Shaquille O'Neal's all-time ranking and legacy..

[HitMan52]

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Pair Hakeem with Penny Hardaway, Kobe, Dwyane Wade, and the current Suns team IN the big men eras that Shaq played in at his prime, and I can almost guarantee you that Olajuwon would've came out with as many rings. Hakeem took a team of scrubs and won a championship, then got an on-the-decline Clyde Drexler halfway through the season and led a 6th seed to yet another ring...come on.

Hakeem also owned Shaq head to head. There's a quote from Shaq 10 years later in 2005 that I posted on page 3 of this thread saying that Hakeem is, in his mind, the best. That's gotta mean at least SOMETHING in the Shaq-Hakeem debate.

Finally someone giving Hakeem his due. IMO he is the greatest Center of all time due to the fact he played in the big man era and dominated all of them. He went from losing to a stacked Boston Celtics team filled with Bird Parrish and McHale in the Finals to completely dominating Patrick Ewing, David Robinson, and Shaquille O'Neal. Plus Hakeem is the only Hall of Famer not to have another Hall of Famer on a championship team.

[TheKingOfVa360]

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Finally someone giving Hakeem his due. IMO he is the greatest Center of all time due to the fact he played in the big man era and dominated all of them. He went from losing to a stacked Boston Celtics team filled with Bird Parrish and McHale in the Finals to completely dominating Patrick Ewing, David Robinson, and Shaquille O'Neal. Plus Hakeem is the only Hall of Famer not to have another Hall of Famer on a championship team.

Hakeem is no where close to the player Kareem was. Kareem has a good argument for the Goat.

6 MVP's
6 Titles
One of the top scores and rebounders of all-time

[Heat3]

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Pair Hakeem with Penny Hardaway, Kobe, Dwyane Wade, and the current Suns team IN the big men eras that Shaq played in at his prime, and I can almost guarantee you that Olajuwon would've came out with as many rings. Hakeem took a team of scrubs and won a championship, then got an on-the-decline Clyde Drexler halfway through the season and led a 6th seed to yet another ring...come on.

Hakeem also owned Shaq head to head. There's a quote from Shaq 10 years later in 2005 that I posted on page 3 of this thread saying that Hakeem is, in his mind, the best. That's gotta mean at least SOMETHING in the Shaq-Hakeem debate.

Hakeem did not own Shaq in the finals. The Rockets may have owned the Magic, but Shaq didn't get owned. Add to that the fact that Shaq was only in his third year and Hakeem was an experienced veteran.

As far as Shaq's comments on Hakeem....as big an jerk that Shaq can be, he does often show respect to those that came before him, those who he looks up to. Hakeem being one of them. Bill Russell another. BTW, I'm not saying Dream sucks either, just that he isn't better than Shaq and very few are.

This would all be a moot point had Jordan not retired anyway.....

[eyejayem]

The Dream was great and had a great team around him.
Shaq was completely dominate and took his team to the finals his rookie year to challenge The Dream.
The dominance has been from day 1.
The better team won the finals.
The experience won over.
The Dream was the better player at the time.
But if MJ was still in the game The Dream would have no Championships.

Shaq on the otherhand has won the majority of the the battles against Timmy.
SHaq in my eyes, if he stops Tim in this post season will have total dominace over Tim.
He in my eyes is cemented over Duncan no matter how many more Duncan wins.
This is an older,weaker, less dominate Shaq over a not as old,as weak Tim Duncan.

If Shaq wins he gets 7B locked next to the Dream 7A(thats being nice)
And Tim will sit in the backseat and soon lock up 9a with The Admiral next to him. Thanks for the injury season Dave.

[exkonvict]

The Dream was great and had a great team around him.
Shaq was completely dominate and took his team to the finals his rookie year to challenge The Dream.
The dominance has been from day 1.
The better team won the finals.
The experience won over.
The Dream was the better player at the time.
But if MJ was still in the game The Dream would have no Championships.

Shaq on the otherhand has won the majority of the the battles against Timmy.
SHaq in my eyes, if he stops Tim in this post season will have total dominace over Tim.
He in my eyes is cemented over Duncan no matter how many more Duncan wins.
This is an older,weaker, less dominate Shaq over a not as old,as weak Tim Duncan.

If Shaq wins he gets 7B locked next to the Dream 7A(thats being nice)
And Tim will sit in the backseat and soon lock up 9a with The Admiral next to him. Thanks for the injury season Dave.

QFMFT. Suns vs. Lakers in the Semis to decide Shaq's G.O.A.T. status.

[D.Brasco]

Can we have a sticky dedicated to shaq's stats in the 95 finals against hakeem? Because anytime hakeem is brought up people say shaq was dominanted by him. Shaq actually put up pretty good stats during that series.

[shawngoat23]

Shaq won't pass Bird or Magic. True, they had more talented teammates, but here are a list of teams that won the championship in the 80s: Lakers, Celtics, Sixers, Pistons.

