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Hakeem Olajuwon vs. Tim Duncan

Which player would you take for one peak season? Why?

Vote in the poll above.

Hakeem, but it's (very) close. It comes down to Olajuwon's superior ability to score consistently against elite defenses. Both fantastic all-around players, leaders, and playoff performers. Last time I looked at my GOAT peaks list, I had Hakeem at 6 and Tim at 7, so right next to each other.

Peak-wise it's Hakeem due to being better in creating scoring opportunities for himself (and his teammates as he became a better passer in the 90s). Career-wise I prefer Duncan who was almost the complete player that we've seen for so long from the get-go, and thus a more well-rounded player for longer than Olajuwon.

Duncan and it simply isn't close for me in that I think the advantage was absolute when we do the comparison, all be it I think they were insanely close in many areas.

For this purpose I'm making the assumption that we're talking 94 Hakeem vs 03 Duncan.

High level view on their careers at the time: Hakeem was just past his physical and defensive prime. At least that is how my perception was, and normally this would be splitting hairs (he had a DBPM of 5.4 in 93 which lead the league and his 4.7 was pretty great in 94 the year in question). However as I said individual areas are often close here, and this keeps the defensive question pretty darn close. Had we been discussing 90 Hakeem, I think the rest of this discussion would change for me. Offensively is where I really take issue with Hakeem's rankings on these lists and where I want to spend time. Hakeem was never a great passer. I never saw the touch around the basket with a pass to a teammate that I saw when he was making a player. I really don't know why that is, but it was a clear flaw. Hakeem's peak really came about because they (Rudy T) created a system around him that year which allowed him to do what he liked (go one on however many) and then after he'd exhausted all options he'd throw it out to generally open shooters. Hakeem is overall perhaps the best one on one center ever. The problem was, this isn't and wasn't good basketball. There's a reason the rockets didn't have a high seeding going into the playoffs. At times players would just stop playing on offense and just stand around.

Duncan in a lot of ways was in 03, Hakeem 2.0 from an offensive system stand point. Throw the ball to duncan, let him work against the defense, and he'll throw the ball out to open shooters. If Hakeem was marginally better defensively (I'd be open to a discussion on just that for these years, but I somewhat lean towards Duncan here, but I'll give it to Hakeem just because I think it's so close the gap doesn't matter) it wouldn't change this as they were both the defensive anchors. Duncan perhaps was more focused on the rim as Hakeem was more mobile though both are about as good as we've seen.




The topic of discussion is always what sort of burden did they have in carrying the team. Above is a table I threw together showing the percentage of box score stats for the season (so all stats even if the player was off the court) that each player took up. Hakeem has what I would consider a decent advantage in points scored however the assists numbers for Duncan are MUCH better. Duncan also has a reasonable lead in rebounding. I'm not sure blocks and steal mean a lot in this context but I left them as they do show a huge edge for Hakeem and leaving them out seems wrong. Overall to me from the eye test and the simple box score data, I feel there was a reasonable edge offensively for Duncan. I don't feel like there's a clear winner in who did more, but if we're looking for a small edge, I'm going Duncan here just based on the numbers.



Next I looked at their OBPM stats which while not a dream stat, it's food for thought and I think it really captures what I think of both of these guys. These are the best OBPM reasons ever, I think I used 500 minute as a minimum for this pull. No real shocker, neither guy was a great offensive player or at least and elite one. What I think often gets confused is that many people seem to think Hakeem was elite, but it was simply not true. The simple points per game stats greatly missed that his offensive game had real flaws and hurt the team. Now sure he was still about as good as you can get one on one, but there's more to offense than just iso scoring.

Duncan was actually very good offensively in 2003. Now there's a good case I should be talking about 02 Duncan instead of 03 due to him leading the league in offensive winshare, but 03 Duncan still had an offensive winshare of 9.5 good for 7th. Hakeem was 10th at 6.4. I'd also argue that the "hockey" assist if we had the data, I believe would widen the gap between the two, but I don't have that data so I'm speculating based on memory which isn't ideal for Dream since that was more than 20 years ago and I only recall watching a few of those games over again and that was still a while ago.

