Former Post writer on the Dream

http://www.dallasnews.com/sports_day/highschools/sherrington/318037_sherrington_22.html

If this is indeed the end, if asthma and a blood disorder and blood clots and a tricky heart and 17 seasons bounding like Tigger across a court have finally ended his eternal spring at 38, Hakeem Olajuwon will not go forgotten into the night.

How many team athletes have done more for Texas sports, pro and college?

Hakeem took the University of Houston to three Final Fours and won two NBA titles with the Rockets, the latter turning a Houston paper's headline from "Choke City" to "Clutch City."

Fans will remember what he did for a city's sports esteem. They will remember that, and the "Dream Shake" and a regal countenance belying the child-like energy unmatched in someone so tall.

As for me, I will remember all that, and this, how one of the greatest basketball players ever tried to stow away on an airplane.

History: Before anyone knew there was an "H" in his first name, Hakeem was a big kid of enormous talent and little guile. After unfolding out of a cab and Guy Lewis' wildest dreams at UH, he never quite caught up to his long shadow.

Once, in a game against Virginia, he was running down the floor when he suddenly lodged an elbow in the neck of Olden Polynice, who went down like a bag of jocks through a laundry chute.

Afterward in the locker room, the first question was about the wild elbow.

"You're not going to write about that, are you?" he asked, eyes wide.

Well, Hakeem, a couple million people just saw it on national television.

"Oh."

Occasionally at UH, his immaturity led him to bad company. Over the Christmas holidays in 1983, when a couple of teammates quit the team while the Cougars were in Hawaii, Hakeem didn't quit but decided to go back to Houston, just the same.

Covering the Cougars for the late Houston Post, I decided to follow the story home, prompting a startling request from an athletic department official:

"Can you look out for Hakeem?"

So there we were at the Honolulu airport ticket counter, a 6-11 Nigerian and his shriveled-up traveling companion. The agent informed us that the only way to get home was a tour of the West Coast and assorted Midwest sites, all without the benefit of priority seating.

A puzzled look. The companion pulled Hakeem aside and calmly explained that we were on "standby" all the way, meaning that we could get "bumped" at any of the stops, leaving us on the "highway" with our "thumbs out" in the middle of "nowhere."

A look of terror confirmed the message was sent.

As it turned out, the trip was uneventful. The lone ripple came at a stop when a flight attendant read the names of a few unfortunate passengers who then were forced to hack their way to the front of a packed plane.

Dazed, I looked over at Hakeem, a couple rows back. The heart of Houston basketball was coiled into an upright fetal position, head down and leaning into the seat in front of him.

Praying? Sleeping? Who could tell? But it didn't come up again until a conversation on a lift back to his apartment.

"Hey, Hakeem. What were you doing when they were reading off the names on the plane?"

"Oh," he said, smiling, a little embarrassed. "I was hiding."

Hakeem Olajuwon leaves a lot of mental impressions ... drifting out of the lane to challenge a last-second shot by North Carolina State's Dereck Whittenburg ... lying on the floor of The Pit afterwards, hands over his face ... rising to carry UH to the final again the next season, and three times more with the Rockets.

But the image he left last Thursday – a proud man walking away from a news conference in the cluttered corridors of the Compaq Center in Houston, accompanied only by the sound of clicking cameras – is perhaps the most unsettling.

Who knows if a blood disorder will allow him to play again, or if the Rockets will pay to keep him if he can? Here at the end, if that's what it is, it's hard to think of him this way.

Better to remember him as he was, young and vital, the hope of a city on his shoulders, the wonder of a child in his eyes.


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