them. Of note are his game-winning jumper in the final seconds of Game 1 of the 1995 Western Conference Finals against the Spurs, as well as his key bucket against the Magic in Game 3 of the 1995 Finals.
Other Rockets who stepped up in the playoffs include Sam Cassell, who scored the last seven Rocket points to clinch Game 3 of the 1994 Finals in New York, a performance Sam Smith of the Chicago Tribune proclaimed "probably the biggest for a rookie in the NBA Finals since Magic Johnson's 42-point performance in the deciding game of 1980." Big balls indeed.
Or maybe you recall Mario Elie’s "Kiss of Death" three in Game 7 of the 1995 Western Conference Semifinals against the Suns to put the Rockets up by 3 with 7.1 seconds to play.
A Mad Max guy? You'll make the case for Vernon Maxwell, who hit four of four from distance in the first quarter of Game 5 of the 1994 Western Conference Finals to knock out the Jazz.
Carolina fans like myself fondly remember Kenny Smith’s seven threes against the Magic in Game 1 of the 1995 Finals, including the dagger that sent the game to overtime.
The clutch shots piled up for the Rockets over those two years, earning Houston the nickname "Clutch City," but overlooked in all of this is the most clutch Rocket of them all: Hakeem the Dream. The wide open threes that rained down during that era were made possible in no small part by the interior dominance of Olajuwon. He commanded a huge amount of attention and still managed to up his scoring average from the regular season, averaging 33 points per game in the 1995 playoffs, while also significantly increasing his assists. Cassell admitted, in a rare moment of humility, "How hard can it be, setting up The Man?'' Or conversely, how hard can it be when you're set up by The Man?
In addition to his offensive dominance, Olajuwon owned the paint on defense, grabbing vital rebounds and blocking shots at pivotal moments in the game. The most memorable of these was a play as clutch as any Jordan jumpshot: the anti-gamewinner in Game 6 of the 1994 NBA Finals. It's a moment Knicks fans know all too well. With 7.6 seconds on the clock and down two, the Knicks inbound the ball to John Starks, who gets a screen from Ewing, dribbles to his left, pulls up for the jumper....and is blocked by Olajuwon! Dream had come over on the switch and managed to recover just enough to get his fingertips on the ball, thus sending the ball off course and preserving the 86-84 victory and extending the series to Game 7.
Truth be told, the Block has been the subject of its own "Where Will Amazing Happen This Year?" commercial and is hardly an obscure moment, but it still somehow fails to capture the imagination in the same way as Jordan's jumpers, or even those of Olajuwon's own teammates. So it goes for Dream's greatness, which may not have been as flashy as some of his contemporaries, but which still deserves to shine its own light.
(*To be fair, 82games.com's list of “clutch” stats does include all types of production, including blocks and rebounds. However, the most clutch shot blockers on the list are Andray Blatche and Brendan Haywood, neither anyone’s idea of a hero. By contrast, the leading clutch scorers—LeBron James, Kobe Bryant, Carmelo Anthony—are exactly who we talk about when we talk about clutchness and therefore greatness.)
FD'sUndisputed Guide to Pro Basketball History will be officially released on October 26, but the celebration is beginning early. Inspired, and curated, by Brian Phillips of Run of Play, DREAM WEEK features some of your fastest and most favorite writers trying to crack the mystery of Hakeem Olajuwon and his Rockets.
Jack Hamilton would like to dedicate this post to the memory of Solomon Burke but given the subject matter fears that would be in poor taste. He’s previously weighed in on white folks in Boston and writes about music and other things elsewhere. You can find him @jack_hamilton
(Or, The Dream and the Juice)
Hakeem is rich with associations. At Houston he played alongside Clyde Drexler on the Phi Slamma Jamma teams; after his senior year he was selected first in the NBA draft, two spots ahead of Michael Jordan; upon joining the Houston Rockets he was paired with a creaky 7-foot-4 enigma named Ralph Sampson to form the “Twin Towers;” in the autumn of his Rockets career he was reunited with Drexler, then Charles Barkley. Along the way Hakeem forged rivalries against—and often bested—the finest centers of his day: Ewing, Robinson, O’Neal. It’s hard to think of Hakeem without thinking of any of the names mentioned in this paragraph.
