Goat Post Moves? Hakeem, Kareem, Kevin Mchale

[mdonnelly1989]

Who had the greatest set of post moves All Time? Totality

[trex_8063]

As far as who had the largest repertoire of moves and weapons, I think that pretty clearly has to be Hakeem. As for who had the best "go-to" indefensible move: Kareem's sky-hook, baby.

So idk who gets the distinction as GOAT for the question you're asking.

[Quotatious]

As far as who had the largest repertoire of moves and weapons, I think that pretty clearly has to be Hakeem. As for who had the best "go-to" indefensible move: Kareem's sky-hook, baby.

I'd respectfully disagree with you about Hakeem having a better repertoire of moves than McHale. Olajuwon was way more athletic than McHale, so he could use his strength or speed to gain an advantage over his opponents, while with McHale, it was just pure skill, and for me, it's really hard to argue with the results - Hakeem never came even close to 26 PPG on 60% FG and almost 66% TS, for an entire season.

Still, I think that Olajuwon is a fairly close second behind McHale in terms of post moves variety, and he was obviously a much better all-around player (and, FWIW, he was the focal point of his teams' offense his entire career, unlike McHale, who was the second option after Bird).

Kareem's variety of moves IMO wasn't on the level of McHale/Olajuwon, but he may be better than them, because he perfected the fewer moves that he had, and his size allowed him to be more consistently dominant with less effort (for example with his skyhook), and on higher efficiency.

In terms of post moves variety, I'd say McHale and Olajuwon are the best, but in terms of efficiency, it's Kareem and Shaq. Since the OP's question is who had the biggest variety of moves, I'm going with Kevin McHale.

[tsherkin]

As far as who had the largest repertoire of moves and weapons, I think that pretty clearly has to be Hakeem. As for who had the best "go-to" indefensible move: Kareem's sky-hook, baby.

I'd respectfully disagree with you about Hakeem having a better repertoire of moves than McHale. Olajuwon was way more athletic than McHale, so he could use his strength or speed to gain an advantage over his opponents, while with McHale, it was just pure skill, and for me, it's really hard to argue with the results - Hakeem never came even close to 26 PPG on 60% FG and almost 66% TS, for an entire season.

He also never came close to the depth of his team permitting him to face single coverage all game long. He used fewer moves and Olajuwon's handles and athleticism let him wield a browder array of attacks.

You can make a legit argument that McHale's single coverage moves were as good or better: he was amazing. You cannot sensibly argue that Olajuwon didn't have a broader array of moves, or that he wasn't more effective against full defensive attention.

Kareem's variety of moves IMO wasn't on the level of McHale/Olajuwon, but he may be better than them, because he perfected the fewer moves that he had, and his size allowed him to be more consistently dominant with less effort (for example with his skyhook), and on higher efficiency.

Kareem had like three moves through the seventies, four if you count the left-handed variant of the skyhook he used on the left block. He didn't really add a face-up jumper until much later. That said, at his height and with his efficiency and passing game, he didn't really need a lot more. You could make an argument that his simple set of moves was as or more effective than what McHale or Olajuwon did. Kareem was nasty.

Mchale had an up and under, a baseline spin and a turn-into-the-lane fallaway J where he used his length to gain separation. He had your basic drop steps, too. He didn't do a ton else besides hit the O-boards or move off-ball: he didn't have to. He had none of Olajuwon's midpost game and he didn't have third-level counters. He was a move-countermove guy, which is a big separation compared to Dream. It isn't sinful to have fewer moves if what you do is that effective, see Shaq. Same deal. Step into lane for hook. Spin baseline for hook or dunk. Up and under. Drop step. That's basically Shaq's repertoire, only McHale had range to 17 feet and used a fallaway Shaq abandoned after Orlando.

[trex_8063]

Yeah, I gotta agree with tsherkin here. I went back and watched some "Kevin McHale post moves"/"Kevin McHale scoring" compilations on YT to refresh my memory. Wasn't really noting a wide array of moves. There was the turning over his left shoulder right-handed jump-hook (or modified jump-hook), the drop-step (sealing defender on his hip) and laying it off the glass, the little turnaround J......and that was about it, other than hitting the offensive glass (where he was very good at either tipping it in or otherwise keeping the ball high, preventing the possibility of getting stripped).
But still just not the wide array that we saw from Hakeem.

But again, the relatively few moves Kareem had were so amazingly effective and efficient that he'd still maybe be my pick for GOAT post moves.

[Quotatious]

He also never came close to the depth of his team permitting him to face single coverage all game long. He used fewer moves and Olajuwon's handles and athleticism let him wield a browder array of attacks.

You can make a legit argument that McHale's single coverage moves were as good or better: he was amazing. You cannot sensibly argue that Olajuwon didn't have a broader array of moves, or that he wasn't more effective against full defensive attention.

I've actually alluded to that difference in terms of attracting defensive attention (but it's not really about Hakeem attracting extra defensive attention compared to McHale because of him being that much more potent offensive force, but rather because McHale had a lot more offensive threats on his team - obviously Bird was the #1 concern for opposing defenses, but they also had a second inside scoring threat - Parish, and someone who was about as good as you could hope for as a fourth option - DJ, plus Ainge was clearly more talented offensively than your average 5th option - he even went on to average 17+ PPG when he left Boston).