The Sixers (Moses, Dr. J, Toney, Cheeks, B. Jones, etc.) can contend for the greatest team of all time. The Celtics with Bird, Mchale, Parish, DJ, Ainge, Walton, etc. can as well (and in earlier years, Archibald, Maxwell, etc.). The Lakers featured Magic, Kareem, Worthy, Scott, Cooper, and Thompson (and in earlier years, McAdoo and Nixon). The Pistons were the worst championship team of the decade, but look what they had.
- Isiah Thomas, a player who many compare favorably to Chris Paul (top 3 player today)
- Joe Dumars, a Ben Gordon type with better playmaking ability and DPOY caliber defense (#2 SG behind Kobe today, IMO)
- Mark Aguirre, a player capable of scoring 30 ppg with 53% FG as the #1 option on a bad team (Carmelo). The guy who he was traded for, Dantley, was even better.
- Bill Laimbeer, a nasty big with three point range. Led the league in rebounding once. Not quite Dwight Howard on the boards, but think a better Mehmet Okur on offense and a less athletic Ben Wallace on defense.
- Dennis Rodman, greatest rebounder of all time and a shutdown defender. Bruce Bowen with more offense (like 9 ppg on nearly 60% with good passing) and GOAT rebounding in limited minutes.
- Other quality bigs like Rick Mahorn, John Salley, and James Edwards, who would assuredly start on most teams in the league today.
- All this, and Vinnie Johnson was the Finals MVP one year.

This was the type of competition needed to win the ring in the 80s--the weakest such champion--to say nothing of the great teams that didn't win a championship in that era. Quite frankly, none of the teams in the 00s can even measure up to the Bad Boy Pistons, besides the Shaq-Kobe Lakers, and they fall significantly short. The Spurs, while a great franchise, cannot compare. The recent Pistons, who have owned the league in recent years, would find their best players (Chauncey or Rasheed) to be worse than Isiah, Dumars, and Aguirre. Moreover, although the recent Pistons pride themselves on the strength of their starting five, the Bad Boys could more than match that and bring so much more depth off the bench. This is to say nothing of that abomination of a Heat team that somehow won a championship in 2006.

Therefore, it is easy to see why many value a championship earned in the 80s--even with stacked teammates--more highly than championship today.

[King Roosk]

The Dream was great and had a great team around him.
Shaq was completely dominate and took his team to the finals his rookie year to challenge The Dream.The dominance has been from day 1.
The better team won the finals.
The experience won over.
The Dream was the better player at the time.
But if MJ was still in the game The Dream would have no Championships.

Shaq on the otherhand has won the majority of the the battles against Timmy.
SHaq in my eyes, if he stops Tim in this post season will have total dominace over Tim.
He in my eyes is cemented over Duncan no matter how many more Duncan wins.
This is an older,weaker, less dominate Shaq over a not as old,as weak Tim Duncan.

If Shaq wins he gets 7B locked next to the Dream 7A(thats being nice)
And Tim will sit in the backseat and soon lock up 9a with The Admiral next to him. Thanks for the injury season Dave.

No bro lol, I don't which Houston Rockets team you were watching back then. In the post above yours the poster stated that Olajuwon is the only HOFer to not have another HOFer on his championship team. Hakeem did not have a great team around him.

Hakeem played in an era of legendary big men. Shaq played in an era where the best big man, althought (arguably) the best ever for his position, was a PF. As for the talk of Hakeem only winning rings because of Jordan's retirement, Shaq didn't win any titles while Jordan played in the 90s either. If you switch Shaq and Hakeem's places in NBA history, along with their teams, then it's only reasonable to believe that Hakeem could have filled one of his hands up with rings. I know people will say "but you can't change their eras, blah blah blah", but it's a completely relevant argument to make when discussing Shaq and Hakeem's greatness against one another.

Let's also not forget Hakeem having disposed of the showtime Lakers with Ralph Sampson in the WCF of 1986, only to go on and lose in 6 games to the legendary Boston Celtics. Who has Shaq beaten? The Nets, the Pacers, the 76ers, and the Mavericks. This is open to debate, but I personally don't think any of the teams that Shaq's Lakers routed were comparable to those of the teams back in the day. Shaq's Lakers had to beat Duncan's Spurs, and that's impressive. However, Olajuwon's teams routed the Malone/Stockton Jazz, the D-Rob led Spurs, Barkley's Suns, Ewing's Knicks...Olajuwon was going against legendary players/memorable teams any time he won something meaningful. Just food for thought...

[King Roosk]

Can we have a sticky dedicated to shaq's stats in the 95 finals against hakeem? Because anytime hakeem is brought up people say shaq was dominanted by him. Shaq actually put up pretty good stats during that series.

