[Grantland] Is Hakeem Olajuwon's Post-Up Play Training All It's Cracked Up to Be?

Great! Diss Hakeem's training just when Rockets have locked up his services.

So the other stars won't know what they're missing ...

I'll look to Harden, TJones and Asik (maybe) to pick up those post moves better than Howard. But Howard would benefit from the maturity of Dream's basketball philosophy.

 

1. No rational NBA player works out with Dream expecting to gain a signature post move that took a lifetime to develop and perfect. Neither should any fan.

2. Most of his pupils train for a couple of weeks. In this limited time, an emphasis is placed on theory of the post game as opposed to mastery of execution. The videos echo this and it is foolish to believe otherwise.

3. Do you really think Dream has a on-size-fits-all curriculum without any influence of today's NBA game? Each player approaches Dream with a different set of requirements, level of understanding and prior experience.

Dream is an absolute legend for his abilities in the post. There are other healthy NBA legends who were masters in their domain. Why isn't Magic or Stockton sought out for improving floor general skills? How about Reggie Miller or Bird for shooting and scoring?

The unique ability that Dream brings to the table is the insight that took years to learn and master. Listen to the way he talks about the center position and the importance of the post game. A current NBA player can expect to gain rare insight that will translate into offensive and defensive options that are just not around in today's NBA.

Grantland themselves did a great piece on Lebron's transformation...

Spoiler

LeBron and Kobe are probably Dream's best successes. Do you see them dropping a Dream shake or any of the moves in their training vids on a regular basis?

No!

And you'd be a fool if you expected them to

 

"Elite fundamentals"? That isn't even a real thing.

Most of these big men don't even have basic, go-to post fundamentals on the low block. And then Dream is teaching them things like ball fake left, pivot right step back fadeaway jump shots.

The point of the article is that it is useless to teach guys like Tyson Chandler things like that when they aren't even fundamentally sound in the post in the first place.

 

The problem here is why will Chandler need to go to Hakeem to learn BASIC pnr moves? His own coach and trainers can teach him that for free. That would be like you get lessons from usain bolt and he teaches you pre race warmup exercises. If Im paying 100k I want to learn the signature hakeem moves, not something tailored to my own limited skills. At least even if chandler sucks now he can contnually practice at home and come up with his own stripped down version, like what lbj and kobe did.

 

Ok then why dont you tell tyson chandler he sucks and shouldnt bother trying to improve? Lol its not hakeems fault tyson chandler can score, thats the main reason he went to hakeem in the first place. Hakeem can implant his moves to chandler and chandler can continually work on it until he gets better. Even if he cant duplicate it, qt least Chandler got exposed to how devastating post moves can be, he now has a goal to work towards. If hakeem spent one month teaching chandler how to dribble and do a hookshot, do you think Chandler will think 100k is money well spent?

 

Basically what I was thinking & going to post.

 

This kind of silly, especially people thinking 15k a week is expensive. These guys could spend 15K in a day and not be affected by it. So let’s put things in perspective. Secondly, stock brokers and finance managers would pay money, or their organizations pays just to go hear an expert stockbroker speak. Imagine if Warren Buffet wanted to talk about the stock market for 2-3hours, you can only imagine how many people in the finance field would cough up the money to go. You are not going to learn how to be a stockbroker there, bcos you already know how. However you get to see different concepts, leadership styles, best practices and so. Same thing applies here. D12 is not going to learn Hakeem post moves anytime soon, but he can learn patience in the post; to take what the defense gives him and things of that nature. All that I believe is worth $15000 if it makes him a better center.

 

I'm guessing what the smart players do is train on Hakeem's moves, choose the one or two that best fits their style and try their best to master those.

Training on the more complicated moves, like the dreamshake may never be usable for some people on the court, but it might go a long ways towards improving your footwork and balance even if you never use that actual move in a game.

I have know real issue with the article itself though. While Hakeem is with out question one of the top 2 or 3 greatest centers of all time and my favorite all time player, I would probably prefer to be trained by Yao Ming for a number of reasons.

 

Yao's game was clearly impacted by Hakeem.

 

http://blog.coachup.com/2012/08/08/...he-benefits-of-private-coaching-at-any-level/

 

And this - which just completely contradicts the Grantland article. Wow, this might be their worst piece of journalism yet!


http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2011/writers/paul_forrester/01/13/olajuwon/index.html#ixzz2eryLVeCv

Eight years have passed since Hakeem Olajuwon last dream-shaked his way off an NBA court. And though the two-time NBA champion and one-time MVP's career is but a series of YouTube clips or NBA TV Hardwood Classics to much of the league's current generation, his influence is quickly spreading via a growing network of stars who have made Olajuwon their own personal Yoda. Kobe Bryant, Dwight Howard, Josh Smith, Emeka Okafor -- all have called upon the 12-time All-Star in recent years to help refine their talents.

"It's always good to get advice from successful veterans, and he's a Hall of Famer," said Smith, who worked with Olajuwon in 2008. "Everything he gave me I was able to borrow -- countermoves, go-to moves, knowing how to play post defense. I would try to mirror his moves and he helped me work on all the things he was critiqued on when he was a player."

