Hakeem Olajuwon or Tim Duncan - Start a franchise

[Baller2014]

You continue to conflate 1 drugs scandal with Hakeem's 9 year career prior to winning a title. Yes, in that 1 single year, the drugs thing became a big distraction and hindrance, especially in the playoffs. That's ONE year. What about the rest of them. It was the Hakeem side who started off by talking about how weak his early 90's support cast was, and not that you're getting called on it you're trying to change the subject to the drugs scandal. Could Duncan's support casts in 02 or 03 have gone 28-20 without him? It seems absurdly unlikely. Hakeem's team was playing 500 ball in 1990, with a support cast that put those 01-03 Spurs squads to shame.

[therealbig3]

Personally, my point isn't even about the Rockets losing having anything to do with Hakeem...I'm not BLAMING him for their mediocre performances from 87-92. I just don't understand the argument that there's no way that Duncan would be winning MVPs during that time, or that there's no way he would be seen as an elite player at the time, so he would have done no differently than Hakeem and would have probably been worse...you're kind of implying that Hakeem was in constant contention for MVP during that time, but he was just getting beaten out by GOAT-caliber players and that's the ONLY reason why he wasn't getting much recognition, while Duncan had a weaker era that allowed him to shine...and that's clearly not the case.

I mean, Barkley was consistently beating out Hakeem in MVP voting during this time, despite even worse team success in a couple of these years, so clearly, Hakeem wasn't considered on Barkley's level either. And as great as Barkley was, there's no question that I'm taking prime Duncan over prime Barkley.

[microfib4thewin]

At one point Hakeem was even considered to be below Ewing and Robinson until the 2 peat happened. I don't see how Duncan can rank below those two regardless of how crappy his team is, and both the 02 and 03 Spurs were pretty bad.

[ShaqAttack3234]

I'll go with Dream. He was more dominant, and while some seem to think Dream only had 3 great years from '93-'95, he was great for a dozen years. Particularly from his 2nd year when he led Houston past Magic, Kareem and Worthy's Lakers in the WCF through '97 when Dream was clearly declining, but still played very well at 34 and led one last contender as Houston won 58 games and lost to Utah in the WCF despite their big 3 experiment not being an ideal fit. Some of Dream's playoff performances during this time are really forgotten too, particularly his early years in '87 and '88, some of those are really incredible. If you look at Dream's skills around '90 or '91, they were already close to the Rudy T years, he just wasn't utilized as well due to poor coaching and management. Dream was regularly anchoring top 3-4 defenses, though with a number of different coaches and casts, and Dream was robbed of DPOY in '90 when Houston were tied with Detroit for best defensive rating. Again, Dream took his game to another level in '93, but he was one of the great players in the league for over a decade, just like Duncan was.

[Baller2014]

Don't get me wrong. I have Hakeem in the top 10 all-time. He was a great player. It's just his greatness before 93 and after 95 was not comparable to Duncan's greatness. It's just those 3 years when he is arguably as good or better. That's not such a harsh criticism, I mean Duncan's a top 5 player all-time for mine. I'm can see the argument Hakeem's peak was higher in those 3 years, though not by much if it was. I just weigh that against the rest of his career (where he was great, but not Duncan great).

[90sAllDecade]

Alrighty. Let's get back on the PC board and warm up some muscles

Pops is getting severely underrated here. He's very clearly on the "Mount Rushmore" of all time NBA coaches and has an argument for GOAT coach.

Does anybody think perhaps Duncan's passing ability was enhanced by the coach who installed his system or by the HOF and all star talent he was passing to? Of course it greatly helped.

Rudy T was a good coach who built around Hakeem, but he isn't even close to Pops as a coach. It's like comparing a borderline all star to a top 5 player as far as coaches.

To ignore that and the fact that regular season accolades like MVP voting are team based awards is to ignore context imo. How? The player on the team with the best regular season record or near best usually wins the award.

What helps that regular season record? All star, HOF teammates (who Duncan played with during their peaks/primes) and a GOAT level coach/system.

Hakeem is a better individual offensive player, defensive player and a better athlete than Duncan. Tim has better longevity, but again team support and coaching helps this, a major advantage that Olajuwon didn't have in comparison. Hakeem has a much better peak as well.

