Chicago Tribune (1998): Jordan-Hakeem on same team

In light of the Jordan/Kobe comparisons and the "What if Jordan and Shaq where on the same team" questions, I find this old article nudges one to ask some of the same questions regarding a Jordan-Hakeem duo. It's kinda interesting...

Here's a Chicago Tribune article from 1998....

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Life with Michael
Houston just missed dynasty

By Sam Smith

Tribune Pro Basketball Writer
June 11, 1998

Forget the sixth championship.

Michael Jordan should be going for an eighth or
ninth title by now. He should be challenging
the records of Bill Russell's Boston Celtics.

He should be part of the greatest one-two punch
in NBA history . . .with Hakeem Olajuwon.

That was the real mistake of the 1984 draft. It has long
been hung on the Portland Trail Blazers for selecting
Sam Bowie with the No. 2 pick instead of Jordan.

"He (Jordan) was good," Jack Ramsay, the then-Portland
coach recalled in a rather obvious description. "I saw
him on that (1984) Olympic team. My Portland team, our
rookies and free agents, scrimmaged against them.
Everybody says now they `Oh, yeah,' but I'll tell you
no one predicted this."

No one predicted Jordan would become arguably the
greatest player in NBA history. A shooting guard
carrying a team to the NBA title had never happened
before and was never even imagined--especially by the
Bulls.

"Michael is a very good offensive player but not an
overpowering one," Rod Thorn, then the Bulls' GM,
said after drafting Jordan. "He's not the kind of guy
who will singlehandedly turn around a franchise, and I'd
never ask him to do that."

Which may have been the best break the Bulls ever had.
Because if the Rockets had an idea--if anyone had--some
things would not have been the same. Kids would be
wearing Rockets jerseys, and Al Capone would still be
Chicago's most famous citizen.

The 1984 season was the last in which the NBA used a coin
flip between the worst Eastern and Western Conference teams to
determine the No. 1 draft pick. The lottery began in
1985 to do away with the longstanding practice of
teams tanking games down the stretch to improve their
draft position or get a shot at the coin flip.

The Rockets, who had taken star center Ralph Sampson
first in 1983, lost 17 of their last 20 to settle into
the worst record in the West.

The Pacers, who had traded their 1984 No. 1 pick to
Portland several years before for center Tom Owens,
held off the Bulls, who lost 14 of their last 15. Had the
Pacers not made the trade, they would have been in
position to pick Jordan. And they would not have taken
Bowie at No. 2. Portland did, for reasons that have
been explained many times.

The Blazers had drafted guard Clyde Drexler the year
before. He was nearly as highly regarded as Jordan in
college, and veteran shooting guard Jim Paxson
was All-NBA Second Team that season.

"You thought (Jordan) was going to be a good player,"
Ramsay said, "but we were good at `two' guard. Our
scouts thought highly of Bowie. We gave him a
physical exam. The doctors said he was fine, but that
turned out not to be the case."

Bowie's legs simply failed him. Although he went on to
have a reasonably productive NBA career with several
teams, he was never more than a solid role player.

If Hakeem (then Akeem) Olajuwon was the certain No.
1 pick coming out of the University of Houston after
three Final Four appearances, the other given
was Portland's desire for a center. The Blazers were a
playoff team, but hadn't been in serious contention
since Bill Walton's injuries ended the run of Portland's
1977 championship team.

"Jack Ramsay did what he had to do for his team," said
Bill Fitch, who was then coaching the Rockets. "Sam
Bowie was a special player. I never saw a center pass
the ball any better than Sam."

Another possibility, however, was Sampson, the
1984 Rookie of the Year who averaged more than 20 points
his first two seasons. What if Houston had selected
Olajuwon with the No. 1 pick and then traded Sampson for
the No. 2 pick and used it to select Jordan? The
Rockets would have had the best inside and outside
players of their era.

"We had to have a center," Ramsay said. "We would have
done that."

If only people had thought Jordan was better.

"There was a time when we felt there was a chance to
make a trade with Chicago with Sampson for Jordan,"
Fitch said. "But nothing was ever done."

That was after the 1985-86 season. The thinking then
was it might be too one-sided a deal--for the Rockets.

Sampson was 7 feet 4 inches and a star who'd help lead
the Rockets to the Finals in 1986, where they lost in six
games to one of the great Celtics teams. The belief
was Houston would succeed Boston and the Lakers as the
NBA's powerhouse.

"Ralph was a big commodity," Fitch recalled, "and Jordan
really hadn't come into his own."

Even with Jordan the Bulls were at best a .500 team.
Jordan had helped the Bulls recover at the box office,
but the belief was that teams needed a center to win
an NBA championship.

Who could have blamed the Bulls for considering a
chance to trade for Sampson, an All-Star?

In fact, there had been serious Bowie-or-Jordan
discussions within the Bulls' staff before the 1984
draft. Thorn was always committed to Jordan even
though several members of the coaching staff pleaded
for a center.

Now, had Bowie been healthy. . .

"We had just drafted Ronnie Lester (a Chicago native
from Iowa) despite a history of injuries, and Ronnie
never worked out," Thorn recalled. "Now Bowie was
coming off a leg injury at Kentucky, so we wouldn't
have wanted to take a chance again."

If the Bulls had had the first pick, "we would have
taken Olajuwon," Thorn said. "At the time the prevailing
thinking was 6-6 guys are limited in how good they can
be. We felt Michael was an extraordinary athlete who at
worst would be a very good NBA player and at best would
be an All-Star player. If Jordan had not been
available, we would not have taken Bowie. We probably
would have taken (Sam) Perkins over (Charles)
Barkley. I thought Charles was too short to play power
forward."

So did the Philadelphia 76ers, but they knew Barkley
was good. They believed Jordan was even better and
pursued him aggressively.

North Carolina coach Dean Smith had sought out the
76ers when canvassing the NBA about whether Jordan
should turn pro after his junior season. It was a
regular practice of Smith's regarding his underclassmen,
and the 76ers' coach was Billy Cunningham, a former
Tar Heel.

The Sixers had the Clippers' pick from a previous trade
for World B. Free, and it appeared they might end up
with the top pick. But the Clippers won an improbable
game the last weekend of the season to finish with one
more victory than Houston and the pick fell to No. 5.

Cunningham, coming off a championship the year
before, believed Jordan could step in for a fading
Julius Erving and assured Smith the 76ers would select
Jordan. When their pick fell to No. 5, the Sixers tried
to trade for the No. 3 pick to take Jordan, offering
their No. 5 and No. 10 picks and Andrew Toney. But the
Bulls decided to stick with Jordan if they weren't going
to get Olajuwon.

The 76ers knew, because Smith knew.

"I remember him saying to me, `It must be tough
passing up the surest-fire All-Star ever to come into
the game,' " Fitch recalled of his predraft conversation
with Dean Smith. "He knew then. People knock him as
the only one who could hold Jordan to fewer than 20
points a game, but his system had a lot to do with
him becoming the player he did."

- Chicago Tribune Copyright 1998

 

Hell! Even Behad could play PF on that team!!!


...j/k Behad!