Hakeem Olajuwon or Tim Duncan - Start a franchise

[ThaRegul8r]

I am also baffled by the absurd argument Rockets fans are putting out, that Duncan would be nobody in Hakeem's era.

A common tactic. Though usually it's "X player from the past would be nobody in the present era."

[Prokorov]

Who do you take?

Duncan. i dont really see the argument for hakeem either. duncan better in all facets

[Winsome Gerbil]

I am also baffled by the absurd argument Rockets fans are putting out, that Duncan would be nobody in Hakeem's era.

A common tactic. Though usually it's "X player from the past would be nobody in the present era."

An even more common tactic is to deliberately misrepresent an opposing argument in order to create a strawman. Noting that the historical record and Duncan's own career path makes it highly unlikely he could have squeezed in even 1 MVP, let alone 2, during that era. Noting that Tim Duncan does not stand out as nearly such a paragon if annually inside its Tim Duncan v. Hakeem Olajuwon v. David Robinson v. Pat Ewing v. Shaqille O'Neal v. Alonbzo Mourning v. Dikembe Mutumbo. Noting these things does not make Tim Duncan a "nobody" in that era anymore than Hakeem was a "nobody" in the era. It does make it much harder for him to achieve the career accolades he did, as it was for Hakeem, even setting aside the incompetent franchise he was playing for. In case people forget, Hakeem was drafted in the same draft with Michael Jordan. Right there from Day 1 you never have a chance in hell of ever being considered the best guy in the league...unless MJ should conveniently take a couple of years off after 10 years and open a short window for you to show your quality.

[microfib4thewin]

We could also look at the RPOY ranking for Hakeem. While there is still winning bias involved for that project and I do not believe there was anyone who tried to make cases for Hakeem it is probably more reflective of how a player did compared to MVP voting where people back then placed much more emphasis on team success. Let's say we exclude MJ and Magic to make things more fair for Hakeem, here is how he ranked:

87: 2nd(behind Bird)
88: 2nd(behind Bird)
89: 2nd(behind Barkley)
90: 6th(behind Barkley, Ewing, Malone, Robinson, Isiah)
91: 6th(behind Malone, Barkley, Robinson, Pippen, Drexler)
92: 6th(behind Malone, Drexler, Ewing, Robinson, Pippen)
93: 1st
94: 1st
95: 1st
96: 5th(behind Robinson, Malone, Penny, Payton)
97: 2nd(behind Malone)

Which looks better for Hakeem. In 87 and 88 he was only beaten out by Bird who just exited his MVP peak. In 89 he was only beaten out by Barkley during his brief offensive peak before he fell off, but in 90 to 92 he wasn't just getting eclipsed by the two MJs. He was losing out to players that no one put on the all time top 10. His true peak which started in 93 seem to get its deserved recognition as he just finished behind Jordan. Then in 94 and 95 he took the throne as expected. But here is the thing, some people said Hakeem had tougher competition so rising to the very top was more difficult for him than Duncan, but who was his competitions in those two years?

In 94 you have Robinson, Shaq, Ewing, and Malone as his rivals. Robinson and Shaq have the better regular season numbers but their playoff run was short lived. This was just one of the several disappointing elimination for the Admiral while 21 year old Shaq was underwhelming in his first playoff series. Ewing and Malone had similar regular season numbers and were outdueled by Hakeem in the playoffs. In 95, the competition is 22 year old Shaq, MVP Robinson, and Malone. Similar to last year, Malone did not surpass Hakeem in the regular season and got outdueled again in the playoffs. Robinson had his best statistical year but struggled again in the playoffs before Hakeem took him out. Shaq and Hakeem had a standstill and the Rockets got their first title.

When Hakeem took reign his competitors were '94 Malone, '94 Ewing, '95 Robinson, and '95 Shaq. It's just an opinion, but I would have taken 01-03 Duncan comfortably over those four, and I would have put 02-03 Duncan as an equal to 93 Jordan. While the late 80s Hakeem may have been overshadowed by players that were arguably greater than Duncan I do not think that trend continued into the 90s. I do not find competition to be much of an argument to support Hakeem.

[Winsome Gerbil]

Who do you take?

Duncan. i dont really see the argument for hakeem either. duncan better in all facets

That is, just to use a word thrown around earlier...just ignorance. There is no support for that kind of blanket dismissal. At all.