I couldn't find box scores, but Wikipedia does have their PPG for that series:

Game Hakeem Shaq

1 31 26
2 34 33
3 31 28
4 35 25


Olajuwon averaged 32.8 ppg for the series, and Shaq averaged 28 ppg. Hakeem didn't necessarily "own" Shaq in that series (by the modern definition of the word), but he did outscore him in every single game, scoring at least 30 points in each game of the finals. That's one on one vs Shaq, and that's impressive.

[Doctor MJ]

No it's not just Magic vs KAJ but for some reason people are talking as if Magic was the leader of the Lakers since his rookie season.

Well, he did win the Finals MVP his rookie year capped with a final game performance that was as great as anything Kareem has ever done. I wouldn't want to use that to knock Kareem, but to talk about rookie Magic as if he was a sidekick is pretty absurd.

[ice9]

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I couldn't find box scores, but Wikipedia does have their PPG for that series:

Here's box scores for all the games including recaps.

http://webuns.chez-alice.fr/finals/1995.htm

O'Neal had more rebs, assists, and blocks than Hakeem, but also more turnovers. Hakeem did take 42 more fg's in the series than Shaq. Shaq had 16 more ftas. Minutes and fouls are identical. There is no way Shaq got owned, it was the Magic as a team that got dominated.

[G35]

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Well, he did win the Finals MVP his rookie year capped with a final game performance that was as great as anything Kareem has ever done. I wouldn't want to use that to knock Kareem, but to talk about rookie Magic as if he was a sidekick is pretty absurd.

Yes I would say Magic was the sidekick then and for years after that. Kareem was hurt and Magic filled in with his legendary performance. But he never had another game statistically better than that one. I would compare the situation to Shaq/Kobe in relation to Magic/KAJ.

In that rookie season Magic was the 4th leading scorer and 2nd on the team in assists behind Norm Nixon. Kareem was clearly the #1 option and Wilkes the #2 option even in the playoff's......

[tkb]

Here's box scores for all the games including recaps.

http://webuns.chez-alice.fr/finals/1995.htm

O'Neal had more rebs, assists, and blocks than Hakeem, but also more turnovers. Hakeem did take 42 more fg's in the series than Shaq. Shaq had 16 more ftas. Minutes and fouls are identical. There is no way Shaq got owned, it was the Magic as a team that got dominated.

Note that the 9 steals recorded for Shaq in game 2 is most likely a mistake.

But, yeah, the statement that Shaq got dominated by the Dream is way overdone. The Magic were completely outmatched after Nick Anderson and Dennis Scott put up choke jobs for the ages in that series. Shaq himself will tell you that Dream owned him (as he did publically at the time), but everyone knows it was the rest of the team who dropped the ball while Shaq held his own against Dream.

[Warspite]

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Yes I would say Magic was the sidekick then and for years after that. Kareem was hurt and Magic filled in with his legendary performance. But he never had another game statistically better than that one. I would compare the situation to Shaq/Kobe in relation to Magic/KAJ.

In that rookie season Magic was the 4th leading scorer and 2nd on the team in assists behind Norm Nixon. Kareem was clearly the #1 option and Wilkes the #2 option even in the playoff's......

Are you suggesting Magic couldnt be a leading scorer or asst man? Magic at 19 or 20 yrs old could lead the NBA in scoring or asst. He didnt because that wasnt his role. Dont confuse what people can do with what they did. In team sports many times people sacrifice there own for the good of the team. Who wants there PG to be the leading scorer anyway?

The point simply is that in the Finals in a game 6 Magic played all 5 spots scored 44pts and dominated a team with a GOAT candidate on it. Magic may never have done it again because it wasnt asked of him to do so. Magic has said many times that he could have a scoring title but he wouldnt have a ring and he plays for rings.

Wilkes might have been a 2nd leading scorer and Magic 4th but you pick Wilkes over Magic for your team and watch the crowd laugh at you.

[G35]

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Are you suggesting Magic couldnt be a leading scorer or asst man? Magic at 19 or 20 yrs old could lead the NBA in scoring or asst. He didnt because that wasnt his role. Dont confuse what people can do with what they did. In team sports many times people sacrifice there own for the good of the team. Who wants there PG to be the leading scorer anyway?

The point simply is that in the Finals in a game 6 Magic played all 5 spots scored 44pts and dominated a team with a GOAT candidate on it. Magic may never have done it again because it wasnt asked of him to do so. Magic has said many times that he could have a scoring title but he wouldnt have a ring and he plays for rings.

Wilkes might have been a 2nd leading scorer and Magic 4th but you pick Wilkes over Magic for your team and watch the crowd laugh at you.

Well KAJ did win a scoring title. Kareem was the captain of the team. Kareem was the 1st option on the Lakers. He was MVP of the league and a previous 4 time MVP.

One thing about that is just because Magic was talented doesn't mean he was the leader of the team. No coach is going to make a rookie a captain or leader of the team no matter how talented he is.

If you think Magic as a rookie was the leader of the team and watch the crowd laugh at you......