[Project:Primes of the top 10 ever] List the top 12 seasons between Hakeem Olajuwon vs. Larry Bird

[LA Bird]

1. 86 Bird
2. 93 Hakeem
3. 94 Hakeem
4. 84 Bird
5. 87 Bird
6. 85 Bird
7. 95 Hakeem
8. 88 Bird
9. 83 Bird
10. 90 Hakeem
11. 81 Bird
12. 87 Hakeem

Seeing too many 95 Hakeems in the top 3. The best argument for that year is his postseason scoring and while the volume is certainly impressive, the efficiency is not that great. Maybe the 53 FG% looks good back when people don't count 3s and FTs but Hakeem was shooting 2.7 TS% below the rest of his team. That's a long way from GOAT big man scoring runs like 80 Kareem who averaged 32 ppg on 10.0% TS higher than the rest of his team. With the defensive dropoff from previous years, I think 95 was clearly worse than the 93/94 version even before we look at the regular season. I also think people are sometimes too generous with the early versions of Hakeem because of what he accomplished later at his peak. 90 Hakeem is comparable to 90 Ewing, DRob and none of them are on the level of 85/87 Bird.

I am fairly high on early Bird's team defense so some of those seasons still show up here despite the box scores not looking too pretty. 81 Bird had a strong playoffs run (24.5 / 14.5 / 5.6 / 55.5% TS) until his 2011-LeBron-esque choke in the middle of the Finals but 2 of those games were blowout wins so it's not too bad at the end of the day. The 83 Celtics started 37-10 (64.6 win pace) but finished the year 21-21 ending with a upset sweep by the Bucks so I might have to look more into the reasons for that midseason meltdown and whether that affects Bird's rating for the season.

[70sFan]

So many different lists, this one is more exciting than the first one!

[70sFan]

I also think people are sometimes too generous with the early versions of Hakeem because of what he accomplished later at his peak. 90 Hakeem is comparable to 90 Ewing, DRob and none of them are on the level of 85/87 Bird.

I think it's the other way around - people are so used to 1993-95 version of Hakeem that they basically ignore the rest of his career. Olajuwon made some subtle improvements in his offensive game after 1992, but it's nothing ground breaking. Meanwhile, he was never better on defensive side of the floor and this is where the majority of his impact truly comes from.

[Odinn21]

Hakeem Olajuwon vs. Larry Bird results;

Code: Select all

1.  121 points / 0.917 share / '94 Hakeem Olajuwon
1.  120 points / 0.909 share / '93 Hakeem Olajuwon
3.  117 points / 0.886 share / '86 Larry Bird
4.   98 points / 0.742 share / '84 Larry Bird
5.   72 points / 0.545 share / '95 Hakeem Olajuwon
6.   70 points / 0.530 share / '87 Larry Bird
7.   69 points / 0.523 share / '85 Larry Bird
8.   48 points / 0.364 share / '88 Larry Bird
9.   35 points / 0.265 share / '90 Hakeem Olajuwon
10.  31 points / 0.235 share / '89 Hakeem Olajuwon
11.  24 points / 0.182 share / '83 Larry Bird
12.  18 points / 0.136 share / '87 Hakeem Olajuwon

13.  11 points / 0.083 share / '88 Hakeem Olajuwon
14.  10 points / 0.076 share / '81 Larry Bird
15.   5 points / 0.038 share / '82 Larry Bird
16.   4 points / 0.030 share / '97 Hakeem Olajuwon
17.   4 points / 0.030 share / '86 Hakeem Olajuwon
18.   1 points / 0.008 share / '91 Hakeem Olajuwon

Points within top 12 seasons voted;
Hakeem Olajuwon 39 - 39 Larry Bird

Point totals in top 12 seasons voted;
Hakeem Olajuwon 397 - 426 Larry Bird

Winner: Larry Bird with the point totals.

Results on Google Sheets

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A note; I had to not count Narigo's and Dr Positivity's rankings. If they are to provide some explanations in the next 24 hours, I'll update the results with their votes.

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Edit;
Just saw that Dr Positivity had explanations and counted his vote in.
Before his votes, the results were 40-39 & 372-378 and it was tie. With his vote, Larry Bird has a clear advantage in point totals while being tied in the other department, so I changed the winner from a tie to Larry Bird.

[Odinn21]

90 Hakeem is comparable to 90 Ewing, DRob and none of them are on the level of 85/87 Bird.

I'm inclined to agree with this statement btw. There was really not much separating Olajuwon from Ewing and Robinson (and also Barkley fwiw) in the late '80s / the early '90s.

My main comparison for this overlapped timeline is Barkley. We have Olajuwon clearly ahead of Barkley now with the 3 year peak Olajuwon had from 1992-93 to 1994-95. But from 1987-88 to 1995-96, when both were in their respective primes, it was Barkley who was the better player in the first half of that span.

[Dutchball97]

Wow looks like this couldn't have been any closer. To be honest I'm a bit surprised to see the top 8 seasons being exactly in the same order I had them in as well considering how varied the responses were.

[70sFan]

I'm not satisfied by results, but I probably overrate two-way bigman as usual

[Odinn21]

Just saw that Dr Positivity had explanations and counted his vote in.
Before his votes, the results were 40-39 & 372-378 and it was tie. With his vote, Larry Bird has a clear advantage in point totals while being tied in the other department, so I changed the winner from a tie to Larry Bird.