Now that the two oxygen thief players are inducted, I can direct my focus to Hakeem.
AEnigma wrote:Hakeem is the player peak I have the
easiest time placing above Lebron.
Re: “1994 was picked as his peak year”
Yes, largely because he pulled off the MVP/DPoY/FinalsMVP triple crown, and when two years are next to each other, people tend to lean toward the one with the larger playoff sample. To the extent we are judging regular seasons, 1993 looks comfortably more impressive: more rebounds, assists, steals, and blocks per possession… fewer turnovers per possession… Marginal decrease in scoring per possession while scoring more efficiently… I routinely criticise the use of box all-in-ones for cross-player analysis, but I think they at least merit use comparing a player to themselves in two adjacent years, and here they universally favour 1993 (PIPM has the advantage as 7.28 to 6.2, BPM has the advantage as 7.5 to 6.8, RAPTOR has the advantage as 7.78 to 6.08, etc.)… 1993 Hakeem is easily in my shortlist of greatest regular seasons ever, and that stretch starting around January where the Rockets finished on a 41-11 tear is a level I personally do not think any other centre reached.
AEnigma wrote:Hakeem was second in MVP voting [in 1993], and I think one could easily argue he lost for primarily superficial reasons. The Suns started the season 21-4, and went 16-2 without KJ; that sets some narratives pretty early. Add in that they earned the league’s top seed, and that Barkley seemed to many to be Team USA’s best player in the summer Olympics (no Hakeem present), and you immediately have a full steam Barkley MVP train without really needing to look at what either player is doing.
Hakeem had a slower start. He and the Rockets were still working to acclimate themselves to Rudy T’s scheme, with similar growing pains to what we saw with the 1990 Bulls. And then like the 1990 Bulls, they as a team, and Hakeem individually, eventually went on a tear. January 8th, they had a losing record at 14-16. Hakeem was averaging 24.7/12.6/2.8/4.1/1.4 on 57.1% efficiency. They then went 41-11 the rest of the way with Hakeem averaging 26.9/13.3/4/4.2/2.1 on 58% efficiency. Unfortunately, those first couple of months count too, and the Barkley narrative had built up far too much of a lead.
Does it quite meet 2009/13 Lebron? Well, maybe not, but basically no one does, so then it is more about who seems to trail least.
Re: 1994 impact
Keeping in mind the former point about Hakeem’s 1993 production exceeding his production in 1994, I think we should not be so quick to judge his “peak” level as a set “+14.5 on/off” simply because we lack data from the preceding year. In both years, the Rockets had a +4.5 net rating. In both years, their other four starters were Kenny Smith, Vernon Maxwell, Robert Horry, and Otis Thorpe. However, in 1994 Thorpe played 550 more minutes and Maxwell played 300 more minutes. Horry and Hakeem were both consistent (but an edge with them too to 1994), and Kenny Smith saw his minutes decrease by 200
but had Sam Cassell replacing Sleepy Floyd and adding an additional 250 minutes of play. Finally, the team added reliable roleplayer Mario Elie as their sixth man, providing 1600 minutes. All of those additions subtracted primarily from the 1993 bench of Winston Garland (-1000), Carl Herrera (-500), Matt Bullard (-600), and Scott Brooks (-300). To me that reads as a notably better team, yet it was one which only slightly outpaced its predecessor, and I see most of that gap being bridged by Hakeem’s decline in production. On/off can be noisy year to year, but in terms of value provided, I feel pretty comfortable marking 1993 Hakeem as a clear step above 1994 Hakeem.