And I’m not here to write about any of them. I’m here to write about what is the strangest and, for me, most indelible Hakeem association of them all, when for one not-so-shining moment the Dream’s legacy crossed paths with a man who was once the most compelling sports figure of our time. I’m here to write about O.J. Simpson.
June of 1994 had a confusing and darkly unsettled feel. Kurt Cobain had recently committed suicide, the GOP was gearing up to crush the mid-terms, and Major League Baseball was hurtling towards a strike that would take years of creative pharmaceutical consumption to undo.
The NBA was in a particularly strange moment. The Rockets and Knicks had clawed their way into the first Finals of the Jordan interregnum, and like Dan Devine I was rooting hard for the Knicks, albeit for different reasons than Dan, reasons I can’t even particularly remember. I wasn’t from New York, but rather suburban Boston; perhaps as a Celtics fan I felt some Atlantic Division solidarity, perhaps I was drawn to the fact that there was something distasteful about them, or maybe they were just a little more interesting than rooting for the Rockets. The Rockets were Hakeem’s team, period, and even though the Knicks were nominally Ewing’s team they had guys like Charles Oakley, Anthony Mason and John Starks keeping each game teetering on the brink of violent, Yeatsian chaos.
The first three games of the 1994 Finals unfolded as a defensive stalemate. Houston won Game 1 at home, lost Game 2, and won Game 3 at MSG. It was shaping up as a solid series, though one that would appeal far more to the hardcore fan than the casual enthusiast, marred as it was by a galling dearth of offense and the stark absence of anything resembling Jordan-esque star power.
Attention was further scrambled by an increasingly bizarre distraction from elsewhere in the world of sports. On June 13 (one day after Houston had taken their 2-1 series lead), the partially-decapitated bodies of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman were discovered in Brentwood. Simpson, of course, was the estranged wife of football HOFer and NBC Sports personality O.J. Simpson.
The first few days of all this were disorienting, even more so than everything that followed. O.J. as a public figure was a weird case, a guy who’d parlayed a brilliant NFL career into a social position best described as “famous-for-being-famous.” He’d shilled for Hertz in a vaguely memorable series of commercials, played a supporting role in the Naked Gun movies (an underrated trilogy whose rewatchability he has effectively destroyed), and pioneered the dubious practice of ex-jock reporters presenting “inside information” that was neither particularly inside nor particularly informative. Still, most Americans felt cheerfully neutral towards him, and certainly weren’t inclined to think him capable of double murder.
Things quickly got murkier. Tales surfaced of domestic violence, the tone of reportage began to shift, and suddenly O.J. started to seem less like a genial grieving husband and a more like a shadowy and troubled guy. Amidst all of this New York won Game 4—Hakeem scored 32 but got little help from his teammates, while the Knicks had all five starters in double figures and double-doubles from Ewing (16 pts, 15 boards) and Oak (16 and 20).
Game 5 was to take place on June 17, and by this point the shit had hit the fan, O.J.-wise. Confident that he was now the prime suspect in a double homicide, the LAPD made an arrangement with O.J.’s lawyers that he’d turn himself in that morning. Over a thousand reporters waited for him at the courthouse. O.J. never showed. A few hours later the LAPD officially declared O.J. a fugitive from justice; at the same press conference Robert Kardashian read a supremely fucked-up letter from O.J. that came off like a mixture of self-pitying diary entry, confession of guilt, and suicide note. Living on the east coast, news of all this reached us around dinnertime. I remember hearing it on the radio and my father, who’s a lawyer, saying something that can be profanely summarized as “holy fucking shit.” That was the moment I realized that things had gotten real for O.J.