Hakeem had to be the #1 offensive AND defensive anchor during almost the entirety of his prime and peak years, Duncan could defer to Robinson, Bowen, Sean Elliot, Rodman at one point, Manu, Parker, Splitter/Leonard this year and had an all time coach in Pops to reduce his minutes to lengthen his career.

Duncan still had some of these players and Pops during his 01-03 years as well, all star level team support on defense and GOAT coaching counts too. Taking everything in account (team support, competition etc.) and the context of stats/flaws in accolades etc., Hakeem is the better individual player imo.

[Baller2014]

Most of what you said has been addressed in excruciating depth already on this thread, so I'll just focus on these two points.

To ignore that and the fact that regular season accolades like MVP voting are team based awards is to ignore context imo. How? The player on the team with the best regular season record or near best usually wins the award.

Try reading Therealbigthree's last 3 posts. He went over this in considerable depth.

Duncan still had some of these players and Pops during his 01-03 years as well, all star level team support on defense and GOAT coaching counts too.

Saying "Duncan had these players in 01-03" is like saying "hey, Lebron had Shaq in 2010" or "why didn't Hakeem make the Raptors good?" These players were not at a good place in their career arc from 01-03 (especially in 02, where the team just sucked beyond any words that can describe sucking). To call players "all stars on D" is to confuse what an all-star is. Mutombo was an all-star on D. Ben Wallace was an all-star on D. Rodman was an all-star on D. Not because any of them had an offensive game at all, but because their D was so good they were on the all-star team.

Nobody on the Spurs support cast was any kind of all-star, and some of their players were simply bad (on D and otherwise). Take a look at the Spurs wing and back-court rotation in the 01 playoffs. Not only was not a single one of those players "good on D", but they were actively bad players, between bench warmers and outright scrubs. The 02 and 03 Spurs were little better. D.Rob was not any kind of all-star at that point, indeed he was passed over for Wally S (that's how bad he looked). And it wasn't some snub because of his stats or because good D wasn't appreciated, Mutombo made the all-star team the same year and was an all-nba teamer purely on the back of his underrated big man D. D.Rob wasn't considered for such honours because he had collapsed as a player, and everyone knew it. He basically didn't even play in the 02 playoffs, and he wasn't much better in 03 when he did play (which wasn't very much). Bowen was good on D, but so bad on O that without a megastar to draw constant double teams like Duncan or Shaq (or peak Hakeem) he would have come off the bench or worse. Talk of how guys were "defensive all-stars" is usually a mask designed to hide the fact that they were "bad players", e.g. "Michael Curry is a good defensive player".

[Mutnt]

Pops is getting severely underrated here. He's very clearly on the "Mount Rushmore" of all time NBA coaches and has an argument for GOAT coach.

Agree, for me Pop is clearly the GOAT coach.

Does anybody think perhaps Duncan's passing ability was enhanced by the coach who installed his system or by the HOF and all star talent he was passing to? Of course it greatly helped.

Good point. I think the edge here for Duncan is his consistency. He didn't peak higher than Hakeem as a passer but he was just more consistent at moving the ball and making passes and I think that mainly stems from him playing in a system like Pop's and for so long. Pop's teams, at times, may have lacked talent but they were never a mess from a coaching standpoint. Sadly, the same can't be said by the majority of Hakeem's teams.

Anyway I favor Hakeem over Duncan from an individual standpoint, that also applies when starting a franchise although I understand why some choose Duncan. But yea, Duncan's main strengths, his consistency & longevity & success, may very well be a result of simply playing for Pop + better teams for the majority of his career.

[Shot Clock]

No not really, you havent explained how the rockets in 1991 still managed to have the same winning percentage despite hakeem missing 26 games, all your doing is making bickering excuses like the typical olajuwon mark. Tell us, why did that terrible supporting cast not miss a beat in 1991 with hakeem out of the lineup, talk about 1991, quit dodging the **** question by bringing up 1992.

Weird stuff happens all the time. Spurs lost Tim for 16 games in 2005 and still won 59 games, and had a winning record without him.

[Masigond]

Weird stuff happens all the time. Spurs lost Tim for 16 games in 2005 and still won 59 games, and had a winning record without him.

