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Which early career finals run would you say is better and/or more impressive? Stats wise it looks close though I would say Hakeem has an edge on defense here

1993Playoffs wrote:Which early career finals run would you say is better and/or more impressive? Stats wise it looks close though I would say Hakeem has an edge on defense here

Hakeem led Houston to the most impressive underdog series win in NBA history as far as I'm concerned in the WCF vs Los Angeles I'm not going to sit here and say he did it without any help. Sampson was fantastic. But Hakeem still led Houston in 4/5 categories that series.

LBJ was epically great vs Detroit. But imho that Detroit team wasn't as good as the teams Ben Wallace anchored. Los Angeles otoh was in the midst of winning 3 out of 4 titles.

LBJ was awful vs the Spurs, but to be fair to him Cleveland wasn't even expected to make the Finals or beat the Spurs and plus he was only like 22 years old and still learning the game.

Boston is arguably the GOAT team and it still took them 6 games to beat Houston. Hakeem had a better Finals against the odds than LBJ did.

I'll go with Hakeem here.

The Lakers won the title the year prior and the two years after this. Kareem, Magic and Worthy all played in every game as well and Hakeem's Rockets beat them in 5. Then a pretty competitive series with the Celtics in what is generally seen as their best year as a team to top it off. LeBron was very impressive too, especially against Detroit but overall Hakeem takes it clearly for me.

LeBron's Finals performance gives him the edge here.

Don't really see the case for LeBron.

Hakeem by far.

Ein Sof wrote:LeBron's Finals performance gives him the edge here.

What was so great about his finals performance?

No-more-rings wrote:

Ein Sof wrote:LeBron's Finals performance gives him the edge here.

What was so great about his finals performance?

Yeah like, what? Incredibly weak supporting cast or not, Lebron was legitimately awful in the '07 Finals. This is Hakeem easily.

Is this just their run to the Finals or the whole playoffs? I guess the answer is the same for both, but Lebron's Finals pretty much eliminates him here because it's clearly the worst series by a good margin.

Dutchball97 wrote:The Lakers won the title the year prior and the two years after this. Kareem, Magic and Worthy all played in every game as well and Hakeem's Rockets beat them in 5. Then a pretty competitive series with the Celtics in what is generally seen as their best year as a team to top it off. LeBron was very impressive too, especially against Detroit but overall Hakeem takes it clearly for me.

What's amazing about that Lakers series is that the Lakers' big 3 all had a good series against the Rockets and they still got beat fairly badly. Hakeem definitely led the way as well. A lot of people act like Hakeem wasn't that good offensively until 93 but he was getting it done throughout the 80's when it mattered most of the time.

Ron Swanson wrote:

No-more-rings wrote:

Ein Sof wrote:LeBron's Finals performance gives him the edge here.

What was so great about his finals performance?

Yeah like, what? Incredibly weak supporting cast or not, Lebron was legitimately awful in the '07 Finals. This is Hakeem easily.

Yeah and I feel a big reason the last two games were even close was because Tim Duncan was shut down offensively, something Lebron really had nothing to do with.

No-more-rings wrote:

Ron Swanson wrote:

No-more-rings wrote:What was so great about his finals performance?

Yeah like, what? Incredibly weak supporting cast or not, Lebron was legitimately awful in the '07 Finals. This is Hakeem easily.

Yeah and I feel a big reason the last two games were even close was because Tim Duncan was shut down offensively, something Lebron really had nothing to do with.

Ya that was just an all around terrible series from LeBron. His jumper was awful and he was having trouble with Bowen and then getting semi shut down in the paint though the super slow pace of that series also made all box score numbers seem low for both teams. Parker's ability to execute half court offense really showed through. I'd love to see how 2020 LeBron could have done there in place of his 07 self.

