Incomparable Hakeem The Dream

A man with 1000 moves. At the same time, an outright attacker and a defender. A football goalkeeper who has become one of the best basketball players of all time. A combination of elegance and efficiency. Hakeem's game was like his nickname - san. The operation of dental root extract is generally presented as an oblique obligation. You appeared, you hold on a little while, and after two days you are in operation.

"You will be ready to transfer matches after two days!".

Yeah. As he rubbed his right head of anesthesia from the anesthesia, and the oral surgeon wandered through the jaw, courage went through the door expressly. It was not helped by the fact that a mouth was drawn from my mouth by which a good doctor was sewing a wound at a place where he once was a tooth. In the end, I got some elephant antibiotics, painkillers ("drink three instances!") And a ban on going out for two days.

"Maybe you'll swallow a little, do not worry"

The next day, after mostly evaporating the effect of anesthesia, I woke up swollen as a beekeeper. His face pulsed, and I nervously crossed the house. What to do? I found the solution in the form of youtube, music by Pantelis Pantelis (do not ask why, I just like it at this time, although I'm late for at least a year) and in the corner of the screen a video clip titled "Hakeem Olajuwon top 10 plays". "I have not seen Hakeem for a long time, let's just remember a little bit."

This has just turned into a marathon that lasted for seven hours.

Supported with painkillers, I searched again all the most important moments of the man who made playing on a low post looks like an art. Bill Simmons once wrote: "Before we see the new Michael Jordan than the new Hakeem Olaywon," maybe it's not far from the truth.

His speed was always fascinated. Legs, hands, jump, everything was extremely fast, archaic fast. While we were younger one of our favorite NBA moves was blocking Hakeem in the face of one of the fastest players Rod Strickland. Olajuwon caught him from the center and launched his apparently clean layout into the audience.

I do not think that there was a player with a faster second or third jump from Hakeem to the history of the league. When you lift it up on a faint shot, it only touches the parquet floor, it is back in the air and blocks the shot, once, two, three times if necessary. Alonzo, Mutombo, Ewing, Robinson, Ben Wallace all protected their outer ring in their power. Again, none of them was a defensive force like Hakeem. Aside from the most blockades (3,830) in league history, Dream is the only center among the top 10 in the stolen balls of all time. Attack? It was just poetry.

The famous story is that Olajuwon began to play sports on the football field and that he was a goalkeeper. He discovered basketball only at age 15. When the trainer tried to demonstrate something about the dunk and dubbed Hakeem (then called Akeem), the trainer went to the chair. While explaining to him that he had to do it from the ground, his first dictation passed for two days.

Hakeem's family was well-suited to all standards, about Nigeria not to talk. When Olajuwon appeared to play basketball and studied in the United States, parents were not too enthusiastic: "The coach talked to my father and got his consent. When he left his father, he told me that nothing was left of it." Parents thought basketball was considered by pure wasting time. "

Hakeem received a call from the University of Houston even though coach Guy Lewis never watched him. That's the way a friend speaks the other. Olajuwon was so demanded that no one came to him after landing in Houston. He called Lewis and begged somebody to come for him, "Son, take the taxi" was the coach's answer.

Hakeem's rise began after working with NBA legend Moses Malone who at that time was one of the best NBA players and who individually worked in Houston during the summer. "The first day I tried to knock on him, and he almost typed me into the parquet floor. I knew that if I could do something against Moshe in this sport then I can oppose everyone"

From the first meeting, one man was aware of his possibilities. Clyde Drexler ...

"I see him as a millionaire in the future," Drexler said in 1983. "He will be the best center in the history of the league. Better than Wilts and Russell."

At Houston Olajuwon University, Drexler, Michael Young (Limoges) and Larry Micheaux, they danced all over and led Houston to three F4 positions, but without a title.

Olajuwon was, according to Drexler's prediction, the first draft of the draft, in front of Michael Jordan. He moved a little further from his college in Houston Rocex.

Already in the second season, He and Ralph Sampson (whose son is currently playing in Finland for Bayonne) made Houston the ultimate in the finals of 1986 as their original "Twin Towers". In their second season, Olajuwon scored 23 points with 11 rebounds and 3.5 the blockade per game, and his game in the play-off was best described by Lakers Pat Riley's coach at the time. "We tried everything, we kept it with four players, we helped from all sides, he's just a great player."

When it seemed that a new big team was created in the westat the conference and that the Rockets would be dominant, they abandoned the knee of Rapha Sampson and he was soon sent to Golden State, and Hakeem remained torn in average.