Duncan's loss showed in those games!
With him, they were 50-16 (.758)
without him, they were 9-7 (.563)

With him they basically were a championship contender (on pace for 62 wins, on par with the 1st seed Suns of that year), without him the winning percentage would have meant finishing at the 7th seed for the playoffs (on pace for 46 wins)...

Compare that to the difference between the winning percentages of the 1991 Rockets with and without Hakeem. Furthermore, noone will argue that the 2005 Spurs were an OK team as Parker and Ginobili had become true impact players. Still there's a lot of room between borderline playoffs teams and true contenders.

[Shot Clock]

Well, my initial point with regards to the MVP voting is that yeah, I know Hakeem was on bad teams for the most part...but a super elite player who ranks amongst the very best in the game would still be recognized for how great he is, and would still receive some MVP love. Hakeem wasn't even close in a few of those years.

In 03, when Duncan won his 2nd MVP, T-Mac was 4th in MVP voting that year, AHEAD of Shaq. This was a guy who led a crappy Magic team to a .500 record and the 8th seed in a terrible Eastern Conference. He still got recognition for how great of a player he was. MVP voters WILL give votes to great players on terrible teams. Hakeem wasn't even getting those "sympathy" votes. Why is that? Probably because he wasn't THAT highly regarded around the league...he wasn't considered the clear cut 4th best player in the league after Jordan, Magic, and Bird. He was considered on the same level, or worse, than Robinson, Malone, and Barkley. Guys who Duncan was definitely superior to.

There are a ton of reasons why players do and don't get votes. I certainly don't spend a lot of time looking to see who got a handful of votes further down the list as you will see a ton of strange results. I also doubt that if Duncan was in the league during Hakeems timespan he would have been regarded as definitely superior to any of the guys listed. Duncan had no big man competition. The league was putrid during the early 2000's.

Duncan's argument is based mainly on winning. He wasn't going to be winning much vs the Lakers/Celtics and Bulls. He certainly wasn't going to be happy on a drug riddled squad.

92: Hakeem doesn't even get a vote...can't just be because his team missed the playoffs...because Barkley's Sixers missed the playoffs (and Barkley was eating his way out of Philadelphia and was openly being a cancer and was demanding a trade) with a terrible 35-47 record...and he still managed to receive some votes...Danny Manning received a vote, whose Clippers were only 3 games better than the Rockets...Detlef Schrempf received a vote, whose Pacers finished below .500.

Simple. Houston's ownership went public and called Hakeem out for faking injury based on a diagnosis over a pulled hamstring. Hakeem lost it and it became a **** show.

If you think the voters were just getting it wrong (and I actually agree, because some of the people getting votes over Hakeem is pretty ridiculous), fine. But clearly, Hakeem's status as a player wasn't anywhere close to what it's being portrayed here as being...he wasn't considered a super-elite player at the time, because super-elite players on mediocre teams still receive some recognition in MVP voting...just look at Dirk in 03, he had the numbers, and he had the team success...but Kobe, T-Mac, Shaq, and KG, despite winning a lot less games, were considered superior players and thus got the nod from the voters. If you're considered a truly standout player that's just in an unfortunate situation, you don't get voted below so many players like Hakeem did.

This is just hilariously false. Go back and check articles at that time. Hakeem was viewed as a super elite player from early in his career. If he was drafted by a better franchise he'd have seen more recognition but Houston was a mess.

[Baller2014]

No not really, you havent explained how the rockets in 1991 still managed to have the same winning percentage despite hakeem missing 26 games, all your doing is making bickering excuses like the typical olajuwon mark. Tell us, why did that terrible supporting cast not miss a beat in 1991 with hakeem out of the lineup, talk about 1991, quit dodging the **** question by bringing up 1992.

Weird stuff happens all the time. Spurs lost Tim for 16 games in 2005 and still won 59 games, and had a winning record without him.

The Spurs were (fairly) good without Duncan in 2005 because they were a good support cast. Nobody here has said otherwise, instead people have pointed to the bad teams Duncan had (like 01-03).

[Baller2014]

There are a ton of reasons why players do and don't get votes. I certainly don't spend a lot of time looking to see who got a handful of votes further down the list as you will see a ton of strange results. I also doubt that if Duncan was in the league during Hakeems timespan he would have been regarded as definitely superior to any of the guys listed. Duncan had no big man competition. The league was putrid during the early 2000's.