Meanwhile, Hakeem often really just couldn't count on his teammates to deliver (actually, he was extremely frustrated with them by the early 90s, even demanded a trade in 1992, he was close to being traded to the Clippers). Obviously he played with Sampson for the first 2.5 seasons of his career, but it still doesn't compare to the talent that McHale played with, and after Tomjanovich took over as a coach, they were solid offensively, but it was a direct result of the system that he applied, which was based on surrounding Hakeem (and his own improvement as a passer) with shooters, it certainly wasn't a result of Olajuwon getting a chance to play with some amazingly talented offensive players (Drexler would fit that bill, I guess, but they won their first championship without him, so I wouldn't focus too much on that addition.

Okay, enough with it, went slightly off-topic.

Getting back to the crux of the matter - it's very possible that McHale would've faced similar defensive pressure as Hakeem, if he played on a much less talented team than the 80s Celtics, a team where he would be the go-to-guy. How he would be able to deal with it is another thing (well, I'm pretty sure he would've focused more on improving his passing, like Olajuwon did in '92).

Like I've said before, Olajuwon was way more athletic, so he could really take advantage of those phyiscal gifts (he was also remarkably skilled, no doubt about it, but he had that physical advantage over his opponents that McHale didn't), whereas McHale's only above-average physical gift was his great length/wingspan, but he was skinny as hell, not really fast or strong, not a punishing physical presence - he was basically all skill, while Olajuwon was half skill/half athleticism (kinda like I would compare Bird and MJ/Kobe - Bird was all skill, he just had to make up for his relative lack of athleticism with skill and high IQ/anticipation, while MJ/Kobe, who's also extremely skilled and fundamentally sound, has a huge athletic advantage over Bird - not that it takes anything away from MJ/Kobe/Hakeem, no, punishing them for being athletic would be ridiculous, but it just makes me appreciate Bird/McHale even more).


Okay, I'll leave it at that, because this post is really starting to look a bit weird for someone like me, who ranks Olajuwon as a top 5 player of all-time.

[penbeast0]

I'm not sure I'd limit it to those 3. Adrian Dantley had incredible success as a slim 6'5 (he couldn't even bully people out of his way like Barkley who did pretty well too); Waymon Tisdale and Marcus Fizer had ridiculous variety of moves; they aren't remotely GOAT candidates because they just weren't GOAT level players but it should tell you that it's not about variety but success. And once you go there, how do you separate out just the moves credit for success v. size/strength/quickness/athleticism/team concept/etc.?

[Quotatious]

I'm not sure I'd limit it to those 3. Adrian Dantley had incredible success as a slim 6'5 (he couldn't even bully people out of his way like Barkley who did pretty well too); Waymon Tisdale and Marcus Fizer had ridiculous variety of moves; they aren't remotely GOAT candidates because they just weren't GOAT level players but it should tell you that it's not about variety but success. And once you go there, how do you separate out just the moves credit for success v. size/strength/quickness/athleticism/team concept/etc.?

As far as variety of moves, classic post up centers like Bob Lanier and Al Jefferson come to mind.

[Warspite]

Kevin McHale


hakeem does deserve mention because he his post game was Ben Wallace like as a rookie.

[Winsome Gerbil]

Kareem had THE shot, quite possibly the most unstoppable shot in league history (which helps explain why he's the leading scorer in league history). But because he had THE shot, I've never had the impression he was busily mastering a full set of moves sown there, because...why? Catch the ball 10 feet away = 10 ft skyhook. 5ft? 5ft hook. 15ft? 15 ft. skyhook.

McHale I think was the technician, more post moves, more variety and counter moves then maybe anybody in history. He was a guru, and if he'd just retired to running his own big man camp after basketball (and doing NBA analyst stuff, he was good at that) instead of trying to head coach I think he would have done better.

Hakeem is in between the two.

Most unstoppable shot:
Kareem
Hakeem
McHale

Best repertoire:
McHale
Hakeem
Kareem

The thing is, that if you are just looking for who was most effective, then you have to throw Shaq on here too. And Shaq had more moves than people gave him credit for, but they were all centered around getting one enormous shoulder or the other into you and sending you flying into the popcorn vendor. But still, if we are just talking effectiveness, he's there with Kareem. If its moves, that's McHale and Hakeem.

[90sAllDecade]

McHale was fantastic, but I just don't see how this isn't Hakeem all the way.

I also don't know if I agree with the argument that less athletic equals more skilled or more athletic equals less skilled.

I think McHale definitely had top 2 all time post moves, but everything McHale could do from what I've seen Hakeem could do and then some. Look at these videos, McHale has beautiful fakes, step throughs, fingerolls, fall aways etc.

But Hakeem has all of that including just as good or greater counter move depth (3 deep at least), and builds on that with a face up game, crossovers, more spins as well.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wdtgUOiWHJg[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22O2lApCBBs[/youtube]