I wrote my long Olajuwon makes the Hall of Fame post back in April and didn't want to rehash the same thing. However, it's still a special time when the greatest Houston Rocket all time, the arguable best center of all time, and the inarguable top 3 center of all time, Hakeem "The Dream" Olajuwon is inducted into the Springfield Hall.
Here is the induction ceremony the Rockets held for him in April:
Here is a link to his acceptance speech (Note: If anyone has an embed link for it, send it my way and I'll post it here)And as much as I don't think Ewing is really a full fledged Hall of Famer, Hakeem was extremely complimentary of him, so that's good enough for me. Also, every picture I've seen of Hakeem and Patrick seems to show that The Dream is taller. Now I know for an absolute fact that Olajuwon is not really 7 feet tall and that he's probably closer to 6'10 than 7', so what does that mean about Ewing? Has he shrunk 3 inches? I always thought he was a true 7 footer? I will get one jab at Ewing in here though, as eloquent as Hakeem was, and remember, English is like his 8th language, Ewing could barely put together a sentence.
JA Adande wrote a great article about Hakeem, and sums up a lot of what I feel about the Olajuwon era. I know that Clutchfans got all overreact-y about it, but there is nothing wrong with that article. Adande wasn't trying to hype Jordan in any way, and it's kind of weak to suggest he was. All he was doing was trying to talk to the casual NBA fan, the guy that only knows Jordan was phenomenal and show that Olajuwon was phenomenal as well. No, he wasn't American, he was one of the first International players to dominate, and everyone should know it, not just Rockets fans.
Saturday, September 6, 2008
Hakeem The Dream - An Official Hall of Famer
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5 comments:
Every time you link to Clutchfans, God kills a kitten.
I think the site itself is fantastic. I like that it's a big community of "Rockets" fans and it sort of started the NBA fan sites on the internet. That being said, I think your point is that it has a tendency to be overreact and whine central. And while that is about as annoying as things come, it does have some good info.
I was at that ceremony in Houston and I still get goosebumps watching him speak and thinking about how much he owned that building that night.
Oh, the forum has its moments. It's when the posters there still bitch about trading away Rudy Gay for Shane Battier (!), or the ongoing saga of the Yao Only Fans v. the T-Mac Only Fans that they start to lose me.
"The Best NBA Center in my Students’ Life"
http://dberri.wordpress.com/2008/09/07/the-best-nba-center-in-my-student%e2%80%99s-life/
"This list reveals that Robinson, at his peak, surpassed the performance of any of the other centers we considered. And that includes Olajuwon.
Let me close by considering an argument people often offer in evaluating basketball players. Often when considering whether player A is better than player B, people look at how the two players performed against each other. Although this approach might work in a sport like boxing or tennis, it’s not appropriate in basketball. Basketball is a five-on-five sport. What matters is how a player contributes to his team’s success, not how he performs relative to one person on another team. And when we consider each player’s contribution to team success, it looks like The Admiral was the most productive center in the NBA since the 1980s."
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