RealGM

Who would you rather build a new team around in todays league?

“In today’s league,” the answer is pretty clearly Steph IMO.

The player who was the catalyst for 4 titles and most successful dynasty in the current era.

Hakeem, Much better defensively, better playoff performer

Hakeem!

1. Not a lot of Good Low Post Defenders
2. Elite Defensively
3. Lots of curry’s success was based on the premise of him being ahead of his time… And the league not being prepared for what GSW was doing from 2013-2022. Modernly, assuming they both get their peaks right now; teams are going to be way more prepared personnel and strategically for Curry then they’ll be for Hakeem

Hakeem’s much more resilient and trustworthy in the playoffs. Rim protection never goes out of style and if you think his game of post moves and counter fakes down low wouldn’t work today, all you have to do is look at Jokic to prove otherwise. The one thing I’d be concerned about is Hakeem’s passing ability in a league where zone defense and soft doubles are legal, but I think it’s something he’d adjust too. He’d be a little less valuable in todays game for that reason, but I’d still put him ahead of Steph.

I think pointing "clearly" in either direction is jumping the gun, especially in the case of Hakeem - where he of course played within the framework and crystalized basketball intelligence of a vastly different framework / set of rules & nuances - so all we have is speculation as to how he would perform in today's game contrasted to the tried and tested proof of concept of Curry as a teams' centerpiece.

On the subject of speculation, I think one thing vastly under-regarded here for those who comfortably prefer Steph is how great Hakeem's horizontal defense was. While he doesn't have the sheer lateral acceleration of Russell or the defensive super-computer mind like Garnett (same moniker fits Russell like a glove here as well, GOAT defender for a reason ) - his anticipation and instincts along with movement [graceful footwork and ability to shuffle] I would say are both 100th percentile. What he would be tasked to defend today would certainly be different, but I don't see how being a horizontal ace wouldn't lend itself better today in a game where teams move the ball side to side more often. Of course, he woudn't be deployed as frequently as one who iis stonewalling isolations - but the rim protection and off-ball rotating abilities would still be present in spades for a modernized Hakeem (in theory) - where I think he would still be a destroyer of worlds eliminating teams' cutting/hand-off/PnR sets being able to clog an entire 2-man game up.

iggymcfrack wrote:Hakeem’s much more resilient and trustworthy in the playoffs.

We don't really know for impact.
What we can suggest is his box-production is more resilient (though Curry's BPM after age 34 season is +7, Hakeem's at that age is +7.3 and his latter years, fortunately for the average small, would drag that down).

Curry is (by my impression, without a deep dive) weaker in box-resiliance though there is presently some debate going on about to what extent teams were selling out to stop Curry and to what extent that hurt his real-terms impact.

For whatever it's worth in the small 97 and on sample (mostly from '97) while his box composites hold up well the on-off does so less. This is a tiny sample, playoff on-off is noisy, these aren't main prime years (though the damage is done in '98, '99 not '02 and his average probably "benefits" from not having the age 37 and 38 seasons). For what it's worth I think someone tracking the '95 finals had Houston build a decent chunk of their net advantage in Olajuwon off minutes (in v. limited time, which would make the off rate look great, but also illustrates that it is unsustainable). On the other hand a different poster tracked a bunch of games that were playoff tilted and indicated very strong impact (though again iirc some signs of unsustainability). This is marginal stuff, but raised due to the absence of pure impact data in this area of importance to him (in terms of resilience).

A counter (to better box-resillience) might be that Curry gives us greater certainty of impact. Curry, for a six-year spell, including 3 with a fellow high usage superstar and elite shooter, has an on-off of +17.2. Hakeem is missing masses of data but we do have 94-96 RS, which covers 2 of his widely-regarded (here, I think) peak-ish years (93-95). 14.5, 11.9, 10.3 are strong showings, especially in the peakish years. At the same time the (non-minuted weighted) average over the 3 years would put him a distant (and joint- with Blaylock) second to David Robinson (12.333 to 18.76667. We'll discuss data snippets momentarily, these sorts of numbers fluctuate but his best known year (with two of his top 3 regarded covered, though again missing much prime)is below Curry's 6 year average (again, limitations ... benefits playing with Draymond etc) . From recollection the WoWY family tends to see Olajuwon favorably, as did the playoff tilted peakish tracking and the versus 76er on-off whilst the small sample Squared 2020 RAPMs are positive but not really elite.

iggymcfrack wrote:Rim protection never goes out of style and if you think his game of post moves and counter fakes down low wouldn’t work today, all you have to do is look at Jokic to prove otherwise. The one thing I’d be concerned about is Hakeem’s passing ability in a league where zone defense and soft doubles are legal, but I think it’s something he’d adjust too. He’d be a little less valuable in todays game for that reason, but I’d still put him ahead of Steph.

I would say my impression is Jokic's post game combines fakes with brute force, is headed towards the basket and in a direct manner and is, as you note one head of a hydra with a remarkable passing threat (and my impression is people are more thinking of these two things as being somewhat multiplicative, rather than purely additive). There have been Hakeem advocates (though the one coming to mind, not necessarily a detailed footage analyst [Bill Simmons]) that suggested his post attack could eat the clock. His post attack is, I think, less direct and powerful too, more finesse and footwork and fading, less ending up at the basket.

Hakeem was a lot more literally resilient. In the 13 year span bounded by his All-Star selections (1985-1997), Hakeem missed a grand total of 94 out of 1066 possible regular season games (8.8%) and ZERO playoff games out of 140 possible. For Curry those total missed games in 10 seasons (2014-2023) were 170 out of 777 (21.9%) possible regular season games and 12 playoff games out of a possible 159 (7.6%).

Plus, Hakeem also came right into the league and made All-Star, All-NBA in year 2. It took Curry 5 years to reach All-Star and All-NBA. A team with Hakeem is going to get a lot more prime minutes on the court.

I often like to look at player personalities for these kinds of questions and interestingly (to me) you really can't do much better than these two on that front. Akeem started out a bit rowdy but really became Mr Rogers over time, and obviously both players have been extremely team-loyal

Where do we think Hakeem would rank as an offensive player in today's league? Obviously that's only 1 part of the picture, but I'm curious

Top players that immediately spring to mind:
Jokic
Steph
Luka
LeBron
KD
SGA
Embiid
Giannis
Tatum

How does he compare to those guys? What about somebody like a Trae Young?

henshao wrote:I often like to look at player personalities for these kinds of questions and interestingly (to me) you really can't do much better than these two on that front. Akeem started out a bit rowdy but really became Mr Rogers over time, and obviously both players have been extremely team-loyal

Both players remained on the same team for a long time (which relates to loyalty but also contract situations, CBA, timing of contract expiry, general team context etc).

Olajuwon did issue a trade demand; readings on that situation can differ and information is always incomplete (especially regarding health).

rand wrote:Hakeem was a lot more literally resilient. In the 13 year span bounded by his All-Star selections (1985-1997), Hakeem missed a grand total of 94 out of 1066 possible regular season games (8.8%) and ZERO playoff games out of 140 possible. For Curry those total missed games in 10 seasons (2014-2023) were 170 out of 777 (21.9%) possible regular season games and 12 playoff games out of a possible 159 (7.6%).

Plus, Hakeem also came right into the league and made All-Star, All-NBA in year 2. It took Curry 5 years to reach All-Star and All-NBA. A team with Hakeem is going to get a lot more prime minutes on the court.

Curry also came into a league where no one believed he could be a winner or a leader the way he is now. His style of play was ahead of it's time while Hakeem was more with the times.

Hakeem was definitely more durable and missed fewer games.