Dream vs Modern day big men

i'll see your danny ferry and raise you a pete chilcutt. that guy started in our first 3 series in the 95 playoffs. pete chilcutt! people might even know who danny ferry is today. pete chilcutt? all i remember is he's the only guy i've ever seen take a corner 3 and shoot it behind backboard into all that stuff behind the basket.

and i can't tell if you're being serious about duncan > hakeem and robinson=hakeem but i'll pretend you are. robinson and hakeem's career regular season stats are remarkably similar. mpg, ppg, rpg, blocks, steals, asts, TO's, fg%, ft%. couldn't be more even. however, one was a beast in the playoffs, the other wasn't. you say hakeem had flashes? yeah, they happened every april and may, and the occasional june.

robinson playing on good teams his whole career doesn't really make him more consistent (though he is a stat freak as his career PER is up there with jordan's).

and i guess hakeem's supporting cast was so much better in '95 despite the fact the spurs had the best record in the league. not sure how that works. but of course, one guy came into that WCF series and stepped it up like he always did, and the other didn't. that's what was so ridiculous about the rockets 2 title runs, there was almost never a game hakeem didn't dominate. and certainly not a series he didn't dominate. and it was the same way his whole career. check his career playoff stats, almost 5 ppg higher than the regular season. robinson, not so much.

even duncan in this day and age can let a ginobili or parker own a game. except maybe a drexler game here or there, that was never the case for hakeem. duncan's 2003 title is damn impressive, right there with hakeem's '94 title. but over the course of their careers, duncan is just a level below. i've seen duncan too frustrated by shaq during the lakers run, have too much trouble with guys like the wallaces, and seemingly get bothered by more people than hakeem ever did in his career, to think duncan was better than hakeem. and hakeem certainly wins the defensive side of the ball.

if you wanna stick with the numbers, duncan would get beat pretty handily, except maybe assists and playoff rebounding. if we're going with just winning, it sure does help to be drafted by a team that won 59 games before you got there and then drafted and signed guys better than any team in the league for the next 9 or 10 years. i'm fairly sure only a spurs fan would put duncan ahead of hakeem. the bias doesn't go the other way.



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I'll take Hakeem at his peak against any big man, save possibly Shaq. I'm sorry, if they're not calling offensive fouls, that guy is unstoppable.


Hakeem's 4 year run trumps anything Tim has done in a 4 year span. But, Tim's had the better career, imo. And, he's from another country as well, as someone mentioned earlier.
 
even if you just take out hakeem's 4 year run and go with the first 8 years of his career, the numbers are:

hakeem: 22.9 ppg, 12.5 rpg, 3.5 bpg, 2.0 spg, 2.2 apg, 3.1 TOpg, 51.3 FG%

duncan: 21.6 ppg, 11.8 rpg, 2.4 bpg, 0.8 spg, 3.1 apg, 2.8 TOpg, 50.8 FG%

now the rockets were faster paced than the spurs, but the offensive numbers still stack up well and then the defensive numbers are better. and that's just taking out his best 4 years.
 
The thread seems to have shifted away from the original point, but I vehemently disagree with the idea that Hakeem couldn't handle the athleticism of modern day big men. He wiped the floor with David Robinson and Shaq in the mid 90s when they were in their athletic primes.

The young versions of Robinson and Shaq were probably 2 of the 3 most athletic centers in NBA history along with Howard. They were also a couple of inches taller than Howard, and much better overall players.

I think he could handle the athleticism just fine.

And besides all this, Hakeem was a hell of a run and jump athlete himself when he was younger. You don't set the record for most blocked shots in league history as a 6'10 player if you can't get off the floor.
 
Some of you are rediculous. Duncan has played with much better teams than the Dream no doubt. And Hakeem was a better player than Duncan. He was more athletic, had sick moves in the post, and was a more dominant defender. Don't give me this Duncan is a good TEAM defender ****. Yeah he's good. Hakeem was great on D, not good.

No one is saying Duncan is bad at anything. He is good, very very good. But the Dream is on another level.
 
I'm not a Rockets fan, but I would place Hakeem in rare company at the position. Probably in the top 4, or 5 centers to ever play the game.

Like a couple of much older old timers Russell and Chamberlain, I have no doubt they and Olajuwon in their prime could play with anybody in any era and kick *** doing it.
 
I think I just read a serious argument that Tim Duncan is better than Hakeem. But it's late, so maybe my eyes deceive me. At least I hope that's the case.
 
I actually did not use rings as the sole metric. If you read my posts, my premise is that while Hakeem had one of the greatest four year runs of anyone who ever played the game, the rest of his career was pretty unremarkable.

In contrast, Duncan has been consistently awesome throughout his career.

With respect the to "eye opening" statistics - more shooting = more scoring = more rebounding = more shot blocking. There's no argument that the Spurs, as a strategic matter, play one of the slowest regular season paces in the history of basketball. They can score a ton if they need to, but why run yourself ragged? Also, Duncan plays PF and Hakeem played (mostly) center, so it's a little unfair to compare numbers of blocks... combined with the fact that the Spurs play more team defense than was prevalent in the 90s.

The Dream was a great player. I even had a Dream jersey as a kid. But he had a lot of disappointing seasons, regardless of the guys around him.

There's a reason Duncan is compared to Bill Russell. You have to go that far back.
 
As for prolonged greatness, there were a few years where Dream was not considered the league's best center. How many years can we say that about Duncan?
 
I feel like I'm playing both sides, but I think Horry said that Dream was the best he's played with.

Horry played so well in the playoffs I remember some rated him a top 3 PF. Other than shooting 3's, he was a great defender.

When Houston won the first time, Thorpe/Dream?Horry just overpowered other front lines.


And Dream played with some good players. Or if you're saying he didn't, wouldn't his stats be overinflated? Always the first option? Tim shared the ball with two 20 ppg scorers most of his career.


Back to the talent of Houston through the years. Thorpe was a PF who did the dirty work and never demanded the ball. Same with Smith. Maxwell/Cassell/Smith, while not individual stars, performed their roles well. And Horry was of course Horry.

Sleepy Floyd was not a bad player either.
 
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