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Seems these are kind of his "lost" seasons, almost. His career is interesting:

• Enters the league, leads team to Finals in his second year
• Team is injury-plagued, emerges as best defender in the NBA
• Has a couple bad years between injuries/contract disputes
• Turns out a 3 year peak as good as anybody in NBA history
• ???
• Has two more seasons as an elite defender
• On his last legs and eventually a journeyman

95-96 and 96-97 are missing from the equation.

95-96: Goes up against a strong Sonics team. Gets swept after a poor game 1.
96-97: Beats Sonics with Big 3 including Barkley. Loses to a great Jazz team.

So how do you rate these years?

As good as 92-93 through 94-95?
Slightly worse offensively, as good defensively?
Slightly worse defensively, as good offensively?
Slightly worse on both ends?
Major step back?

If Hakeem is still an MVP type guy in 95-96 and 96-97, I think his longevity might be underrated.

I'd say he was roughly the same on offense as in 1993-95 (weaker motor at this point) and significantly worse on defense (especially than 1993). He was still a star on both ends of the floor though. Definitely a strong all-nba candidate, though probably not MVP-level anymore. Maybe weak-MVP level is fair for these years.

I agree that his longevity is underrated, he's been remarkably consistent for 13 years sample - 1985-97.

Hakeem's longevity is definitely underrated. Great from at least 1986 to 1997. Just as an aside, he had a 19/9.5/2.5 season at age 36 during the rushed 1999 lockout schedule that should have been hell for older players. He got bludgeoned by Shaq in the playoffs but the Rockets didn't have an alternate big man to take the punishment (like say the Spurs always did) and I don't know which 36 year old is holding up much against 350 lb, basically-prime Shaq.

Anyway, 1996 Hakeem was already 33 and still put up a 26.9/10.9/3.6/2.9 season. Kareem at 33 was only at 26.2/10.3. Even knocking it down to 24/9 seasons, there are only 9 of those at age 33 or later and 3 of them are Elgin Baylor from a faster era. In other words, this is a rare season. In the 1st round, the Rockets continued a streak of 5 consecutive road series wins and 6 consecutive SRS underdog victories.

Finally, after only having arguably 1 bad offensive playoff series in his career, he finally had another one in the second round, at an age when plenty of bigs struggle. To be fair, the Sonics were a +16 win, +5.8 SRS favorite. And they didn't exactly just sort of take an interest in Hakeem. They used an army of athletic wings to double and triple Hakeem on the catch and basically dared the Rockets role players to do something after the pass out. People will argue Hakeem should have handled it better but, keeping in mind I haven't watched the games since seeing them live, I have rarely seen a big doubled/tripled this much and this quickly, certainly not back then. I can't think of almost any players who statistically looked great under such committed doubling (i.e. nothing like all the doubles Hakeem saw in earlier years). Come hell or high water, they were not going to let Hakeem walk out of that series with a 25 ppg type series. Hakeem had his worst playoff game ever with a 6 point, 4 rebound game 1 and then was respectable the rest of the way and games 2/3/4 were all close. Including an insane game 2 where the Rockets hit 13 3's, which would have tied the playoff record only a year earlier before the Rockets made 19 against Utah, and the Sonics not only matched the Rockets 13 3's, but broke the Rockets new record of 19 by hitting 20!!! On 20-27 shooting! Including an 8-8 3rd quarter! I still haven't seen anything like it***. And the Rockets only lost 105-101. Anyway, unless the Rockets were supposed to eternally overperform their talent and never lose to a heavy favorite again, they were never getting past the 2nd round. Hakeem was still a very good player and probably does very well against anything other than the Sonics all out assault.