And then things got surreal. My father isn’t a basketball fan and hadn’t been watching Game 5, but at some point he came into the TV room and told me that the LAPD were involved in a car chase with O.J. Simpson. A few minutes later NBC switched to a split screen, the basketball game on one side while Tom Brokaw anchored coverage of the low-speed white Bronco chase on the other.
What’s easy to forget about the now-iconic Bronco “chase” was that the stakes weren’t whether or not the cops were going to catch O.J., like most car chases that we see in movies or on TV (especially if you live in L.A., where they’re kind of a thing). The stakes were whether O.J., riding in the back of the Bronco with a gun to his head while his friend Al Cowlings clumsily negotiated with the LAPD, was going to surrender to police or blow his brains out on national television. Ninety-five million Americans were glued to their television in anticipation of the public suicide of a football icon and rental car pitchman; there’s really no other way to say it.
Of course, a small handful just wanted to watch basketball, and I was one of those. My dad wanted me to switch to ABC but I stuck to my guns and we kept it on NBC, which was more than a little awkward since O.J. was an NBC employee. The Knicks won 91-84, Ewing put up 25 and 12 and Starks added 19 points, 7 boards and 6 assists; Hakeem had 27 and 8 for the Rockets. The Knicks’ win would not be the lead story on SportsCenter the next day.
The epilogue seems almost unnecessary, but the Rockets won the next two games at home, breaking the hearts of championship-starved Knicks fans and giving Hakeem the first of his two rings. He’d win the next one the following year, sweeping an Orlando Magic team best described as “happy to be there.” The Simpson Trial was still ongoing, and wouldn’t wrap until October of 1995.
I was fourteen when Nicole Simpson and Ron Goldman were murdered, and I was sixteen when O.J. walked. I could throw some cute Wonder Years-style tag onto that fact—“during that time I discovered true love/lost my virginity/saw my brother return from Vietnam a man”—but I can’t, because none of those things are true, and even if they were, who cares. I’m sure if I’d been a little older I’d have gleaned more significance from the polarizing racial dynamics and myriad outrages on both sides of the case, but I had black friends who thought O.J. was guilty and white friends who swore he’d been framed, and while I knew the trial was a big deal, it really just seemed like a sad state of affairs that became a lot more momentous than it ever should have. It seems that way now more than ever.
But for better or for worse, when I think of Hakeem Olajuwon I think of O.J. Simpson and that night in June when I watched a basketball game while occasionally checking out of the corner of my eye for a glimpse of the first televised celebrity suicide in American history. Or maybe it was vice versa; I honestly don’t remember, which shows how profoundly the two events have since intertwined. I don’t feel good about this, and it bothers me that Hakeem, one of the greatest players of his generation, a big man blessed with such incredible skill, grace, and athletic intelligence, is linked in my imagination to a murderous sociopath, but these things are hard to undo, and in a strange sense Game 5 of the 1994 NBA Finals may well be the most memorable basketball game I’ve ever watched. I don’t know what any of it means.
I do know one last thing, and I swear this is true. At some point shortly after the trial, a friend of mine happened upon Hakeem having lunch in Cambridge, MA. He went over and asked for his autograph, which Hakeem graciously provided.
FD'sUndisputed Guide to Pro Basketball Historywill be officially released on October 26, but the celebration is beginning early. Inspired, and curated, by Brian Phillips of Run of Play, DREAM WEEK features some of your fastest and most favorite writers trying to crack the mystery of Hakeem Olajuwon and his Rockets.
Bomani Jones is the host of "The Morning Jones" on The Score on Sirius Channel 98, a contributor to ESPN.com's Page 2, and occasional talking head. After years of writing on sports, music, culture and politics, Bomani has served as an on-air personality since January 2008 and joined The Score in 2010. You can follow him on Twitter.
Before I start, let me stipulate that Michael Jordan is the best. Any time you talk about '80s and '90s basketball, you've got to say that first, like saying you're saved in front of a church. Otherwise, they'll think you're a heathen.
Especially when you plan to say something that maybe, just maybe, will come across as blasphemous.