Whichever way somebody chooses to go on this question, if they don't think its close then they don't have a clue what they are talking about. You would be hard pressed to find any two other all time greats more closely matched in statistics and individual achievements. Getting lucky and being drafted onto the right team is not an individual skill. Playing for an all time coach is not an individual skill.

[Prokorov]

Who do you take?

Duncan. i dont really see the argument for hakeem either. duncan better in all facets

That is, just to use a word thrown around earlier...just ignorance. There is no support for that kind of blanket dismissal. At all.

Whichever way somebody chooses to go on this question, if they don't think its close then they don't have a clue what they are talking about. You would be hard pressed to find any two other all time greats more closely matched in statistics and individual achievements. Getting lucky and being drafted onto the right team is not an individual skill. Playing for an all time coach is not an individual skill.

duncan was the better scorer, passer, post player, rebounder, defender, and his overall impact on the game was greater.

hakeem was the ulimate empty numbers guy imo. and the most overrated player on this board. he was great, but not tim duncan great

[Baller2014]

Like I said on the last page, Hakeem was not losing to all-time greats in his pre-94 career, and he was not getting rated behind only all-time greats. Rather, he was losing to run of the mill teams. That's why it's so baffling to hear people post ridiculous questions like "how would Duncan have done in Hakeem's era?!" I'll tell you this for nothing, he wouldn't be losing to the 39 win Sonics in the 1st round of the playoffs. And it's not like that is an isolated example.

[Winsome Gerbil]

Duncan. i dont really see the argument for hakeem either. duncan better in all facets

That is, just to use a word thrown around earlier...just ignorance. There is no support for that kind of blanket dismissal. At all.

Whichever way somebody chooses to go on this question, if they don't think its close then they don't have a clue what they are talking about. You would be hard pressed to find any two other all time greats more closely matched in statistics and individual achievements. Getting lucky and being drafted onto the right team is not an individual skill. Playing for an all time coach is not an individual skill.

duncan was the better scorer, passer, post player, rebounder, defender, and his overall impact on the game was greater.

hakeem was the ulimate empty numbers guy imo. and the most overrated player on this board. he was great, but not tim duncan great

And there ya have it.


Thank you for proving my point for me.

[Winsome Gerbil]

Like I said on the last page, Hakeem was not losing to all-time greats in his pre-94 career, and he was not getting rated behind only all-time greats. Rather, he was losing to run of the mill teams. That's why it's so baffling to hear people post ridiculous questions like "how would Duncan have done in Hakeem's era?!" I'll tell you this for nothing, he wouldn't be losing to the 39 win Sonics in the 1st round of the playoffs. And it's not like that is an isolated example.

No doubt. Timmy absolutely puts up more than Hakeem's 30.5pts on 60.2% shooting 12.7reb and 3.8blk for the series, and would have singlehandedly gone out there and taught Robert Reid and Allen Leavell (the, ahem, "starting backcourt") to shoot better than .337 and .294 in the series. Hell, he may have just shot for those guys. This is Tim Duncan we are talking about.

P.S. You can always tell good team construction around a Twin Towers set when your team hits 3 3ptrs total in a 6 game series to give them space. Which even back then was not much.

[Baller2014]

The whole point of looking at pace and minutes adjustment was to highlight how deceptive volume stats are. Hakeem's stats weren't really better than Duncan's at all, they just appear that way. Not that we should be using volume stats to judge this. Tim Duncan carried some flat out garbage teams in his time, particularly from 01-03. 02 is probably the worst team he ever had, and they won 58 games and were a top 3 team in the NBA. His wing rotation in 01, especially in the playoffs, is maybe the worst wing rotation I've ever seen on a contender. It was awful. Hakeem was a great player. Duncan was better.

[Shot Clock]

As usual, a topic that asks "Who would you take?" becomes pointless bickering among some people about how "my choice is better than your choice." Just stating one's own choice and leaving it at that is apparently too much. It's like, some people are literally incapable of doing it.

And then the people that don't even answer the question but return over and over to take shots from the peanut gallery and act all righteous about people daring to debate on a player comparison board.

[ThaRegul8r]

As usual, a topic that asks "Who would you take?" becomes pointless bickering among some people about how "my choice is better than your choice." Just stating one's own choice and leaving it at that is apparently too much. It's like, some people are literally incapable of doing it.