The tutoring is a bit underground for league circles, spent out of the eyes of other NBA teams at a gym near Olajuwon's home in Houston, where he spends the summer of each year before returning to his wife and seven children at his home in Amman, Jordan. Though usually lasting no more than a few hours for a few days, Olajuwon's lessons are personal in nature, custom-designed to take advantage of a player's unique skills and teammates.

"It wasn't just him sitting there telling you or showing you moves," said Rashard Lewis, who worked with Olajuwon last summer. "It definitely is something different. Anybody can go out there and shoot a shot and can go right, left, jump up and down. The moves [we worked on] come within your freedom and make you go in different directions."

The teachings start with the nimble footwork Olajuwon developed while playing soccer as a kid in Nigeria.

"You start with a mental picture, then it is all footwork," Olajuwon said of his approach. "And the footwork is repetition. It is a dance step. You demonstrate it, then you criticize it by breaking it down. All you need to do is figure out how to get this guy, my opponent, off balance while you're shooting. If you don't have the height advantage and you play against a guy who is very long, he will bother your shot. But if you freeze him, misdirect him when you're going up, he can't get to it. So what move are you going to use to make that happen?

"Once you have a base, then it's time to recognize your own abilities; that's how these moves become natural. You have the freedom to create, where you say, 'I love going right more, I love going left more, I feel more comfortable with this.' Then it becomes natural. And then the more you use them in a game, the more they become your moves."

 

#1 Dream is not really charging that much. He is a 50+ year old man worth hundreds of millions of dollars and he is giving up his valuable time.

#2 There is a long list of players he has helped, including Kobe, LBJ, Howard and Amare.

#3 If the author wasn't brain dead he would have made his article about the fact that the post coaching in the NBA is so terrible that players will pay out of their own funds to meet and train with Olajuwon. To take it further, the best big man in the NBA actually based his free agency choice in part on the chance to be coaches by one of the few quality big man coaches (McHale).

 

There are so many little things that NBA players do wrong or have never learned that even an amateur coach should be able to help fix. How in the world is Akeem with all that experience not going to be helpful for centers?? Will it improve their post game deamatically for sure? It depends on the pupil. But if all people think is that Akeem teaches them just his moves as if adding a car part or that all elite players don't need coaching or to learn, you guys are looking at things too simply. Hell, I'd love to have the ear of Lin and Bev, even I could teach them a thing or two. Of course it may not be anything they don't know already, but knowing and having it ingrained in your syst is a different matter altogether.

 

Have no problem with the article, I think it was fairly objective and had some valid points. That being said, I don't think Hakeem's lessons are a scam.

As Dwight said, its not about emulating Hakeem. Its about taking parts of his game, his knowledge, and fitting it into your game. If you only want Hakeem to teach you moves that suits you, how are you ever going to expand your game, to get better? You can't just go to a university and tell the professor "Oh I only want to learn things related to what I learnt in high school". Thats just going to get you nowhere.

Great and smart players take away things from their teachers and evolve around it. It's the dumb players that try to imitate and ultimately fail.

 

It's pretty obvious to me that the guy who wrote this is just trying to take the Rockets offseason success down a notch or two and decided to aim his attack at the heart of the Rockets and clearly the man who played a big part in swaying Howard's decision to come to Houston.

Hey Grantland! Go choke on a big fat one!

 

That article said nothing but telling us that the author is a hater.

 

You my friend take things out of context with no respect for perspective (post game "elite fundamentals" so to speak), just like that idiot author.

If you think it is useless for someone like Tyson Chandler to try to improve their game by learning something new from Hakeem, then you are an idiot fan to basketball and I really shouldn't even be wasting my time replying to you.

 

Maybe you are not going to become as good a painter as Titian, but if Titian is teaching you his techniques, and you put in time to actually learn these techniques, there is a good chance you will become a better painter.

 

Sweet Lou shedding some light on the situation. I remember that coachup article, but not the SI one; thanks.

Are we forgetting that the man is the all time blocked shots leader? Maybe all that makes for good youtube clips are the one dribble spin moves and ball fakes, but I know I read somewhere that Hakeem spent a good deal of time with both Yao and Dwight on defensive mentality, protecting the rim, and dominating. Awesome.

To be fair, the article does make some valid points, and I would generally agree that it's not the most productive application of time for low usage stiffs to get caught up in the mechanics of Hakeem's offensive arsenal. However, it's clear that Koremenos didn't bother to actually interview the guys who've trained with him to get a feel for the breadth of topics that Hakeem hits on.

Secondly, if Tyson Chandler or JaVale McGee are dumb enough waste their entire session on asking Dream how to cross guys from three and shoot fadeaway baseline jumpers, that's on them.

 

I think this article perfectly sums up how fans think of Hakeem's training in terms of fan expectations. Which is that players after the lessons would somehow be able to emulate him, even if poorly. Or develop some ridiculous post moves they can start using in games.

Suppose this offseason there's a thread that says "Bird working with Jeremy Lin during summer." I bet more than a few on this board who would start wondering how close Lin can become a 50/40/90. Fans overrating a player's ability to learn Hakeem's post moves is so fan-ish that I feel no need to get mad over it.