Here it goes: forgive me, but can we please stop saying the Bulls would have won eight championships in a row had Jordan not retired in 1993?
For one, it discounts the tenuous nature of the basketball universe, how one change can throw everything out of whack. And, how after three full postseasons in a row and an Olympic run, even a superhero might get hurt.
Then there's the big part--have you ever heard of Hakeem Olajuwon?
It was he that was drafted No. 1 in the 1984 Draft and, unlike Sam Bowie, he didn't come with the lingering regret of passing on Jordan. It was Olajuwon that got his team to the NBA Finals in his second season, five seasons before Jordan finally conquered the Pistons.
And more importantly, he was the dominant center of his era, the best in an era that featured five Hall of Fame (or soon-to-be Hall of Fame) centers in or entering their primes. Of of them, he was the most singular. He was a power forward with quickness wings would kill for and a presence traditional pivots couldn't match. He controlled the lane at a shade under 6-10, and his repertoire of post moves made him just as unstoppable as Jordan (either you're unstoppable or you're not; there are no degrees).
Jordan vs. Olajuwon is the forgotten “what if.” What if the Bulls had to deal with a top notch center in the NBA Finals, which they never had to do in their six runs? What if Bill Cartwright and Horace Grant had to deal with a dynamic center, rather than a top-notch yeoman like Patrick Ewing? What if Olajuwon, as prideful and vindictive as Jordan, had a chance to exact a series worth of revenge against the team that broke his orbital bone three years prior?
We don't ask those because Michael Jordan would never lose a series. Maybe he wouldn't, but if any team could have slain the juggernaut, it was the nondescript outfit that won the '94 championship in Jordan's absence. I could point to the Rockets' record against the Bulls in the '90s, better than any other team's. Or I could point to the mercurial insanity of Vernon Maxwell, which assured that at least one person in the building wasn't scared, a stark contrast to the perpetual echo of Dan Majerle calling for help in the '93 Finals while Jordan put up over 40 points per game.
But the real answer stood in the middle. Olajuwon was just as averse to losing as Jordan and, more importantly, just as intense and singular on the floor. Undersized centers don't lead the NBA in rebounding twice or put up 12 consecutive 20-10 seasons without those qualities. The same fuel that pushed Jordan to carry the Bulls to immortality helped turn Dream from the league's biggest hothead--notorious for telling referees to “suck his d*ck” when he didn't like a call in his early days--to an unstoppable force. As no team had an answer for Jordan, the Bulls had none for Dream, other than the point of Cartwright's elbows.
For all his greatness, the only thing Jordan could do to help stop Olajuwon would be to leave a shooter wide open for 3. That was the trade team after team made against the Rockets, and it didn't work out well enough for any of them. What could a 6-6 guard do to counteract the Dream Shake? What could he do to bring out the man in Grant, who was too scared to consider shooting on the Bulls' last possession in the '93 Finals (he threw that hot potato to John Paxson)?
Is this convincing? It probably won't be. I could break out a computer simulation, and you wouldn't believe that, either, and that's the difficulty of playing the “what if” game on something like this. However, considering no one has won four straight NBA titles since 1966, the presumption of another ring for Chicago doesn't make sense. The '93 title team wasn't as good as the previous two, and it couldn't win home-court advantage in the East, let alone the NBA Finals (which they did not have in the '98 NBA Finals, either). The wear and tear of playing over 100 basketball games per season was enough to creep up on any team.
The end result of that conclusion, however, is a devaluation of Olajuwon. He was the second-best player of his time, behind Jordan. But Jordan sucks so much air out of the room that few even bother to think about who comes behind him. There's His Airness, then there's everything else, and those things that happened without Jordan in the house didn't matter.
Including two championships.
I've never been able to figure out exactly how that works. Does the Sixers' fo-fo-fo title count because Jordan was still in Chapel Hill? Do Tim Duncan's first and the first two Shaq/Kobe titles count since Jordan was taking a break? Hell, what about Kobe's fifth?