Re: Playoffs
Here we return to the issue of underselling a player simply because we lack sufficient data. We do not have a collected sample of Hakeem’s plus/minus in 1994, no. However, what we know is that Hakeem is consistently one of the sport’s greatest playoff risers (/maintainers). What we know is that he increased his scoring rate, assist rate, steal rate, and block rate while maintaining his efficiency — and that of course is reflected by an increase in those box all-in-ones like BPM (up to 8.5, and for what it is worth also went up to 9.1 the prior postseason). What we know is that those +4.5 Rockets played at more of a +8 level relative to their competition. And then as a more scattered sample (~46.5 playoff games plus 11 regular season games), we do have some indications that Hakeem was potentially posting monster plus/minus in this period:
https://forums.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?f=64&t=1330591The 1994/95 Rockets supporting cast did not have any players who ever made an all-defensive team. Drexler was a good support piece overall in 1995, but he was not there in 1994. In 1994 they had no all-stars. The only players who had been or would be all-stars were the legendary Otis Thorpe, who was an all-star in 1992, and a rookie Sam Cassell playing less than half the game off the bench, who would go on to make the all-star game ten years later in 2004. None of those players averaged more than 14 points per game in the regular season or postseason, which was less than half Hakeem’s postseason average and barely half of his regular season average. Remember, not a single one of them was ever an all-defensive selection either. For good measure, Hakeem also led the team in assists per game that postseason, as well as points, rebounds, blocks, steals, and minutes (something only replicated by 2016 Lebron among title winners).
In prior projects and threads discussing Hakeem, I compiled
excellent analysis by Fatal9, shared commentary from Elgee both
old and
new, and quoted a more thorough post on
1993 Hakeem from Double Clutch. Several users here more recently may have seen
70sFan’s breakdown of Hakeem’s 1993 Game 7 against the Sonics, which echoed
similar thoughts by Double Clutch. 70sFan has also previously provided
his assessments of Hakeem as a scorer.
As to the comparative part of this process, I am not going to lean too hard against Duncan, because while I think Hakeem had a higher ceiling as both a defender and scorer and proved himself more capable of overcoming adversity, there is plausible merit to the characterisation of peak Duncan as a similar calibre player. For my standards I feel that leans
a little too heavily on the idea that 2002/03 was a true spike for him, but coupled with his superior positional versatility (i.e. it is more intuitive that peak Duncan could replicate Hakeem’s success as a centre than that peak Hakeem could replicate Duncan’s success playing next to Robinson and other centres), any arguments I could make against him feel too eye-test dependent, and Hakeem being more aesthetically dynamic does not mean he was inherently
better. I am also not going to lean too hard against Russell, it because there it is a matter of how much one weighs Russell being a more significant era standout. But for the rest?
AEnigma wrote:Outside of free throw shooting, I have no
strong criticisms of Shaq or Wilt in the playoffs. However, perhaps tied to the principle of missed free throws (which by my count cost Wilt titles in 1965, 1968, and 1969), there is some element of “missed opportunities” in their playoff histories. For me, Shaq’s defensive weaknesses made for a more limiting element in the postseason than Hakeem’s comparatively mediocre passing vision. I think OldSchool pointed out his impressive translation on three separate teams (also applicable to Wilt), which is a definite positive but is somewhat undercut by those teams being consistently
good rosters tied to an all-time 2-guard. This is not prohibitive — Kareem famously only ever won with “the two best point guards ever” — but it does take away most of the adversity aspect. I struggle to envision players exceeding or even matching Hakeem’s results in his place, whereas I can more easily envision Hakeem matching or possibly even exceeding the success of others in their place; such is the benefit of regularly exceeding the realistic playoff expectations for your teams.
Exceeding expectations also happens to be the key distinction I see with Garnett compared to the rest of this group. While Garnett never disappointed me in the postseason,
my process is not about checking for the fewest disappointments.
I have gestured to this before, but Garnett does not have the standouts of other players — those moments where he elevated and brought a team farther than its talent, like we see more consistently with Hakeem or Lebron. 1999 he does a good job of matching with Duncan and gives the Spurs one of their two losses. 2001 he has a respectable scoring performance and clearly outdoes Duncan on that front. 2003 you could argue he plays better than Shaq that series. 2004 he defeats an ostensibly strong Kings team (I am lower on that team’s realistic playoff ceiling but all the same) capped off with a legendary game 7, and then he looks like the best player on the court in the conference finals.
And you know, that is all nice, but compared to the bar of Hakeem or Shaq or Magic I think it falls short, and none of those are at the level of Wilt’s highs for me either. I trust Garnett to meet and on occasion slightly exceed expectations based on the roster around him, while also impacting the game at a superstar level well beyond that of true playoff risers like Reggie or Isiah. Which all puts him fringe top 10 for me, not #6.
