Top 100 NBA Players: #12 - Hakeem Olajuwon

Hakeem Olajuwon

Hakeem Olajuwon is undoubtedly one of the greatest centers of all time and easily the best modern defensive center the NBA has seen. He is the best player who was not born as a United States citizen, and he peaked at exactly the right time, which allowed him to win a couple of championships and cement his place as one of the all-time greats.

Hakeem grew up primarily playing soccer in his native Nigeria, but when he was introduced to basketball as a teenager, he knew he had found his calling in life. He was only offered a spot on one college team, at the University of Houston, and after a couple of years training with local pro and NBA MVP Moses Malone, Olajuwon led the Cougars to two consecutive national championship games before being drafted by the Houston Rockets as the #1 pick in the NBA Draft, two spots ahead of Michael Jordan.

The Rockets started seeing success pretty quickly, making it to the NBA Finals in Hakeem's second season, where they lost to the Boston Celtics, whose 1986 team is regarded as one of the greatest teams in history. It looked like the Rockets were going to be a force for years to come, but because of a series of injuries to Ralph Sampson and their inability to get any decent players to play with Olajuwon, Houston suffered through several disappointing seasons.

Everything finally came together in 1993-94, beginning with the retirement of Michael Jordan in the offseason. Olajuwon took advantage of the hole left at the top of the league and had one of the most impressive seasons in history, becoming the only player ever to win the regular season MVP, Finals MVP, and Defensive Player of the Year Award in the same season.

The next year, things didn't look quite as good, with David Robinson and the Spurs dominating the regular season and Olajuwon dealing with some health issues near the end of the year, but with a late-season trade that brought college teammate Clyde Drexler to town, the Rockets were able to become the lowest-seeded team in history to win the NBA Finals, and Olajuwon repeated as Finals MVP.

Olajuwon is well-known as a great shot-blocker, and he still holds the record for most shots blocked in a career, although they have only been recorded for half of the league's history. Not only was he great at blocking shots, he was always among the leaders in steals as well, and in 1989 he became the only player in history to record more than 200 blocks and 200 steals in the same season. In fact, there have only been 8 seasons in which a player reached 150-150, and four of those belong to Olajuwon. He is definitely one of the greatest defensive players of all time.

Olajuwon was also great on the offensive end of the court, averaging over 20 points per game for 13 consecutive seasons to start his career, and his moves in the low post have become legendary, especially his patented "Dream Shake," which involved numerous fakes and spins and allowed him to get a ton of easy shots near the hoop. He now hosts a camp each summer where he teaches footwork in the paint, and many NBA stars have trained with him, including Yao Ming, Kobe Bryant, and LeBron James.

What really made Olajuwon great is that he stepped up his game when it mattered most, especially against the toughest competition. During his two championship seasons, he outplayed David Robinson, Shaquille O'Neal, and Patrick Ewing in the playoffs, and also beat teams led by Karl Malone and Charles Barkley. When Robinson won the regular season MVP in 1995, Olajuwon made a point of completely dismantling him in the Western Conference Finals, and Robinson was never the same player again.

The thing that held him back from making the all-time top 10 was that his three-year peak was relatively short for a great player, and happened to coincide nicely with Jordan's first retirement, then abruptly ended when Jordan returned. He played in an era with many other great centers, and he was the best of any of them during his peak years, but he was only one of the top 5 players in the league for 5 seasons, which was a relatively short period, especially when compared to the players that make up my top 10.