When we move to those playoff runs, it gets a bit challenging to ever compare two playoff runs. The rockets played some pretty good teams in the Blazers, Suns, Jazz, and Knicks. I don't want to get into an era quality debate (I have both rather low so I'll say they're even), but 3 50 win teams is no joke. The Suns, Lakers, Mav's, and Nets seems a hair weaker for the spurs mostly due to the Nets. The mavs however are the only 60 win team of the groups and the lakers were the defending champions all be it that team was having issues. I still would say those are similar enough runs. The nets for all the talk of being weak had the best defensive rating that year. The mavs had the best offensive rating. Similar to the knicks having the best defensive rating and the Suns having the best offensive rating.

Sorry I don't have playoff data in an nice easy table so no pictures.

Duncan VORP 3.5 BPM 11.6 WS 5.9 WS/48 .279 PER 28.4 Points Per 100 30.6 Assists per 100 6.6 TRB per 100 19.1
Hakeem VORP 2.8 BPM 9.1 WS 4.3 WS/48 .208 PER 27.7 Points Per 100 35.9 Assists per 100 5.3 TRB per 100 13.7

Now yes I got lazy and left out that Duncan turned the ball over at a lower rate and Hakeem had more blocks and steals. I also left out TS% (edge duncan). But I think those stats illustrate their title runes fairly well in those two years.

Each passing year it seems like Hakeem gets more and more valued and Duncan's peak years came in an era where the NBA let defenses do too much, a lot of big names that drew crowds had retired, and in generally it seems that history missed how dominate that year was for Duncan. But for me Duncan was noticeably better 03 than Hakeem 94. While I will give a marginal nod defensively to Hakeem, I can't overlook how much better offensively Duncan was as it wasn't a small gap.

this comparison has always fascinated me and still leaves me without clear-cut answers. This needs to be debated more, but it seems that most people already have their thoughts made up on this matter

My arguments will be as impartial as possible in terms of contents, despite my avatar. Maybe you will feel a bit of a scent of partiality in the way sentences are constructed and in the rethoric department because my goal is to be an advocate of Duncan's case.

If we compare Hakeem's 93-94 season with Duncan's 02-03 season, Hakeem's advantage comes down to usage%, the ability to sustain a higher volume of scoring x game. How do you reconcile this gap with the fact that most advanced stats slightly favour Duncan both in RS and PS?

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Regular season: If we change the system of reference to "100 possessions" (as dhsilv has done above me)
Hakeem is favoured by 2 points,0.6 blocks more,1 steal more,
while
Duncan has 1 more assist,4 more rebounds
(yeah this might seem a bit trivial but the differences in this comparison are so elusive that we need to explore the reductionist approach too)
Accounting for everything,PER gives the advantage to TD ( Duncan 26.9 vs 25.3 Hakeem), WS/48 and BPM too.
On-off for Duncan in RS +14. A staggering +23 in the PS,
We don't know about Hakeem.

(Hakeem has a clear advantage if we take his 92-93 regular season but that advantage also disappears in the playoffs despite playing also half of TD's games)
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Post Season.x 100 possessions: The situation doesn't change much.
Hakeem beats Duncan by 6 points x 100, 1 steal more, 1 block more
Duncan has 6 more rebounds x 100, 1 assist more,
PER, WS/48, BPM, Ortg, Drtg, give the advantage to Duncan here too

Hakeem's opponents had an average of 4.3 SRS in the playoffs
Duncan' opponents had an average of 4.2 SRS in the playoffs (let's give Duncan some handicap because of Dirk missing 3 games...but the spurs were ahead in the series before the injury)

This isn't helpful as much as I thought though and we're not accounting for teammates contribution. Were those rockets w/o HO better or worse than those Spurs w/o TD?

