Hakeem Olajuwon should be top 10 in NBA

Look up pace of play. Oscar Robertson got an average of 30 more plays per game then modern NBA players. The stats aren’t comparable.

He’s obviously a great player, a legend and a top 15 guy. But he’s not Lebron James. It’s not a debate worth entertaining.

 

I don't think Hakeem is a top 10 player.

 

My favorite stat for Hakeem is that he is the only player since the merger (76-77) that is top ten in 4 of the 5 major stats (points, rebounds, steals and blocks) coming in 8th in points, 6th in rebounds, 9th in steals and 1st in blocks.

 

unfomfotable

 

I think it depends how you slice it. Take Tim Duncan...

IMO - at his peak, Tim Duncan couldn't touch peak Olajuwon. Not even close. On either end of the floor.

But over the duration of their careers, factoring-in their accomplishments, you could argue Duncan was better. And while I would disagree, it wouldn't be an unreasonable take.

 

Just to be serious for a moment, I don't see Duncan, at any moment top ten all time in scoring, block shots, steals, rebounds, field goal percentage nor, being one of few players ever to get a quadruple double in a game.

 

I think putting prime Dream on the Spurs championships teams instead of Duncan would maybe lead to more championships

 

Huh? The reason nobody else did it in his era is because Oscar Robertson is awesome. No one is knocking him. I just said he’s a top 15 player. You’re trying to compare his numbers to Lebron not other people in his era and that just doesn’t add up. I’m not a Lebron fan I’m a rockets fan but I’m not going to deny the dude’s place in history. Oscar Robertson, as amazing as he is, is not on his level.

 

duncan has very nice career accomplishment, and many numbers similar to hakeem. possibly even more longevity. but it's hard to compare previous era longevity with modern longevity and duncan got to reduce his minutes very early in his career, but hakeem was still 3rd team in his 15th season so he didn't lack longevity. some numbers better, some numbers worse. they are definitely close.

to me there are 2 big tiebreakers. the first is pop. dude played 19 years with possibly the coaching GOAT. that's like if hakeem got rudy right at the beginning of his career, and rudy was even better than he already was. duncan was always this adjusted plus/minus beast, indicating he had tremendous value basically his whole career. what happened the year after duncan retired? the spurs won 61 games, were #1 in defense, and made the conference finals and were leading 2017 golden state by 20 until kawhi got taken out. at the time, that would have been the most wins in rockets history. #1 in defense when losing a guy whose numbers would indicate he was the rock of the defense. a conference finals appearance (by beating a team that shall remain nameless). depending on how you view the 1981 and 1986 rockets with their playoff outperformance, that would be like the 3rd-5th best season in rockets history. that's what having popovich coach you means.

it's like brady/belichick. can they really both be the best? the best coach and best qb ever both just happened to show up at the same franchise for the same huge stretch of years and we're not thinking the two things might be related? i mean there's no doubt duncan and brady are great no matter how you look at it (i don't see how duncan would not be great, football relies on coaching more), but brady got hurt in game 1 of a season and the patriots went 11-5 and made the playoffs. again, that would be like the 2nd or 3rd best season in texans history. it was done without brady. just like 61 wins without duncan. who was also drafted to a team that won 59 two years before without the injuries. that's just so much franchise success around you. i can't imagine hakeem's career with essentially non-stop contention. hakeem was so damn good in the playoffs (again, duncan also very good), it's hard to see how he doesn't at least get the 5 titles.

the other tiebreaker is just that hakeem was an automatic double well into his 30's. as in, double hakeem or he scores 40, and that's not hyperbole. not that he was never doubled, but you could stop doubling duncan around age 28 or so. the wallace bros in detroit had no trouble with him. tyson chandler and pau gasol held him to 42% and 42.6% in back to back series in 2008. if you had defenders with long standing reaches, you basically didn't need to double ever. and even reasonably good defenders without long reaches could survive without expecting to give up much more than 25 or 30 on a good day. and it's not just like this is a stylistic preference where i'm valuing one-on-one vs team play.

