Hakeem with no rings

[LukaTheGOAT]

Mainstream would have him around where KG is at as they would have relatively similar team success I suppose. So I imagine fringe top 20 to anywhere in the top 30 would be his placement without the rings.

[Doctor MJ]

Hakeem still has great playoff numbers but he loses the 94 finals to Patrick Ewing and the Knicks despite outplaying him head to head (same individual stats), then in 95 he loses to MVP David Robinson and the Spurs again with the historically better head to head numbers. How much does he drop on the 100 GOAT list? (fwiw, Spurs then win the 95 finals)

(Fixed the years, thanks Owly for catching that.)

So, it's a good question and one I'll readily acknowledge that I'd see Olajuwon's career very differently without the title wins.

I want to emphasize that my high estimation of Olajuwon doesn't just come because I'm counting his rings - and I think that's pretty believable given that he only won two.

But his performance in this time makes it very hard for me to argue that either Ewing or Robinson were better than he was, and from there it's less a question of where Olajuwon deserves to rank in a GOAT list, and more a question of comparing what I see from Olajuwon to other specific players and finding reasons why those other players deserve to be ranked higher than him. And truthfully, I find that difficult in virtually any comparison because Olajuwon brings such virtuosity to both sides of the ball.

[sp6r=underrated]

To me the more interesting hypo is if Utah wins Game 5, 1995. The Jazz led that game well into the 4th Quarter. That takes out the Robinson and Shaq series entirely. 1994 Suns Game 7 was a clear win for Houston but it was still reasonably close in the 4th. If that happens the Ewing series never happens.

Those 3 series never happen, especially Robinson/Ewing, HAkeem gets regarded differently.