Shaq feels like the most pertinent point of comparison among that list, so I will direct my focus to him.
First, I have seen some commentary on the 1995 Finals, but I think that is overstated as
a case for Shaq, both
in the Finals and as
a more general comparison.
Second, focusing more on Shaq’s defensive weaknesses, while it is true that he achieved a moderate degree of defensive competence in the deadball era, a) his (over-)lauded 2000 regular season level never really translated into the postseason because of how opponents in the postseason are better at honing in on specific weaknesses, and b) Shaq routinely struggled against sufficiently skilled pnr offences.
NWI Times wrote:Shaq's pick-and-roll defense is a no-goPRO BASKETBALL: NBA FINALS NOTES
AUBURN HILLS, Mich. -- The Los Angeles Lakers' shoddy pick-and-roll defense probably will improve only when Shaquille O'Neal decides it's necessary.
Chauncey Billups and Richard Hamilton practically scored at will on the play during the first two games of the NBA Finals, usually on picks set by Ben Wallace. O'Neal has the responsibility to stop the point guard's penetration, but sometimes the superstar center doesn't feel like it.
When asked how the Lakers will adjust to the Pistons' bread-and-butter play, coach Phil Jackson managed to slip in another gentle dig at his big man.
"It's probably going to be interesting to see what he does," Jackson said before Game 3 on Thursday night. "Because a lot of times, he'll play it soft in the early parts of the game.
"We hound him to get out there, and he'll come on out later in the game when it becomes critical, depending upon his foul situation and what his level of condition is in the game, as far as tired or active or whatever."
https://www.nwitimes.com/sports/other/professional/shaqs-pick-and-roll-defense-is-a-no-go/article_f63cb549-3157-5f37-b204-ae0cf0145367.html
Shaq never encountered the Jazz after 1998, and 2004 was toward the end of his prime, but those weaknesses did not vanish during the threepeat. Mike Bibby excelled in the 2002 conference finals, and I would characterise his performance as one of the biggest reasons the Kings nearly eliminated the Lakers that year. Alright, still not his peak, but getting closer. Focusing in on 2000, here are the lead point guards he encountered:
- Jason “White Chocolate” Williams; by BBR estimates, the Kings maintain their regular season offensive rating against “the league’s best defence”
- “ason” Kidd; by BBR estimates, the Suns are four points down from their regular season offensive rating… but ten points better than their previous series against the Duncan-less Spurs
- Damon “Mighty Mouse” Stoudemire; by BBR estimates, the Blazers improve on their regular season offensive rating against “the league’s best defence”, and have their best offensive rating of the playoffs
- Mark Jackson; by BBR estimates, the Pacers improve on their regular season offensive rating by six points against “the league’s best defence”, and have their best offensive rating of the playoffs by a significant margin.
So I do not really buy this apocryphal spike in defensive ability or performance against playoff opposition in 2000, and especially not against any legitimately dangerous pnr offence. I am at least more willing to entertain the idea in 2001… but that would require a lot of film review to even attempt to quantify the degree of individual defensive improvement independent of any other factors, and I am reluctant to conclude that Shaq just reached a level of defensive transcendence for 16 games which to my eye was never present contemporaneously or in review (acknowledging that the 2001 Lakers are
not a team I watched closely or ever bothered revisiting, because they had too few interesting games
). In any case, we should be careful not to conflate Shaq’s results in the 2000 regular season with his results in the 2001 postseason.
To bring this comment back to Hakeem, I would like to close with the below quotation compiled from RealGM user Harry Palmer. Thus far I have linked to lengthy posts/compilations rather than quote them in their entireties, but I am making an exception for the below because I want to maintain
some romanticism among this deluge of tracking and skill assessment:
Harry Palmer wrote:Best I ever saw do it.