And then the people that don't even answer the question but return over and over to take shots from the peanut gallery and act all righteous about people daring to debate on a player comparison board.

Incidentally, I didn't see an "X for me" anywhere (before editing). And apparently I must have struck a nerve since I didn't single out a particular faction.

There's a difference between discussion/debate and pointless bickering in which everyone's minds are already made up and no one's going to change anyone's mind. There's nothing wrong with the former. I've defended people's right to choose whomever they want on subjective questions—there's no wrong answer as it's asking who the chooser would take, which is solely a matter of preference—the question isn't even asking who the "better" player is/was; the problem comes when people are unwilling to see where the other person is coming from who makes a different choice from them even if they don't agree with it.

As I haven't attacked anyone, nor resorted to ad hominems or the like (nor even said anyone couldn't do it, but made an observation), it's odd that that out of everything, would elicit offense.

[MacGill]

How in the world can ever answer not include 'I would happily take the left over player here'?

2 top 10 players all of time. I mean these players are so close in absolute impact that you'd really have to see who is the coach and what does your bench look like...and even then, please put a gun to my head and make me choose.

We all know what both players did/doing over their respected careers. Let's not allow for teammates and different era/competition to get in the way here. Both have their advantages if starting today as rookies and both would be center blocks around title contenders. In today's nba, you'd have players dying to join each of them so this wouldn't be a problem and primes are long enough to sustain competitiveness for a decade.

I think these questions would go a lot further if you picked a current team and added both players to make your case. We haven't seen TD without a great coach and we have seen Hakeem with a poor one. Both played fantastic under a great coach. We have too many examples of this and it is silly to think that each player wasn't a difference maker out of the gate.

I have these players as #5/6 all-time due to Hakeem's superior peak play. I could see my rankings reversed. I don't see a clear cut winner here where you wouldn't be asking yourself if you made the right choice and I would hate to meet up with the other team in the finals.

[baki]

Fairly easily Hakeem, just better in every facet of the game.

Swap Hakeem and Duncan, Duncan wins 0 and Hakeem wins more than 5 rings.

LOL watch out guys, world's oldest fanboy approaching.

[baki]

I think David Robinson was a better comparison for Hakeem. If some of you can remember, David was quite a center during the 90s, exceptionally athletic for a center, ran the floor like a guard, awesome alley oops and crazy numbers (who can forget 71 points in a game?) But for so many years he couldn't bring the team to the finals because he just didn't have anybody else on his team. Sounds like someone? Sounds just like Hakeem for many years.

Guess what their win-loss matchup was, David won 30 games against Hakeem's 12.

[baki]

This is an ageless debate.

When I look at their careers, I see only one player with a HOLY **** THAT GUY IS THE GOAT level peak. That's Hakeem. '93-'95 Hakeem can all be argued as the best peak of all time (I don't agree, but it can be argued). Duncan doesn't have a year like that. '03 was great but he was never that good.

The difference was that in David's and Hakeem's era they were made to do almost everything for the team, whereas in Duncan's era the offense and defense was a lot more spread out. With such an effective system we never got to see how much better his numbers would have been.

[Masigond]

The difference was that in David's and Hakeem's era they were made to do almost everything for the team, whereas in Duncan's era the offense and defense was a lot more spread out. With such an effective system we never got to see how much better his numbers would have been.

Actually, we somehow did. Look at Duncan's stats in the 2002 and 2003 playoffs (combined): 25.5 ppg / 15.1 rpg / 5.2 apg / 3.6 bpg / 0.6 spg / 3.4 TOV

The Spurs went through him, and he delivered. He isn't the same scorer as Hakeem (one of the very best centers for true volume scoring as he could create for himself so easily - take the 1995 finals numbers as an example: He was taking 29 FGAs per game), but as he is a very good passer, I'd say that he was close as an offensive force as a go-to-guy. Could he have averaged even more? Quite likely (he was averaging less than 22 FGAs per game in the 2003 playoffs), but there's not that much that Duncan could have done more without his efficiency taking a hit, and maximizing efficiency was what the Pop-lead Spurs embodied quite well. Even rather mediocre players would have their share in the team's offense (in that era - the early 2000s, which were Duncan's peak - there were quite some teams who didn't spread out that much. But the Spurs tried to do so) and Duncan was the guy who made limited players like Bowen score their share (even if Bowen couldn't do anything else than shooting threes from the corner).

