Sports Illustrated wrote:THE STUFF OF DREAMS WITH A PERFORMANCE FOR THE AGES, HAKEEM OLAJUWON LIFTED HIS ROCKETS BACK INTO THE FINALS
The videotaped pictures suddenly grab Rudy Tomjanovich, pictures
that leap off the oversized television screen in his office. He
will be in the midst of dull work, trying to dissect the
tendencies and weaknesses of some Houston Rocket opponent in this
long playoff spring, when his attention will be drawn to his own
team. Stop, rewind. He will watch Hakeem Olajuwon in action with a
new and different eye.
Stop, rewind. Hakeem has the ball in that familiar spot, low, on
the left side, back to the basket. He is spinning left, going to
take that little eight-foot jump shot.
Stop, rewind. He is spinning right. The Dream Shake. He is going
to fall out of bounds as he takes that even more familiar
eight-footer that no one can handle. Stop, rewind. He has his
man up in the air, and he is driving, one step, two steps, jam.
Stop, rewind. He is being double-teamed and passes out to one of
his guards -- to Clyde Drexler or Kenny Smith or Sam Cassell --
for a carnival-easy three-point shot to win a Kewpie doll. Stop,
rewind. The pass will be to a cutter for an easy basket. Stop,
rewind.
Tomjanovich simply will stare at the lethal menu. His good fortune
will overwhelm him. ``Sometimes -- often, really -- I just look at
the tape of Hakeem and say, `God, what are the other coaches
thinking?' '' Rudy T says. ``How do you stop that? What do you do?
We're around him so much that at times we take him for granted.
But to see some of the things he's doing now. . . .''
Stop, rewind.
The time has arrived for everyone to stare in amazement at this
seven-foot gentleman from Lagos, Nigeria, to stare even harder
than last year when he was the MVP in the NBA and led the Rockets
to the NBA championship. That was the for-granted stuff. This is
the surreal. He is one step away from winning the title this time
pretty much by himself, taking an ordinary team to an
extraordinary finish. This is his moment. This is his show.
``He's had an unbelievable run,'' Rocket assistant coach Carroll
Dawson says. ``To go up against the type of competition we've had
and to do the things that he's done . . . he's never played
better. He's scoring, rebounding, blocking shots and -- this is
what he's doing better than he ever has -- making great passes. A
few years ago, he'd get the ball and you'd say, `All right, now
he'll try to score.' Now he waits that little extra bit. He sees
where everybody is.''
The Utah Jazz. The Phoenix Suns. The San Antonio Spurs. In each of
their Western Conference series against those teams, the
sixth-seeded Rockets were the underdogs. In each of the three
series, they faced desperate times. They could have been
eliminated in either of two decisive games against the Jazz, in
any of three against the Suns. They squandered a 2-0 advantage and
faced a best-of-three situation against the Spurs, with two of
those games on the road. Each time they pulled a wondrous escape.
Each time the reason for the escape essentially was their
32-year-old captain.
``To my mind, he's the best player in the league, and he's been
the best as long as I've been in it,'' says forward Mario Elie, a
five-year veteran. ``He's so good that sometimes you get caught up
in just watching him.''
…
The credit that Olajuwon has never received, not even with a
championship and an MVP award last year, has begun to arrive in a
hurry. He is now doing the postseason stuff of Magic Johnson and
Larry Bird and Jordan and Bill Russell. Maybe, hard though it may
be to believe, he is doing even more. Did any of them have to
perform with such a nondescript cast? Perhaps the better
comparisons for his postseason transcendence come from other
sports: Olajuwon is more like Bob Gibson hurling the St. Louis
Cardinals to World Series championships, Reggie Jackson in various
October settings, Joe Montana in those Super Bowls, Wayne Gretzky
on one of those Stanley Cup runs in Edmonton, suddenly everywhere
all at once, controlling the entire drama.
``The series he just played against San Antonio is going to be
legendary,'' Tomjanovich says. ``People will be talking about that
series and how he played for many, many years.''
https://vault.si.com/vault/1995/06/12/the-stuff-of-dreams-with-a-performance-for-the-ages-hakeem-olajuwon-lifted-his-rockets-back-into-the-finals 