Not best career, horrible supporting cast during his prime killed that, but never saw another guy just dominate both ends of the floor all game long like that, and also so unique to watch, suddenness and power, agility and grace, skill and athleticism, awareness and relentlessness, he had it all. (but is a bit overrated as a passer. His assists were just the result of how much defensive focus he saw, usually pretty basic kicks to open shooters.) There’s a reason nobody mentions him being drafted over Jordan, and the Rockets owning the prime era Bulls probably helped keep it that way. MJ has said Hakeem was the only player he ever feared, the ‘Big African’, as he called him. (Though in fairness Bird kinda owned him too, but as that was more a rivalry MJ’s not gonna talk too much about that, and also to be fair Bird had waaaaY more help than Hakeem, almost a case of two extremes.)
But a lot of people forget that like MJ, Hakeem exploded onto the scene, beat prime Showtime Lakers to reach the finals in his 2nd year, and was giving probably the best Celtics team ever all it could handle until Sampson’s knee/Hakeem’s ejection. There’s this magazine cover, can’t remember if it was SI or TSN or what, but the cover and lead article were making the case that Hakeem and Sampson back to back 1st overall generational talents were basically cheating and poised to upset the competitive balance and maybe the league should get involved. That was with MJ, Bird/McHale, Showtime, etc. in the league, it was received wisdom that the Twin Towers were the next big thing. Then it all fell apart in a matter of months and he spent the bulk of his career competing against those kind of stacked teams having 2nd best players the likes of Sleepy Floyd or Vernon Maxwell as opposed to Pippen or McHale or Kareem/Worthy, etc. He had support for two brief phases at the very beginning of his career and at the end of his prime and in those 4 or 5 years got to three Finals, winning two. To me this speaks volumes about what he’d have done running with his own Scottie or McHale.
What a waste…but to the guys who played with/against him it was very understood. For just a few examples, Jordan says Hakeem was the best big ever, Shaq says he was the best ever, Big Shot Bob played with prime Duncan and prime Shaq and says Hakeem and it’s not close, etc. But I’ll admit he doesn’t have the resume others do, and his offensive efficiency stats were degraded by carrying such a heavy load at both ends with little support. A lot of people don’t realize that the Dreamshake was a move originated to spin away from the double teaming that was just about automatic for most of his career…indeed Riley says Hakeem was the most routinely doubled/tripled player he ever saw, though in fairness he means specifically doubles from the catch anywhere; Shaq wouldn’t see that but would see a bum rush whenever he got the ball down low that Hakeem did not. Arguably the greatest defensive player ever, arguably the most skilled and among the most athletic bigs ever, he was such a unique built-for-basketball freak, with relatively short powerful legs and long long arms, and a foundation in sports like football (soccer) handball and a kind of volleyball that left him with unreal footwork for a man of any size, off the charts ball to hand coordination and exceptional endurance. He was never super jacked, but more w/e the African version of country strong is. People compared his torso to tensile steel, it was so much denser than you’d think.
I feel there are a couple of generalized points re: Hakeem and data. The first has already been mentioned in terms of how less acute/invariably contextualized defensive metrics are and how much of Hakeem’s real value was contingent on 48 minutes* of being dominant at both ends. Then there is the degree to which his actual defensive play will be obvious watching but whose numerical credit will be dissipated in other’s yield. For example the regularity with which he flashed to prevent a post entry, closed out on the secondary valve n the perimeter to force an error or invite the seemingly open bypass, then was back to protect the rim all in a matter of a few seconds almost as a kind of one man trap. The degree to which everyone who played with him talks about how unicornish he was in this specific regard is pretty eloquent. Personally the only guy I’ve ever seen who came close to even showing the capacity to do this was KG, but he had neither the power nor the post-anchoring role that Hakeem did to fully realize this impact, nor did he do it with a fraction of the regularity. It’s just that he had the capacity that stands out. Possibly Russell playing in a more advanced era would also be here, I cannot tell from what we see on film. So that’s just one example of how do you measure the value of doing something few others would even try?
Next, the degree to which any standardized method automatically homogenizes, and least accurately represents uniqueness. It’s not remotely an issue with the rubric or the people applying it, it’s just the nature of any broadly applied measurement requiring/generating its own gravitational force. Think of how much more accurately scholastic rubrics are tailored to differentiate in the middle/mass rather than at either extreme, Of course this significantly reduces objectivity and leaves analysis wide open to biased ideas of who was/was not the exception, so there’s a futility in highlighting this blind spot, and I don’t feel qualified or unbiased enough to die on this hill. But it definitely helps me understand aspects like almost every player who played with Hakeem and, say, Shaq or Robinson or Duncan consistently saying that not only was Hakeem the best, but that it wasn’t particularly close. And they almost immediately launch into examples like the defensive play I mentioned earlier where he is the primary disruptive force at three different levels on the same play, and how much easier that made their job. The steals/blocks thing is kind of the caveman drawings that indicate but do not especially prove the kind of thing I’m talking about here.