From what I can tell, only Dream's rings lack that luster. Only they come with an asterisk, even more so than the Spurs' lockout league title. As a result, Dream loses luster. Who gets less credit for back-to-back titles with matching Finals MVPs? What other center was the best of his time and somehow gets forgotten when listing the best of the best of his time, let alone all-time? And what player ever had that damn Shake, a junkballer's arsenal coming at 95 miles per hour?
But just as Jordan never won a title over a great big man, the great big man never even got a chance against the greatest on the biggest stage. Had he, perhaps these questions go away. Maybe a weary Bulls team would fall to the Rockets (or maybe even the Knicks), leaving Dream to give high-fives under confetti as Jordan walked off with his head down for the first time since 1990.
But as long as these questions linger, Olajuwon remains underrated. His accomplishments look great on his resume, but mean nothing in our memories. The title is the holy grail, and his are the only ones widely believed to not count because that other guy was Michael Jordan.
Well, this guy was Hakeem Olajuwon, and that meant more than any foe Jordan faced. And no matter what your memory says, that counted for a helluva lot.
FD'sUndisputed Guide to Pro Basketball Historywill be officially released on October 26, but the celebration is beginning early. Inspired, and curated, by Brian Phillips of Run of Play, DREAM WEEK features some of your fastest and most favorite writers trying to crack the mystery of Hakeem Olajuwon and his Rockets.
Randy Kim is the managing editor of AOL FanHouse and former senior features editor at NBA.com. He created this lo-fi tribute to H-A-K-E-E-M while stuck in a food court at a Long Island shopping mall. He also recently made an NBA-Dischord mixtape for The Works.
FD'sUndisputed Guide to Pro Basketball Historywill be officially released on October 26, but the celebration is beginning early. Inspired, and curated, by Brian Phillips of Run of Play, DREAM WEEK features some of your fastest and most favorite writers trying to crack the mystery of Hakeem Olajuwon and his Rockets.
Joey Litman is an FD regular and one of the authors of The Undisputed Guide. He blogs at Straight Bangin', he curates what he sees as America's steady decline on Shit Used to Be Better, and he tweets on the reg. Don't get him started about Drake. Neither he nor Dan Devine knew that Hakeem and the Rockets would stir their childhood souls in similar fashion.
Lying around my childhood room somewhere is a commemorative set of basketball cards from the 1992 NBA Draft. The whole gang is there: Shaq looking svelte; Christian Laettner looking white; LaPhonso Ellis looking weird; Marlon Maxey looking cool; Tony Bennett looking like a foreigner; Don MacLean looking middle-aged. I used to play with the cards in all kinds of ways. I would organize them based on which players had the highest Q-ratings in my wing of the home, and Anthony Peeler would be on top. Then I would reorganize them so that the players were sequenced by conference, with a sub-categorization for alphabetical team listings. I would create dream starting fives, I would stare quizzically at Clarence Weatherspoon, I would wonder for extended periods about how Brian Davis got the lines of his haircut to be so crisp and clean. Once, I spent what felt like an hour reorganizing the letters in Litterial Green's name to create as many partial anagrams as possible.
More than anything else, I would shuffle the cards into a confused, incoherent sequence before reimplementing the unyielding rigidity of the draft order. Shaq on top, always, followed by Alonzo Mourning, whom I presumed, given his proximity to Shaq, was destined to be pretty much as good. My dad would caution that Alonzo was overrated, but the cards said otherwise, and unlike my dad, they fit under my pillow when I went to sleep. When you're a ten-year-old, you accept conventional wisdom dispensed by presumed authorities with blind faith. Draft order, sanctioned and celebrated with its own TV show and all sorts of special media attention, was as authoritative as could be. And that was why I couldn't understand why Robert Horry always had to be placed on top of the Harold Miner, Malik Sealy, Tracy Murray, Jon Barry, Oliver Miller, and Byron Houston cards. I had never heard of Robert Horry, and he didn't seem to be so good. What did Alabama ever do in March?