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I'm glad I'm not the only one. I found an interesting thread opened by the user trex_8063 two years ago who questioned the magnitude of this perceived gap between TD and Hakeem, I don't know if he's still concordant with his thoughts though,It would be interesting to know if he changed his mind:
viewtopic.php?t=1403048

Why is peak Hakeem named along with MJ,LBJ,Shaq,Kareem in term of peak playing while Duncan is relegated in the next tier even if the differences seem negligible or just based on raw stats? (at least to me) I feel like something is missing

Blows my mind regardless of who u pick anyone could see not close for either side

I've always been more on the Hakeem camp but it's decently close to a wash

Also I realise there won't be prime for prime pics of these two but that Hakeem Raptors pic is hard to look at lol

I like Duncan just a bit more. Bit better passer being all that really does it for me. Really not much to separate the two either way. Both easily top 10 peaks to me.

One peak season, Hakeem.

Hakeem could bring it to another level, and do it against other ELITE players--score against them AND D them up.

I am not short changing 01-03 Duncan, but 93-95 Olajuwon was something else--he really was.

I would take Duncan over a career as Masigond stated.

Hakeem was more dynamic, but it is pretty close. I think Duncan was like 98% as good as Hakeem was peak wise. I think people are underrating how good peak Duncan was as a scorer though, 24.7 ppg on 57.7 ts% in the playoffs is nothing to sneeze at.

mischievous wrote:Hakeem was more dynamic, but it is pretty close. I think Duncan was like 98% as good as Hakeem was peak wise. I think people are underrating how good peak Duncan was as a scorer though, 24.7 ppg on 57.7 ts% in the playoffs is nothing to sneeze at.

Personally, I am not underrating him as a scorer....but also context is important.

Hakeem played against the toughest defense in the league in the 1994 Finals and still scored 27ppg on 50% shooting. Trust me, it was no fun being guarded by that NYK frontline....

Hakeem more than got his numbers against DRob (understatement) in the 95 WCF and got his numbers against Shaq (although a young one) in the Finals.

I'll say that if I had to face a really tough defender, I'd trust Hakeem's offense more than Duncan's. I really liked Ben Wallace and those Pistons teams, but I seriously doubt Hakeem would have had such a hard time scoring as Tim did.

Brooklyn_34 wrote:

mischievous wrote:Hakeem was more dynamic, but it is pretty close. I think Duncan was like 98% as good as Hakeem was peak wise. I think people are underrating how good peak Duncan was as a scorer though, 24.7 ppg on 57.7 ts% in the playoffs is nothing to sneeze at.

Personally, I am not underrating him as a scorer....but also context is important.

Hakeem played against the toughest defense in the league in the 1994 Finals and still scored 27ppg on 50% shooting. Trust me, it was no fun being guarded by that NYK frontline....

Hakeem more than got his numbers against DRob (understatement) in the 95 WCF and got his numbers against Shaq (although a young one) in the Finals.

I'll say that if I had to face a really tough defender, I'd trust Hakeem's offense more than Duncan's. I really liked Ben Wallace and those Pistons teams, but I seriously doubt Hakeem would have had such a hard time scoring as Tim did.

Peak Duncan didn't play the Pistons in the playoffs, assuming 03 here. You must thinking of 05. He faced the Nets who were still a strong defensive team. I'm not saying Hakeem wasn't a better scorer, but I don't see the gap as some large one.

mischievous wrote:

Brooklyn_34 wrote:

mischievous wrote:Hakeem was more dynamic, but it is pretty close. I think Duncan was like 98% as good as Hakeem was peak wise. I think people are underrating how good peak Duncan was as a scorer though, 24.7 ppg on 57.7 ts% in the playoffs is nothing to sneeze at.

Personally, I am not underrating him as a scorer....but also context is important.

Hakeem played against the toughest defense in the league in the 1994 Finals and still scored 27ppg on 50% shooting. Trust me, it was no fun being guarded by that NYK frontline....

Hakeem more than got his numbers against DRob (understatement) in the 95 WCF and got his numbers against Shaq (although a young one) in the Finals.

I'll say that if I had to face a really tough defender, I'd trust Hakeem's offense more than Duncan's. I really liked Ben Wallace and those Pistons teams, but I seriously doubt Hakeem would have had such a hard time scoring as Tim did.