Cavsfansince84 wrote:

Dutchball97 wrote:The Lakers won the title the year prior and the two years after this. Kareem, Magic and Worthy all played in every game as well and Hakeem's Rockets beat them in 5. Then a pretty competitive series with the Celtics in what is generally seen as their best year as a team to top it off. LeBron was very impressive too, especially against Detroit but overall Hakeem takes it clearly for me.

What's amazing about that Lakers series is that the Lakers' big 3 all had a good series against the Rockets and they still got beat fairly badly. Hakeem definitely led the way as well. A lot of people act like Hakeem wasn't that good offensively until 93 but he was getting it done throughout the 80's when it mattered most of the time.

I think this is the only instance in NBA history a team lost despite shooting better than 50% FG for an entire playoff series.

FuShengTHEGreat wrote:

Cavsfansince84 wrote:

Dutchball97 wrote:The Lakers won the title the year prior and the two years after this. Kareem, Magic and Worthy all played in every game as well and Hakeem's Rockets beat them in 5. Then a pretty competitive series with the Celtics in what is generally seen as their best year as a team to top it off. LeBron was very impressive too, especially against Detroit but overall Hakeem takes it clearly for me.

What's amazing about that Lakers series is that the Lakers' big 3 all had a good series against the Rockets and they still got beat fairly badly. Hakeem definitely led the way as well. A lot of people act like Hakeem wasn't that good offensively until 93 but he was getting it done throughout the 80's when it mattered most of the time.

I think this is the only instance in NBA history a team lost despite shooting better than 50% FG for an entire playoff series.

That's actually pretty wild, I do think the Lakers main issue was that at this point Magic should've been the 1st option hence why this series became the catalyst for that to happen. As incredible as Kareem was this season, the team was better off with him handing the reigns to Magic.

Yeah, Sampson blows away anyone on Cleveland. But Hakeem just played so much better in his playoff run than LeBron did, who outside of his legendary Game 5 performance had the worst playoff run of his career. Not to mention, he knocked off the defending champion Showtime Lakers, the only time they failed to win the conference from 82-89, and took a GOAT level Celtics team to 6 games.

Hakeem's 86 run has a case as the most impressive playoff performance of that era. This isn't a fair comparison

The Rockets beat the 62 win, reiging(and soon to be) champ lakers in 5 while Lebron's cavs scraped past a non-contender in 7 to make the final.

Hakeem in a landslide

Ein Sof wrote:LeBron's Finals performance gives him the edge here.

losing in less games to a weaker team?

Hakeem for me

LeBron dragged a hilariously bad team to the finals. They had no chance against the Spurs and that was the worst team to ever set foot on the floor during the finals.

Hakeem played better, but had an exponentially better team. LeBron played with a team full of absolute bums

capfan33 wrote:

FuShengTHEGreat wrote:

Cavsfansince84 wrote:
What's amazing about that Lakers series is that the Lakers' big 3 all had a good series against the Rockets and they still got beat fairly badly. Hakeem definitely led the way as well. A lot of people act like Hakeem wasn't that good offensively until 93 but he was getting it done throughout the 80's when it mattered most of the time.

I think this is the only instance in NBA history a team lost despite shooting better than 50% FG for an entire playoff series.

That's actually pretty wild, I do think the Lakers main issue was that at this point Magic should've been the 1st option hence why this series became the catalyst for that to happen. As incredible as Kareem was this season, the team was better off with him handing the reigns to Magic.

Well they didn't have problems scoring on very good efficiency in that series, either as a team or their Big 3 in general.

I think the biggest problem for the Lakers is it was just too much to ask of Kareem at that age to slow down either of the younger more athletic Twin Towers from scoring on the defensive end.

I don't think any HOFer in nba history has ever faced such a daunting task pushing the age of 40. Hakeem himself when he was past his physical prime at a younger age of 36 in the 1999 series vs Shaq was outplayed in an even more lopsided manner.

Even though the Lakers lost 4-1 it was very impressive for Kareem to average 25ppg at that age...especially vs that level of competition.