That wouldn't help them in today's NBA, there are people as big as him and as athletic as him so really he'd end up being a liability given that he makes Dwight Howard look like a guy who is a great shooter with amazing range.
At least, and our rebounding improves at both ends. One could go on. Blocked shots. Steals. I don't doubt that he would be tremendous with Harden and would improve Harden's game. Offensively? One can only dream. My only quibble, really, is the bit about "dominating" the '80's. Dream dominated from the mid '80's through the mid '90's. It's a small thing, but might confuse the casual fan who didn't experience the NBA of the '80's.
Hakeem in the p&r is like a 10000x superior version of Amare. Someone taller, more skilled, and every bit as athletic, but more agile. Not going to even talk about on the defensive end.... The best p&r big men for D'Antoni's system if you include defensive needs too are Hakeem Olajuwon and Kevin Garnett. The real interesting thing is T-Mac in this offense from 02-06. He would've been better than Harden IMO.
True. Would be interesting to see him in today's NBA. He was such a competitor that he woiuld have spent a summer practicing 3's if need be.
Olajuwon might be the most versatile, skilled player in league history. He would beast in any era regardless of his teammates.
Hakeem would be unstoppable in todays NBA because really...you have a stick like Clint Capela playing Center...we get away playing Harrell at center... Really, the only guys who could even dream of matching up with Hakeem are true legit centers, Dwight, Marc, Deandre Jordan...the rest? lol. Proof? Remember when Yao begin to click? It was his last season in the NBA. Yao had a legit back to the basket post game. He demolished the competition, many times going games where he'd just miss one or two shots. The Lakers were very lucky he got hurt. Yao was like Hakeem lite, he didn't have the face up skills but he could still absolutely dominate. Hakeem PLUS Harden? Forget it.
Great point. I can't believe that defense didn't even cross my mind as I was pondering the possibilities with Hakeem added to this team. Sure he'd be an upgrade on offense, but honestly with Harden having the ball so much and our offensive being so perimeter oriented I don't see the offensive improving that much. It's the defense that would really vault us. Capella/Nene/Harrell are defensive scrubs compared to him. I'd take Hakeem at his defensive peak -- 92/93 season.
The whole idea of Harden and Hakeem is wrong. Like Back to the Future. Like Delonte and LeBron's mom.
LOL. You think Wilt couldn't play in today's NBA? He would be scoring 40 per game, or they could run the offense through him and just let him pass to all of the Warriors shooters (you know Wilt led the NBA in assists one season, right?). To think that Wilt could not improve on the role played by Zaza Pachulia or Andrew Bogut is asinine. Total paint lockdown on defense, likely to have the highest rebound rate in the NBA, and what defensive center is going to bother him at all (Wilt averaged over 30 per game against Bill Russell). As for your assertion that there are people as big as him and as athletic as him, that is absolute nonsense. Wilt was a legit seven footer that could run like a deer. He would likely be the strongest player in the NBA today (may have been the strongest ever, though perhaps that was Shaq).
I think he might be able to be a bench player maybe. The league isn't full of short, unathletic white guys at center anymore and the rules of the league today would crush him.....plus he'd be an amazing hack-a-target and we know that the most important thing to him is never fouling out so he wouldn't even pretend to play defense once he got in foul trouble with as easy as it is for big men to pick up fouls in the modern game. Ultimately, I think he'd be a liability on both ends of the court FAR too often.
Wilt would be benched for his turnovers and terrible free throw shooting. He was a great anomaly in his day and he dominated with incredible length and athleticism. But that would all be watered down in today's NBA and his inefficiencies would be exposed.
The Warriors won 73 games with Andrew Bogut starting at center. They have a 0.836 win rate with Zaza Pachulia. Do you honestly believe Wilt Chamberlain cannot match or exceed the performances of those two players?
No chance. We romanticize old players, but they couldn't hang if they were in the much more talented league that we have today. If you were talking centers from the 90's, it would be a different story, but from the 60's? The league was in it's infancy, the talent pool was very shallow. It would be like if you put Terry Bradshaw in the NFL as a QB today, he'd make it about 5 seconds and then be washed out of the league entirely.
Well, that is preposterous. We have actual records of Wilt's size and speed, and he was bigger and faster and could jump higher than Bogut and Pachulia. Skill wise, he led the league in assists when challenged on being selfish. If you want to say he was playing against poor competition, look at his numbers against only Bill Russell, or only hall of fame centers.
Saying that he played against the best competition at the time when the competition was a joke compared to the league now doesn't really make that case. Like I said, put a young Terry Bradshaw in the NFL today and he doesn't make an NFL team out of camp. He's probably the very first person cut actually. You simply can't compare people who played in a league's infancy to those who play today, it's just a completely different level of competition. D league teams today would completely wreck the NBA back in the 60's.....hell top tier college teams could likely do the same. A player looking good then means nothing today, just as solid D league stats don't necessarily mean a player is good enough for the NBA. You could say the same for guys like Babe Ruth too, it's just how it goes. You have to keep them in their own era, it's not fair to talk about them playing against better competition than existed on the planet when they were playing.