Peak Duncan didn't play the Pistons in the playoffs, assuming 03 here. You must thinking of 05. He faced the Nets who were still a strong defensive team. I'm not saying Hakeem wasn't a better scorer, but I don't see the gap as some large one.

Right...but watching Tim (and I'm taking anything away from him--I DO have him ranked higher than Hakeem as a player), I can't imagine even peak Tim maintaining his offense if he had to PERSONALLY go up against Shaq, Robinson, Ewing, etc, as Olajuwon did.

Even during the 2003 Finals, Mutombo (who didn't play much) gave Duncan a lot of problems when he was in the game, people forget.

Maybe what I am trying to say is that Duncan didn't have to PERSONALLY face the two way players and defenders that Hakeem faced and beat up on....the other great PFs were Dirk and KG...Dirk and Duncan rarely were matched up against one another because Dirk would shred him on the perimeter and drives to the hoop while Duncan would simply shred Dirk in the post. And I don't remember TD holding a significant advantage during his personal matchups with KG.

Put peak Hakeem against that NJ front line, no way he'd average under 35 ppg, and no way Mutombo is slowing him down, even if it's for 15 minutes.

And yes, as much as I respect Ben and Rasheed Wallace and that Detriot defense, Hakeem would eat both for breakfast.

So hakeem has the advantage on 1vs1 situations and thats what most people remember and tell their grandkids...is this enough though? It seems like Td erases the gap if we consider the general/garnettian impact. I'm still not sold on this distance unless we focus only on scoring

I would rather have Duncan on my team. Better leader in my opinion.

This is Hakeem, though I don't know if it's close or not. Better offense, especially individually, and definitely better defense. More versatile and could just wreak havoc more than Duncan can on both sides of the floor. Peak Duncan aint a slouch either, but I'm taking peak Hakeem.

it's real close but hakeem is a top 2 peak ever afaic so im gonna go with him

Hakeem because of his defense and his ability to take over a game (dream shake!). Duncan is amazing. Duncan has the better career due to longevity and playing perfectly in Pop's system which included David Robinson, Sean Elliot, Manu Ginobli, Tony Parker, Kawhi Leonard and others. If we use Shaq as a measuring stick, Hakeem mopped the floor with Shaq. I would take Duncan if I were starting a franchise though.

Hakeem by a little, but comfortably. More explosive offensively and more mobile defensively. Over an entire season Duncan could be neck and neck with him but Dream had a higher ceiling on both ends.

LakersLegacy wrote:Hakeem because of his defense and his ability to take over a game (dream shake!). Duncan is amazing. Duncan has the better career due to longevity and playing perfectly in Pop's system which included David Robinson, Sean Elliot, Manu Ginobli, Tony Parker, Kawhi Leonard and others. If we use Shaq as a measuring stick, Hakeem mopped the floor with Shaq. I would take Duncan if I were starting a franchise though.

Where and when did Hakeem mop the floor with Shaq?

Bklynborn682 wrote:

LakersLegacy wrote:Hakeem because of his defense and his ability to take over a game (dream shake!). Duncan is amazing. Duncan has the better career due to longevity and playing perfectly in Pop's system which included David Robinson, Sean Elliot, Manu Ginobli, Tony Parker, Kawhi Leonard and others. If we use Shaq as a measuring stick, Hakeem mopped the floor with Shaq. I would take Duncan if I were starting a franchise though.

Where and when did Hakeem mop the floor with Shaq?

That is the way the great Shaq ONeal described it while kidding around about the 0-4 Finals sweep. Shaq said Hakeem had moves and Hakeem never lost his composure or even got mad. Shaq would elbow Hakeem and Hakeem would take the punishment and laugh and say good elbow big fella and go right back the court an put a dream shake on him. Shaq has the highest respect for Hakeem and puts him on a pedestal more so than any other big man he ever faced. That is because Hakeem was the best he ever faced.

I still would take Timmy to start a franchise with because of longevity.