Duncan's argument is based mainly on winning. He wasn't going to be winning much vs the Lakers/Celtics and Bulls. He certainly wasn't going to be happy on a drug riddled squad.

The post your are replying to answers your own post. Long posts were made covering all these points, but you seem to just be ignoring them. Real, myself and Manisgod, to name just 3 posters, went into excruciating depth about this. Yet your reply simply recycles the points we all addressed. "Drug riddled squad", "MVP is based on teams wins", "Duncan would be nothing in Hakeem's era", "Duncan had good teams". Please, go back to our lengthy posts about this and give them the due consideration they deserved.

[Ryoga Hibiki]

Good point. I think the edge here for Duncan is his consistency. He didn't peak higher than Hakeem as a passer but he was just more consistent at moving the ball and making passes and I think that mainly stems from him playing in a system like Pop's and for so long. Pop's teams, at times, may have lacked talent but they were never a mess from a coaching standpoint. Sadly, the same can't be said by the majority of Hakeem's teams.

Those Spurs were very different from the ones we saw recently, especially offensively.
There was not much ball movement and it was all built around isolating Duncan in the post and waiting for the double team, just like Hakeem's Rockets.

[Shot Clock]

Weird stuff happens all the time. Spurs lost Tim for 16 games in 2005 and still won 59 games, and had a winning record without him.

Duncan's loss showed in those games!
With him, they were 50-16 (.758)
without him, they were 9-7 (.563)

With him they basically were a championship contender (on pace for 62 wins, on par with the 1st seed Suns of that year), without him the winning percentage would have meant finishing at the 7th seed for the playoffs (on pace for 46 wins)...

Compare that to the difference between the winning percentages of the 1991 Rockets with and without Hakeem. Furthermore, noone will argue that the 2005 Spurs were an OK team as Parker and Ginobili had become true impact players. Still there's a lot of room between borderline playoffs teams and true contenders.

Ignoring the obvious issues around coaching and turmoil. Houston was at a pretty weak point in their schedule when Hakeem went down. They weren't feasting on top teams they were playing a lot of 20 and 30 win teams. Even when they faced a better team like SAS they hit them during an injury period too.

I can locate the link I had to an article at the time talking about how his team were forced to start stepping up and not just tossing the ball to Hakeem when things got tight. They built more confidence in themselves and Hakeem had more confidence in them.

When Hakeem returned he went on an expect win streak.

[Shot Clock]

There are a ton of reasons why players do and don't get votes. I certainly don't spend a lot of time looking to see who got a handful of votes further down the list as you will see a ton of strange results. I also doubt that if Duncan was in the league during Hakeems timespan he would have been regarded as definitely superior to any of the guys listed. Duncan had no big man competition. The league was putrid during the early 2000's.

Duncan's argument is based mainly on winning. He wasn't going to be winning much vs the Lakers/Celtics and Bulls. He certainly wasn't going to be happy on a drug riddled squad.

The post your are replying to answers your own post. Long posts were made covering all these points, but you seem to just be ignoring them. Real, myself and Manisgod, to name just 3 posters, went into excruciating depth about this. Yet your reply simply recycles the points we all addressed. "Drug riddled squad", "MVP is based on teams wins", "Duncan would be nothing in Hakeem's era", "Duncan had good teams". Please, go back to our lengthy posts about this and give them the due consideration they deserved.

Yes your posts are excruciating and I give them all the consideration they deserve.

Suggesting a player isn't considered an elite player based on MVP voting is frankly so weak it isn't worth spending a lot of time on it. Do you think MJ was really not considered the best in some of those seasons he lost? How about Shaq? Kobe has how many MVP's? Duncan was kucky, the years he got MVP's Shaq and Kobe were splitting votes. They were feuding half the time. Do we really think Kidd was better then Shaq in 2002? No. Was Duncan really the 5th best big man in 2000? Was Mourning that much better then him? Was Elton Brand better then him in 2006? Was he really the 9th best in 2006?

Why would anyone spend time defending player value based on MVP voting. Do you think these writers spend a lot of time thinking about who they are gonna put on their list outside of the couple they are tossing around in their heads as contenders?

[mopper8]

Duncan had no big man competition.