Olajuwon continued his work, scored over 20 points, was the best blocker and jumper of the league, but poor team-mates and bad coaches were running around him while the board was stinking. Seasons mostly ended with easy defeats in the first round of play-offs. In fact, in that period, he became one of only four players in the history of the Quadruple Double League (18 points, 16 rebounds 10 assists and 11 blocks against Bucks) when Hakeem publicly misled the management of the team unsatisfactory because of a small deal and the inability of the leaders to brought in high-quality reinforcements and when they replied that Olajuwon was playing a violation because he was angry about the amount of the deal, it seemed that the break was the only solution. Hakeem has already been seen as an ex-Rockets player, but this has not happened for some unexplained reason. The new coach Rudy Tomjanovich came to the bench, and Olajuwon corrected the literally the only drawback in his game until then, the return ball after the split.

The Rockets have finally managed to do a good job on the draft. '92 was brought to Robert Horry, a year later by Sam Cassell. With Kenny Smith, Otis Thorpe and Vernon Maxwell. It was the nucleus of the championship team, but as well as on the road to each title, it is necessary to have a dose of luck. Robert Horry, one of the most important players in winning two titles, was turned into Detroit for Sean Elliot in February 1994, but the exchange failed due to Elliot's kidney problems.

After finishing his career, Horry said: "I played with Duncan, O'Neal and Hakeem in a career. Hakeem is the best."

The domination that Olajuwon made during the period of 93-95 deserves to be watched by all who are or want to become centers. Hakeem's speed, agility, co-ordination of movement and resourcefulness are impossible to repeat, but they really have a lot to learn. Breaking up Ewing and Robinson in power and the complete dismantling of young Shaquille O'Neal stunned me even more from this time distance. They were silent observers, nothing more. After all, let David Robinson say: "Solve Hakeem? You can not solve Hakeem!"

Sam Cassell described Houston's game in the championship days: "We did not have any action." We dropped the ball on Hakeem, and if it is not doubled, it is a basket, if it is followed by a return ball and a triple, and sometimes it goes through the doubling. "

Hakeem and Rockets returned from a variety of sinks during the championship of the two titles. In 1994 they lost to Phoenix 2-0, losing both their first home matches. In the final against Knicks they lost 3: 2 and got two last games in Houston where Hakeem bounced Starks at the title. In the second move on the title to Olajuwon, he was particularly pleased by the fact that he gave his title to his good friend Clyde Drexler, the Rockets moved from the sixth position and did not have the advantage of home court during the whole play-off !! In the first round (which was then played in three victories), Houston lost to Utah 2-1, from Suns 3-1 lost in another, Spurs three times defeated their guests during the West Finals to clear Orlando in the NBA Finals .

Against Ewing in the final of the 94th (Hakeem was the MVP of the league, the finale and the best defender of the NBA at the same time) Olajuwon scored 27 points, 9 rebounds and 4 blocks per game, and held Ewing at 36% of the game's shot. Against Robinson, a year later in the Western Finals he scored 35 points per game, with 56% of the game's shot, while O'Neal was rewarded with 33 points 10 rebounds and 3 blocks on average. Be careful about three of the top 10 best centers of all time.

All of this was accomplished by Hakeem, and he had only one half-year-old teammate Clyde Drexler in half a season. The rest were not even close to players like Chicago, Lakers, San Antonio or Miami when they won the titles. Hakeem was the NBA champion with Matt Bullard, Carl Herrer, Pete Chilcutt, Charles Jones, Chucky Brown, Mario Eliem, Earl Cureton and Chris Jent.

Today, Hakeem has its own campus where it became fashionable for the NBA's biggest stars to come up with a great deal of their low-pitched performance regardless of which position they are covering. Kobe, Lebron, Melo, Howard and many others pay 50,000 dollars for five to seven days of training. How much does it really help them? It's hard to say.

One thing kept pounding over my head, looking at the duels of Olaywon, Robinson, Ewing, O'Neal, Mourning, Mutombo. How many of the centers in today's basket are invented species. And sometimes there are teams without centers, at least those serious have won the NBA titles but there were always teams with the dominant people in the racket. There was variety. Today, it's almost gone.

Unless you think that Howard, Bynum, Jordan, Marc Gasol, Chandler, Noah or Sanders are the dominant centers.

Now I understand just how much privilege it was to grow up with Hakeem and watch his unrepeatable moves and the game that really resembled a dream. In the competition he was for the head and shoulders above all, not because this or that one is said, not because it is to someone's favorite, but because it was the best ....