1997. Hakeem has a very good regular season and an excellent playoffs, actually outperforming the 3 peak years in some numbers. 27.6 PER, 0.229 WS48, 62.8 TS% in the playoffs, including an incredible 27/9/4/3/2 conference finals where he shot 59% from the field and had a higher game score than Michael Jordan would have against the same Utah team in the finals. Now people tend to point to this as some example that Hakeem wasn't scalable because the Rockets didn't win it all (because apparently this is the only skill that matters any more). But do you know how the Rockets started that season? 21-2. Hakeem and Barkley meshed perfectly. Barkley upped his rebounds and lowered his scoring, Hakeem lowered his scoring to 23 ppg, Drexler fit in very nicely. Then Barkley started missing games and the Rockets lost 4 in a row. Then he missed some more. Then he got kneed by Shawn Bradley on March 1st and went out for an extended period of time. And Drexler missed a month and a half at the the same time, but the Rockets actually did well, even winning 5 straight without Barkley and Drexler in this stretch. Anyway, when Hakeem and Barkley actually played together, the Rockets were 38-11 (64 win pace). So what was the problem?

First, it's hard to say there was much of a problem. Again, 38-11 in the regular season with Hakeem and Barkley. In the 2nd round, they faced a +6.9 SRS Seattle and won. Then they had to face a 64 win, +8.0 SRS Utah team that set a record by going 36-5 in the 2nd half of the season. Better teams have lost to worse teams than this. But the real problem? Barkley started the season shooting 49.5% from the field. After the Bradley injury, he shot 44% to end the regular season and 44% in the playoffs, and 43% against Utah. Drexler started the season shooting 46%, but after his injuries started shot 41% to end the regular season, 43.6% in the playoffs, and 43.5% against the Jazz. All this while Hakeem shot 59% during the playoffs and nearly had a higher game score against Utah than Barkley and Drexler combined.

In other words, old people things happened. Having a combined age of 101 for your 3 stars would be tough even today, but in 1997? With all 3 players being non-load managed franchise solo stars for over a decade? You were playing with fire. The Rockets sacrificed depth and took a chance to get past Seattle. It worked extremely well when they were healthy, and still worked quite well when less than healthy. Beating a +6.9 team and losing in game 6 on a buzzer beater to a +8.0 SRS team would seem to indicate the Rockets were very good.

These were both very good seasons, just not quite at the level of 93-95, which is expected for age 33 and 34 seasons. In fact, this is an amazing age 34 season. Shaq at age 34 was putting up 18.5/9.5 in the playoffs while getting swept in the first round by Chicago. Duncan had a 13/9 regular season and 12.7/10.5 playoffs while losing in the 1st round to the 8th seed! Kareem had a 24/9 regular season and 20.4/8.5 playoffs. 1997 fits right in along with 1986 as showing how great Hakeem could be in the playoffs outside of his 3 year peak (along with 1987 and 1988 as well).


***No one saw anything like it for a long time. The Rockets and Sonics combined 33 3's in Game 2 were an NBA record, regular season or postseason, for almost 20 years, despite the increasing popularity of 3's over the next two decades. As far as I can tell, it was not broken until May 2015, when two teams combined for 37. One of the teams in that game was, of course, the Houston Rockets.

I think in 1996 he was a top 3 player still after Jordan and Robinson.

1997 he was still pretty good, maybe top 5ish, behind Jordan and Malone but in the range of Shaq and Hill.

ardee wrote:I think in 1996 he was a top 3 player still after Jordan and Robinson.

1997 he was still pretty good, maybe top 5ish, behind Jordan and Malone but in the range of Shaq and Hill.

What makes you think Hakeem was clearly better in 1996 than 1997?

70sFan wrote:

ardee wrote:I think in 1996 he was a top 3 player still after Jordan and Robinson.

1997 he was still pretty good, maybe top 5ish, behind Jordan and Malone but in the range of Shaq and Hill.

What makes you think Hakeem was clearly better in 1996 than 1997?

I don't think he was much worse at all, the scoring drop is really only due to the Barkley trade IMO. Just that guys like Malone and Hill were better in '97 than '96 (I think Hakeem was better than Shaq both years given availability).