Peak Shaq, peak KG, peak Webber even...hard to so no big man competition with a straight face

[Baller2014]

Yes your posts are excruciating and I give them all the consideration they deserve.

If you won't reply to people's arguments, there's not much point trying to debate with them. A number of posters, myself among them, laid out arguments in great depth, and you just seem to be ignoring our posts.

Suggesting a player isn't considered an elite player based on MVP voting is frankly so weak it isn't worth spending a lot of time on it. Do you think MJ was really not considered the best in some of those seasons he lost? How about Shaq? Kobe has how many MVP's? Duncan was kucky, the years he got MVP's Shaq and Kobe were splitting votes. They were feuding half the time. Do we really think Kidd was better then Shaq in 2002? No. Was Duncan really the 5th best big man in 2000? Was Mourning that much better then him? Was Elton Brand better then him in 2006? Was he really the 9th best in 2006?

We know all about voter fatigue with guys like Jordan. But it wasn't like Jordan fell from #1 to #10, he was at #2 or #3 usually. The votes do, to some extent, reflect the perception of players at the time. Hakeem was not finishing #2 or #3, he was finishing behind lots of guys every year almost, and many on comparably (or less) successful teams.

You aren't willing to accept any of the indicators it seems like; how his team did without him, what his public perception was, his good coaches, etc. It's all invalid, except volume stats and cherry picking of his career (i.e. "look at how great Hakeem was in this playoff series in 1986... but what happened in 87,88, 89, 90, 91, 92, etc, is irrelevant").

[Baller2014]

Duncan had no big man competition.

Peak Shaq, peak KG, peak Webber even...hard to so no big man competition with a straight face

Like I noted, Duncan played PF, and he played in an era with the best PF's of all-time.

[Shot Clock]

Duncan had no big man competition.

Peak Shaq, peak KG, peak Webber even...hard to so no big man competition with a straight face

He didn't have to face Shaq. Seriously he was coddled having Robinson cover for him. When did he face Webber in the playoffs? KG? 2001 and KG had a good series.

Duncan's opposition at PF during playoffs

1998
Suns - Young McDyess
Jazz - Malone (oops nope Robinson will take him for you, you take umm Foster)

1999
Minny - Joe smith
Lakers - JR Reid
Portland - Brian Grant
Knicks - broken down SF Larry Johnson, could have been interesting if Ewing played)

2000 - DNP injury

2001
Minny - Garnett - good series
DAL - Dirk pre-prime Irk Nowitski
Lakers - old Horace Grant

2002
Sonics - Vin Baker
Lakers - Robert (wasn't I a SF) Horry

2003
Suns- Amare 20 years old
LAL - Horry
Mavs - Dirk gets injured they have to put a SF in because they have no bigs
Nets - Martin

2004
Grizz - young Gasol
LAL - Old Karl that suprisingly has great success on Duncan

2005
Denver - Martin
Sonics - Reggie Evans
Suns - Amare (37ppg/10 RPG .550FG% that series)
Det -Wallace - Duncan's numbers plummet

2006
Sac - Kurt Thomas (6'7")
Dal - Dirk 27ppg/13rpg (Duncan has great offensive series but disappears in Game 7 OT and Dirk isn't shut down at all)

2007
Nuggets - Nene
Suns - Amare 26.4p/10.6r
Utah - Boozer
Clev - Gooden

He mainly faced a lot of over matched competition. He face a couple good offensive guys in Dirk and Amare and both had extremely good series against Duncan. Garnett is the closest he came to seeing a great two way player, both had a good series. He faced Detroit who had a great defensive line, he had a height advantage but failed to exploit it and his stats dropped significantly. Even old Malone was effective on him.

I think Hakeem would have gladly traded positions since he had to face guys like Ewing, Shaq, Robinson, Malone, Barkley, Kareem, Parrish and McHale. While they all didn't play Center, he was often put in the position of guarding them. He didn't have a Drob to hide behind.

If Duncan wasn't more successful vs the fodder he faced, something would be really wrong. The only times he faced tough aggressive defenders he suffered. The times he faced good offensive players he didn't shut them down, they often had incredible series against him. Yet he's still considered a premier defender based on team defense. Something Popovich's defensive principles have a lot to do with.