(The internets tell me that he won three SEC conference tournaments and appeared in two Sweet 16s, but bear in mind that I was ten. Ten-year-olds don't care who made it to a mid-March Thursday night. They care about players with nicknames like "Baby Jordan" from schools where older cousins matriculate, and they care about teams in the Final Four. Also, they care about the Fab Five, because that remains the coolest basketball team ever.)
Horry's first year in the NBA validated my then-eleven-year-old's skepticism. He only averaged 10 points per game! He wasn't an All Star! This was the eleventh pick in the draft? His team was alright, but it wasn't really on my television very often. And forget the playoffs, which is the canvas of lasting impression, even for adults. For me, then and now, 1993 consisted of little more than John Starks going baseline on the Bulls only to see Charles Smith later go baseline in a much worse kind of way. I also remember those Finals because I hated the Phoenix Suns and resented that they'd even had the temerity to validate the Charles Barkley acquisition by winning the Western Conference. Houston went out against Seattle that year. Though I was by then staying up far too late and watching far too much basketball, I can assure you that I remember almost nothing of a series that usually tipped off each evening as my classmates were nodding off. I probably saw more Horry that year during the hazy moments of a second half as I'd struggle to locate the remote and turn off the television in my room than I did at any other time. No matter what the order of the cards said, he was not very good. I was certain of it, and I am sure I said so at school during at least one of the many morning meetings I'd take hostage with unsolicited basketball commentary.
We all know what happened the next season: Michael Jordan retired, Houston tipped the Knicks in seven games to win the championship, O.J. Simpson killed two people, Pat Riley absconded to Miami, and the New York-Miami rivalry was born. (Plug: There is an entire essay about this most curious kinstrife in FD's Undisputed Guide to Pro Basketball History, which you should buy.) I watched the Rockets against the Knicks with ferocity. Twelve-years-old at that point, I was the second-greatest basketball expert I knew, and my credibility was on the line. Only my dad surpassed me, and I was often reminding him to open his eyes as Finals games crept passed his bedtime.
Applying such keen focus for seven games, my dad and I settled into a rhythm--something I only recognized later in life--that persists to this day. We create our own memes when we watch basketball together. We are each other's best, most rapt audience, and as we share ideas and echo sentiments, we establish shared wisdom that quickly becomes gospel. (We also make all the same noises at all the same times because we're sick in the head.) This is a pathology that surely started before the 1994 NBA Finals, but that series stands as a definitive moment in my relationships with my dad and with basketball because our banter was codified in a special way: it was only then that I finally grasped what it meant to be a team, and why Robert Horry might have merited his place among the cards.
Hakeem's championship Rockets were the first great team I can recall from personal experience. I grew up with the appropriate level of respect for the 80s Lakers and Celtics, and I knew enough about the Bad Boys to understand their place in history, but I based those admiring verdicts on hearsay. I was instructed, and I assimilated the lessons. The Bulls, too, fielded great teams, but with Michael and Scottie, Chicago always seemed like two stars and a supporting cast. Especially to a little boy.
Houston, though, was different. I had watched Hakeem Olajuwon own Patrick Ewing for years, and Hakeem's grace, intelligence, and skills were readily apparent. Hakeem was great. However, no other player on the roster seemed like anything more than average. In fact, among the ten Rockets who played the most minutes that season, the only other players to ever appear in All Star games were Otis Thorpe, in 1992, and Sam Cassell, in 2004, well after he played for Houston. All Star games are not a dispositive criterion for any full evaluation of a player, of course, but think about that again: over the entirety of their careers, Hakeem's nine most important teammates from that season made two All Star teams, collectively. Houston was not a champion predicated on having the most talent.