[therealbig3]

Well, my initial point with regards to the MVP voting is that yeah, I know Hakeem was on bad teams for the most part...but a super elite player who ranks amongst the very best in the game would still be recognized for how great he is, and would still receive some MVP love. Hakeem wasn't even close in a few of those years.

In 03, when Duncan won his 2nd MVP, T-Mac was 4th in MVP voting that year, AHEAD of Shaq. This was a guy who led a crappy Magic team to a .500 record and the 8th seed in a terrible Eastern Conference. He still got recognition for how great of a player he was. MVP voters WILL give votes to great players on terrible teams. Hakeem wasn't even getting those "sympathy" votes. Why is that? Probably because he wasn't THAT highly regarded around the league...he wasn't considered the clear cut 4th best player in the league after Jordan, Magic, and Bird. He was considered on the same level, or worse, than Robinson, Malone, and Barkley. Guys who Duncan was definitely superior to.

I just don't buy the team success argument as for why Hakeem was always finishing so low in MVP voting, because that hasn't stopped the voters from recognizing great players on bad teams before. Look at the other 4 leading MVP candidates other than Duncan in 03: already discussed T-Mac, but there was KG (51-win T'Wolves in a tough West...still not your typical "MVP" success), Kobe, and Shaq (the Lakers massively underachieved and only won 50 games that year). Dirk finished 7th in the voting, despite having a monster statistical season and leading his team to 60 wins. Sometimes, individual players are so great that they get their due recognition for MVP voting, despite a lack of team success. That wasn't the case for Hakeem.

It's not like there weren't other players that were getting a lot of MVP votes despite playing for mediocre teams.

87: Hakeem finishes 7th behind not only the big 3 (Magic, Jordan, and Bird), but he also finished behind McHale, Nique, and Barkley...Barkley's Sixers only won 3 more games than Olajuwon's Rockets.

88: Hakeem finishes 7th behind not only the big 3, but Barkley, Drexler, and Nique...Barkley's Sixers were 10 games behind the Rockets in terms of record (36-46 vs 46-36)...and yet Barkley still managed to finish 4th that year.

89: Hakeem finishes 5th behind not just Magic and Jordan, but K. Malone and Ewing as well...but admittedly, everyone had clearly more team success than Hakeem.

90: Hakeem finishes 7th behind not just Magic and Jordan, but Barkley, Malone, Ewing, and Robinson...Ewing's Knicks only won 4 more games than Hakeem's Rockets.

91: Hakeem finishes 18th, including behind his own teammate, Kenny Smith...yes, Hakeem missed 26 games, but he still put up the biggest numbers on the team, he still played the majority of the season, and he was still clearly their best player...I don't think Derrick Rose would lose out to Carlos Boozer or Joakim Noah in MVP voting if he missed 25 games in a season, but the Bulls still did really well...and it's also hard to really rag on the supporting cast in this scenario, when they help your team win 52 games while the star player misses 26.

92: Hakeem doesn't even get a vote...can't just be because his team missed the playoffs...because Barkley's Sixers missed the playoffs (and Barkley was eating his way out of Philadelphia and was openly being a cancer and was demanding a trade) with a terrible 35-47 record...and he still managed to receive some votes...Danny Manning received a vote, whose Clippers were only 3 games better than the Rockets...Detlef Schrempf received a vote, whose Pacers finished below .500.

If you think the voters were just getting it wrong (and I actually agree, because some of the people getting votes over Hakeem is pretty ridiculous), fine. But clearly, Hakeem's status as a player wasn't anywhere close to what it's being portrayed here as being...he wasn't considered a super-elite player at the time, because super-elite players on mediocre teams still receive some recognition in MVP voting...just look at Dirk in 03, he had the numbers, and he had the team success...but Kobe, T-Mac, Shaq, and KG, despite winning a lot less games, were considered superior players and thus got the nod from the voters. If you're considered a truly standout player that's just in an unfortunate situation, you don't get voted below so many players like Hakeem did.

[The Infamous1]

Hakeem is a more atheltic Tim Duncan who is better defensively and can Drop 30 a night in the playoffs

[Baller2014]

Hakeem is a more atheltic Tim Duncan who is better defensively and can Drop 30 a night in the playoffs

He must be a much better player than Kobe then, right? I only ask because in another thread I saw you posting in your ranked Kobe "easily" ahead of both Magic and Bird.