70sFan wrote:He also anchored some mediocre Rockets teams to strong offensive results, which Olajuwon could never accomplish. It's because Moses gave you the same strengths Hakeem did, but also took away less from his teammates.
I would disagree with this characterization.
If you're talking about the Rockets of that era being better with regards to their league than Hakeem's work, then what you're talking about are the Rockets of the '70s who had the best ORtg and best eFG in the league before Moses ever arrived.
If you're talking about Moses' last years there where Moses had such big impact, then you're not talking about an offense that was hitting higher rORtg than Hakeem's teams. What Moses showed is that after all skilled offensive players were either gone or past their prime, he could raise your floor tremendously by rebounding all the misses.
Doesn't mean he wasn't a good fit prior to that, or that he didn't deserve some credit for being a part of strong offenses, but we should take care not to lump these eras together. At one point you had strong prime scorers like Calvin Murphy and Rudy T worthy of a lot of respect, the other had Elvin Hayes as the main non-Moses scorer. Couldn't have a more stark difference.
Let's also acknowledge that the Rockets in '94-95 won a title by destroying everyone on offense. Yes it wasn't an all year thing - it was a team peaking in the playoffs - but it was drastically more impressive of an offensive performance than, say, the '82-83 76ers which was loaded with non-Moses offensive talent.
Re: Moses gave you the same strengths Hakeem did. C'mon 70s, I can understand arguments for Moses over Hakeem, but the idea he was given you everything Hakeem did is just crazy to me. These guys had two quite different bodies.