the spurs won 5 titles, but they also didn't win 14 titles. these weren't all "tim duncan played superb but his teammates let him down" losses. if duncan doesn't shoot 42.6% against the lakers, maybe they win. there were 3 close games, the lakers won them all (twice with 4th quarter comebacks), and duncan shot 29-70 in those 3 games (41.4%), without bynum even playing (only tall guy was gasol). can you discount his huge rebounding numbers in that series? no, but still, he shot 42.6% and there were 3 close games where being a more unstoppable one-on-one player maybe makes the difference in the series and maybe gets the spurs a title. the spurs could have lost the previous series (went 7) because of his shooting.

they very well may have lost the 2004 series to the lakers because duncan was largely held in check by malone. they won the first 2 games and then duncan finished the last 4 games 17.5 ppg, 38% shooting. do i expect duncan to easily beat kobe/shaq/malone/payton? no, but their two initial wins suggest it wasn't an impossible task and then duncan couldn't score one-on-one for 4 straight games. these were all teams very capable of winning it all where duncan being more unstoppable is possibly a win. it's not like hakeem just cruised to championships on overwhelming teams and he could have dialed back his scoring and still won. we needed hakeem to be a 30 ppg, get doubled to create 3's kind of player all the time, going against really good teams with really good centers. he was, and that's how we got 2 titles. would hakeem have probably had a bad series somewhere in 19 straight years of contending? probably. but he didn't in the years we had a chance (if you want to count 1993 and 1997 as chances, he averaged 23 ppg on 52% against his nemesis in seattle and then a crazy 27 ppg on 59% against utah).

 

Top 10 discussions lead to no where most of the time. The only objective thing that cannot be argued against in with individual skill/talent is free throw shooting percentage. Team basketball has so many variables that it is really impossible to argue who is better individually when it comes to the greats.

Player role
Longevity
Individual Success
Team Success
Rules of the Era
Competition
Peak level
Prime length
Coaching
Luck

All I know is that Hakeem is one of the greatest to do it, and that's enough for me. If someone thinks he's the 5 best player of all time or the 5th best center of all time, I don't mind. I won't lose sleep over a guy who averaged 22 points, 11 rebounds, 3 blocks, and 2 steals in a Rockets jersey. I'll sleep happily.

 

Your argument is more than sound; but there is only 10 spots. Maybe Shaq drops out. The league has been around a long time so it has seen some very talented players come through it. Players that changed the game and are still house hold names decades later. I am finding that some have players in THEIR top 3 where the same players are in a battle to make the top 10. Cases can be made for about 15 or so players to be in the top 10. List like this is what fandom is all about.

 

For anyone looking for a trip down memory lane, found these articles on FreeDarko from 2010 as part of their 'Dream Week'. One of the sites to give the Rox the credit they deserved.
https://freedarko.blogspot.com/search/label/rockets
Unfortunately some of the picture links are broken, but still a lot of fun articles about our old title teams.

This is also one of my favorite articles written about Akeem.
https://vault.si.com/vault/1983/11/28/the-liege-lord-of-noxzema

 

I can’t tell if you’re trolling me with using Charles Barkley as some kind of barometer of fact. I mean he thinks Kobe is better than Dream. That’s ludicrous. Players are notoriously horrible judges of talent and impact.

That aside, I’ve already told you Oscar is a top 15 player. Where he falls in that top 15 is debatable to a point but he’s clearly not better than Lebron just like he’s clearly not better than Hakeem. You can’t just throw raw numbers out there without context. Otherwise Wilt averaged 50 points and 27 rebounds a game one season so easily the greatest ever right? You can’t use just stats to compare players 40 years apart.

Lebron in simplest terms is Oscar Robertson 2.0 with far superior defense and the body of a tight end. Oscar is a legend but these 2 are not a good comparison.