Normally years back I would spend a lot of time at this point highlighting how extreme his lack of supporting cast was relative to any comparable peer but to my delighted surprise in my absence this seems to have become fairly understood. I wish I knew how, but I’ll take it. I’m less sure we have figured out a way to quantify that, but my limitations with data analysis don’t provide any insights into how to move that discussion forward. So call it a big asterisk but not a complete argument.
And I guess the last point I’d make is the degree to which his making everyone around him’s job easier at both ends, less energy intensive and therefore logically yielding them greater reserves that don’t necessarily pay off in a way that’s reflected in any stat you can assign him, or even necessarily require his being on the floor when it does, is again more likely to serve as an impressionist painting rather than a photograph. But again it is a point his peers repeatedly raise, it’s the multidimensional aspect thar for example both Kenny Smith and Michael Jordan raise when calling him the best ever, from opposite points of view. And though I think Hakeem is definitely a highlight friendly player in terms of unique skill sets, the dominant feature that stands out to me that separates what watching him felt like compared with anyone else is the degree to which he was the overwhelming and sideline to sideline focus of play at both ends, relentlessly, up and down and back up again ad infinatum.
I suppose this might mean that my best future objective advocates for this impact is if biometric observation ever approaches baseball’s level, but the nature of their controls makes that seem far off. And so to appreciate that you have to watch entire games and compare that with watching others. For fairness sake I would offer that doing so might also reveal less complimentary angles, for example the degree to which, imo, his passing is overrated, consisting as it did with fairly basic kicks due to the auto-double and triple teaming, and the Rockets being kind of the forerunner of the inside out 3 point game that would become much more sophisticated in other hands. Not necessarily a point against him, if the simple pass is there, take it, but I think the impression of his is exaggerated because of how much that was the bread and butter of their offence when it got to the championship runs.
I’ll close with something that obviously impresses people because it’s mentioned a lot but usually ends up in an ad-hom cul-de-sac about character or w/e and which I have no intention of contradicting but am somewhat more interested in what it tells us about his physical capabilities, and that’s the whole Ramadan thing. In case you’ve somehow missed it, Hakeem’s religion and piety meant that for an entire month in the middle of the season he would neither eat nor drink anything between dawn and dusk. That…should not be able to happen. I mean not without a huge impact… Anyways, the point I’m making about that is not how it’s distinct from ability but rather what extra information it gives us on ability, specifically endurance. Been around pro sports my whole life and nothing I’ve ever learned suggests it’s doable, the margins at elite levels are way too narrow to allow for what should be a fairly crippling practice. But if it made him worse no one has ever had the temerity to suggest it, and some of his career games happened during that period.
But the point I am making is how this dovetails with that 3-d end to end impact he had game after game…to be unique in that way would probably require either ~ superhuman endurance or some kind of unicornish energy efficiency. And I guess maybe his coping mechs for surviving that while being a constant focal point of both teams may even have informed his play when back on healthy practices. But imo it lines up enough to suggest that in addition to his basketball-built physique (in particular relatively short legs allowing for a small man’s footwork and long, long arms allowing for a big man’s space occupation, his at the time pretty unique sports background in sports sceptically dependant on footwork, eye hand/eye ball coordination and multiple jumping (though to be fair here volleyball was a lot more common for basketball players than soccer or handball, for example I think Wilt was considered at or near world level) we have a freakish engine and we are left with what I feel was a perfect storm undermined by a lot of terrible externals beyond his control.
One of a kind.
1. Hakeem Olajuwon (1993 = 1994)
2. Tim Duncan (2003 > 2002)
3. Shaquille O’Neal (2000 > 2001)
. Personally I cannot take D.rob peak so high.