Who knows if Jordan would have stayed with us. As much as he hates Krause, He built that team so Jordan can excel with the bulls. Olajuwon was playing with Maxwell and Scottie Brooks.
I am a Rockets fan. I am not a Houston fan. I am not a fan of any particular player. Therefore, I would choose the GOAT, Jordan.
Hakeem is not only the greatest center of all time (according to many stars, including Jordan), but he is also one of the humblest and classiest players of all time. We could not have asked for a better representative of Houston sports or just Houston in general. Jordan is the best of all time, but we made the right choice with our number one pick in 1984.
Hakeem had to play against and go through some of the many other top 10 centers in the history of the game like KAJ, Shaq, DRob, Ewing etc Jordan really didn't have to up against any other top 10 SG besides Clyde (not often) and the over-rated Reggie Miller.
This. I'd take Hakeem anyways, but this thread is just childish. "Oh, you aren't a real fan because you wouldn't take Hakeem, let me show you how so much of better fan I am than you" is basically the thing I've taken away from this.
It has been repeatedly said (by non-Rockets sources) that Hakeem is the one guy in that draft that you can justify taking over Jordan. If you rewind and send Jordan to Houston and Hakeem to Chicago in the draft, all of NBA history changes. Maybe neither team ever wins a championship during the 90's. Given what happened, I'm down with Hakeem.
This is confusing. How can you be a fan of a team, yet not its players or location? Do you just like the jersey colors? It's kind of a package deal. You associate yourself with a brand, and what that brand stands for.
Really? How is this even a discussion here? Hakeem was the greatest player of all time in my book. I really don't care what the east and west coast media think. Anyone who watched those two teams play, know that Chicago was lucky they didn't have to face us in their championship games. Otherwise, it would be 0 rings for Jordan. Yeah, I said it. Jordan had better appreciate those Seattle teams that were a bad matchup for us. Jordan was great and was a marketing machine, but on the basketball court he was not as great as the Dream. That is all.
Why shouldn't it be a discussion? It's a legitimate question. They were both phenomenal players and we had the chance to have either one of them. Trying my best to remove my Rockets-homerism and my love for Hakeem as my favorite player of all time (I have an autographed jersey of his framed in my study) I think that it is an interesting thing to at least consider and debate.
Wtf? The main reason MJ is treated as goat is because of his 6 rings, however those were a result of multiple factors including having the MJ level of coach and GM who pretty much schooled the rest of the league. MJ has been in the league way longer than 6 years but nobody was calling him goat before PJ and the rest of the jordanners arrived. If Bulls had Hakeem he would be the one with 6 rings and be called the goat, if Rox had MJ I doubt the Rox would even have 1 ring as MJ would have played with Bowie and drug addicts.
The thing that I always think is so funny in these debates is that people look at team success as an indicator of who is the better individual player. If the GOAT was measured purely by number of championship rings, then Bill Russell would be undeniably the best player ever, not Jordan. Not Hakeem. Not Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Not Magic Johnson. Not LBJ. But if you want to look at best player ever, you have to look at a lot more than just team success. It's hard to judge, especially when you are looking across different eras of the NBA or, in the case of Hakeem and MJ, at players playing different positions. If MJ on the Rockets would have still won 6 championships, then of course I would take him. But he wouldn't have. Everything would have been different. For me, I would still take Hakeem. But I don't think it's ludicrous is someone else disagreed and would choose Jordan. It definitely makes for an interesting debate.
Oh yeah, imagine if you had Olajuwon, Barkley and Pippen all on the same team! That would have been EXTRA SPECIAL!!
You wouldn't know how many rings each would win. Or if they would stay in Houston. Even if I didn't live in Houston, it would be really hard for me to draft Jordan over Olajuwon. Olajuwon is one of the greatest, if not the greatest, players on both ends of the floor.
