Dream vs Modern day big men

I'm a Spurs fan who eyewitnessed Hakeem dream shake 5-0 and the league's best record Spurs right out of the playoffs. I think he would school most of the bigs out there right now. He was that good.
 
Yessir, he sure was.






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The Jordan wasn't basketball ready in '95 excuse never fails to piss me off. He averaged 31.5 ppg against the Magic in the playoffs and they still lost.
 
Why would the Bulls need to put up with all the headaches Dennis Rodman brought them if they were so unbeatable with Jordan and Pippen alone?
 
Tim Duncan has 4 rings because the east blows chunks in his era, and he has two other top 30 players in manu and parker on his team, of which hakeem had none unless you count an aging drexler.
 
Duncan has been so consistently good.

Hakeem, for three or four years there, was transcendent.

I like Duncan a lot, and he is very, very good. Stupid to poo poo the guy and there are not many here doing that. I was going to school in Mexico during one of the Rockets' title runs. I kept hearing Mexican announcers having a little trouble pronouncing Hakeem's last name -- it sounded like "Ah-la-juan". Funny.
 
Go look at Jordan's stats during his first comeback year (the Rockets second title) - they are REMARKABLY worse ... to say he was full speed is ********. Also, when going on regular season, which is another ******** argument, IMO...didn't Orlando beat the Rockets both times that year ... sure didn't mean much when it came to the real season. MJ just wouldn't lose.
 
You know, Horry wasn't a great reg season player, but in the playoffs he was top 30. Rockets had guys that could hit outside shots and an enforcer type in Thorpe.


Maybe the fact that his teammates were so bad lead to his great stats? We can go round and round on this.
 
jordan's regular season stats in '95 weren't that good. his playoff stats, however, were better than in any of the next 3 years when they won the title. scoring/reb/asts were all either his best or 2nd best of those 4 years (95-98), blocks and steal were his best by a significant margin, his fg% was 2% better than any of the 3-peat years, and his 3pt% was second only to 96. his turovers being higher was the only thing that was off. he could hardly have played better, it was just that this was the post-horace grant, pre-dennis rodman period. he didn't suffer from a chemistry or freshness deficiency, it was a power forward deficiency. even with another top 5 player on the team, even jordan needed more help. plus they went up against the one thing they never faced against any of the western teams they beat, a dominant center (shaq). the knicks with ewing (who wasn't even shaq or hakeem) were the bulls biggest competitors, again showing that a great big man could be effective agianst the bulls.

would i pick the rockets over the bulls if my life depended on it? no. is it a foregone conclusion the bulls win? no, and certainly not without an all-star/near all-star power forward to help jordan out in addition to pippen.

as for duncan and hakeem, duncan is awesome but hakeem is better. if 92-96 had never happened, they're probably just about equal, but 92-96 did happen for hakeem, and duncan didn't (and at this point won't) match that at any time. though he does get big credit for winning the only other single superstar title (besides the '94 rockets) in the last 30 years. the extra all-nba and all-defensive team selections are more a result of team success hugely influencing those awards (and with duncan never having a bad supporting cast, he always was in the spotlight for his winning) and the fact the forward spots aren't separated and thus duncan got 2 slots on each team to try for (with only garnett and then a couple of years of malone and webber to compete against) while hakeem only got 1 slot with ewing for his whole career, drob for 3/4 of it, and shaq for 1/2 of his career to compete against. not really an even playing field.

i mean hakeem was all-nba 3rd team in '95, and we all saw how that worked out for 1 and 2. he didn't even make an all-defensive team (1st or 2nd) the year he became the first guy ever with 200 blocks and 200 steals. couldn't catch a break on those votes.
 
Very true the Rockets did match up with against the Bulls. I recall Vernon Maxwell defending Jordan as good as you could defend him.

The Dream was not a media megastar like other great players of his time.

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Oh, I forgot why the statement was so ignorant. Duncan picked up basketball at about the same time in life as Hakeem - just prior to going to college. I guess you folks really must not have watched those playoff series where

And I am not equating Robinson's rings with Olajawon's rings. I am equating careers. The fact is, David Robinson had a much more consistent total career than Olajawon> He did not have a season where he played the majority of the season with less than 50 wins. When he came into the league, he beat Bird's record for bigget single season turn-around. Robinson and Jordan basically split the IBM award for the statistically best player in the NBA. He never had anyone much more around him than Olajawon, and certainly never had as much around him as the Dream did in 94-95 when they met head-to-head (Cassell, Mad Max, Horry, Kenny Smith, Clyde the Glide).

Duncan's first ring was won with an aging Robinson, Sean Elliot with one kidney, and AJ and Antonio Daniels splitting time at point. Their shooting guard was ... Mario Elie? Jaren Jackson?

His second was won with a 20 year old point guard from France, Stephen Jackson, Bruce Bowen - who previously could not find a roster spot, a near dead Robinson, Malik Rose, and DANNY FERRY.

DANNY FERRY.

As for Duncan being in the class of Bird, Jordan, and Magic... since he was drafted the Spurs have had the best record of any franchise in ANY SPORT... and the best 10 year playoff record of any basketball team ever. And there were no other players from the first championship who were on the team for the last. I am pretty sure no one else has doen that, either.

Only Houston fans (and possibly some Dallas haters) would put Hakeem in Duncan's class as an all around player.

But idealize whatever you want. I'll stick with the numbers.
 
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