Instead, Houston had the best component parts, and my father and I were mesmerized by it. Consider the point guard position. As we still say today in my household, Kenny Smith may have started for those Rockets, but Sam Cassell was the finisher. A rookie closer, in fact. Together, Smith and Cassell were ideal complements. Smith was able to keep defenses honest with his shooting while applying his athleticism in various ways, and Cassell was able to infuse energy, tenacity, and fearlessness, all crunch-time assets which Smith did not provide as readily. Individually, neither was a perfect point guard, and neither stood on his own merits among the better players at the position. But on a Rockets team anchored solely by Hakeem and a proud facelessness, the Smith-Cassell combination worked.
It was that way across the roster. For many teenage years, I carried around more esteem for Otis Thorpe than anyone outside of his family because despite never providing Karl Malone numbers, Thorpe was dazzling as a workman. More specifically, he provided basketball assets that were unassuming but crucial, and he did so on a team crafted for that purpose. (I also liked Thorpe's gaunt appearance and sinewy style. He was sort of like a Halloween skeleton brought to life.) Houston was not a Super Friends outfit stocked with Hall of Famers, an extension of the two-stars-and-a-crew model, nor a collective of the very good assembled around Hakeem. Instead, the 1994 Rockets were like the Duncan Spurs, only without as much Russian-culture graduate-degree work, talent, and timeless humor. During the championship years, Manu and Tony Parker were probably better, relative to their peer set, than the non-Hakeem Rockets were to theirs. Yet both teams shared an abiding faith in the maxim that the whole can be greater than the sum of its parts. The Rockets may have forever struck the best NBA balance among the worth of the raw materials and the marginal value of the finished product. (Maybe 1977 Trail Blazers partisans would protest otherwise.)
Houston's basketball modality was a revelation to behold, particularly for New Yorkers accustomed to outsized hype and the Knicks' tenuous grasp on functioning teamwork. For years, New York was always one player away--nevermind that the one player was never going to be an addition, but the subtraction of Michael Jordan. So the Brickers would bring in some shiny new piece, or consummate some critical trade, and hope that another amassed weapon would find the right place in the arsenal. This usually worked well, though never well enough, and the contrast with Houston was striking. Vernon Maxwell, Mario Elie, and Carl Herrera were not the missing pieces that captivated the imagination of a Knicks fan, but those standard-issue basketball professionals made critical contributions to the Rockets. As we watched, my father and I were resigned to acknowledging that Houston was "tough"--a team that executed effectively, placed constant strain on an opponent by relying on refined everyday contributions from everyone, and was mentally steeled for a fight.
Mr. Eleventh Pick fit right in on the 1994 Rockets. Horry was a lanky swingman who assisted in the modern cause to strip that term of its ugliness. He would hit jumpers, pogo around near the hoop for rebounds and diving one-handers, play excellent defense, and demand little in return. Not particularly strong or thick, he instead blocked shots on the weak side, challenged shots straight up, and made the right defensive switches down low and up top. Horry was almost always involved with winning time--offering a portend of a career spent as indispensable--and that inescapable reality quickly leaped out at my father. Not just "tough," Horry was gifted within Houston's system. A team that asked for each of its members only to provide what they could in a replicable and reliable fashion asked Horry to provide a little of everything, but never too much of any one thing. I had a harder time immediately appreciating a guy who averaged only 11 and 6 in the playoffs after a childhood within the NBA's galaxy of stars and superstars, but it came to me as I sat in the basketball echo chamber with my dad. Moving away from disappointment and skepticism, I eventually anointed Horry as a sure star on the rise, engaging in some classic, pre-adolescent overcompensation.
As we all know, Horry netted out somewhere between the two poles of undeserving lottery pick and should-be Hall of Fame player. His career, however it is classified, holds special meaning for me. Though no one ever should or will replace Hakeem as the symbol of the mid-90s Rockets, Horry was arguably more Houston than anyone else. On a team of everymen, he was among the finest, and his style captured Houston's ethos in a fashion belied by Hakeem's exceptionalism. Horry also authored a career of winning that still challenges the conventional methods of measuring basketball accomplishment. I just wish I could now manipulate time and convince my ten-year-old self to think this way. I likely would have spent less time in my room with those cards and more time savoring a basketball team in the proper sense of that word.
