Hakeem Olajuwon's absurd post moves were only his 2nd-best skill | Greatest Peaks Ep. 8

[Music] many people view hakeem alajawan's two championships in the middle of the 90s as a kind of interim title belt on rent while michael jordan swung away at curveballs but maybe hakeem should have been in the best player conversation before jordan retired maybe his dazzling scoring repertoire unlocks something special in the playoffs and maybe that incredible defense made him one of the very best players of the three-point era you are watching what greatness is all about where's larry bird in all this has it blocked by elijah michael jordan saves the day this series tackles one question who was the best at his best we start at the aba merger and go through the best multi-year stretches examining the legends who provided the most on-court impact these are the greatest peaks i was playing other sports soccer volleyball philadelphia i jump more of all around athletes but the coach was telling me that basketball is your game hakeem's defensive highlights have the grandiosity of some nfl films montage no one at nba history recorded boar block shots than a cable lager won even though he was closer to 610 than a true seven feet his incredible combination of athleticism and timing made him feel like a very tall oliver khan on the basketball court this sequence epitomizes how impregnable he could be at the rim scottie pippen turns the corner with dream pulled up top and otis thorpe has no chance against the explosive pippen but when chicago runs this with hakeem as the low man elijahwan spits the dunk back in scotty's face and pippin has a runway and is above the square and he still goes and gets it it's not any easier trying to glide around hakeem because that long right hockey stick finds the basketball as he twists in the air the first cornerstone of his shot blocking brilliance was his accuracy targeting the ball with that domineering right hand notice the hand tracks with the path of the ball as it shot even in his younger days when he was slightly less polished he was incredibly accurate targeting the rock and growing up as a handball player primed him to zero in on the ball like this hakeem didn't play basketball in nigeria until he was about 16 so it was really volleyball that groomed his jumping technique he'd patiently prepare to spring up and wait till the precise moment to commit to a shot he holds until sean elliot's airborne then spikes this thing this is subtle and requires great reflexes but when alejand moved around the paint he was constantly ready to jump which allowed him to attack after a shooter left his feet it's on display here where he slides over to contest but when elliot hesitates hakeem shuffles his feet into a new jumping position and sends it back in his face this is an incredible skill allowing him to slide into position for a save yet he doesn't jump instead controlling his body and waiting for the moment the shooter finally puts it up he probably learned some of this playing his third major sport growing up soccer where fittingly he played goalkeeper foreshadowing his career as the nba's all-time leader in blocks hakeem registered at least five blocks in 35 of his playoff games from 1986 to 1994 and in those last two years had five in nearly half of his postseason contests when he was younger he was more of an athletic force but still fairly raw since he picked up basketball at such a late age and by 1990 his defensive techniques were more polished and he still had that whirlwind athleticism but his 1993 season blended some sage tricks with his incredible body control that was so rare in someone his size for example hakeem learned to lurk closer to the ball than most big men of the illegal defense era you see joe klein point here because elijah won should be above the foul line but dream was so quick to the ball he was rarely called for these violations with david robinson at the top of the key akeem loads to the ball at the edge of the legal boundary the bottom of the little circle so his quick reaction time can erase a layup this subtle positioning was especially valuable on the weak side he's not glued to robinson and was always tracking the ball ready to materialize at the rim uh poor sean elliott elijah one's quick help was a nightmare for opponents who were reluctant to shoot when he went into fly swatting mode with that right hand he tracked threats well and was so quick to come into the lane and suffocate any attempt around the basket when akeem went to the bench opposing teams could finally breathe all of a sudden those high percentage shots around the hoop felt much easier back in the game he swarmed to the ball even with his man up high and that response speed generated more high leverage contests than any contemporary that i've tracked he didn't get to every threat he pounces on this back cut but it's a touch too late and every once in a while he missed a cutter coming through the lane but he was usually quick to rotate plugging up gaps in the back line although by 1995 he was a bit slower sometimes arriving late on these save attempts from outside the paint and a slightly slower motor meant he wasn't itching to jump at everything on command hakeem's agility helped him defend the perimeter too for one he was rarely ever attacked by wings on switches they also didn't run as many pick and rolls in the 90s as they do today and coverages weren't as developed then yet he was still comfortable stepping out and taking on smaller players in these spots without too much of a price to pay on this 1993 play hakeem realizes there's too much space between him and the ball so he closes it quickly then sort of lingers near the lane so he can blow up another shot attempt here he blitzes the ball handler to completely blow up the play although maybe he's too overzealous hounding the dribbler into the backcourt still this fantastic mobility allowed him to erase weaknesses in these outdated ball screen coverages he's really low and lunges at the ball from this crouch then somehow slides back to contest he's hugged up to shaq on this pick and roll but that fluid footwork shifts him into position so he can seamlessly transition from sliding to jumping and preternatural timing stamps the layup the culmination of olajuwon's volleyball timing soccer agility and handball accuracy led to the most important block of his career this jon stark shot is for the title in 1994 hakeem slams on the brakes then somehow recovers backwards and times this leap off the wrong foot to save the season this matrix recovery looks half impossible but he does somehow block it to force a seventh game that houston would go on to win in large part because of olajuwon's offense which may have been even more gravity bending than his defense i remember one time i gave him a bow and he just laughed nice nice nice elbow brother and then he came out and gave me and by shaq means the dream shake hakeem's twirling array of head fakes and spins that set up so many of his moves his blend of size and balletic footwork made him a deadly isolation weapon and these were skills he possessed early in his career drilling crazy fadeaway jumpers or faking one way to freeze defenders and then spinning for a jump hook that agility and balance gave him an edge over most bigs of that time but shot selection was an issue in those early days launching into triple teams at times and in other cases just firing deep jumpers early in the shock clock by 1993 hakeem's scoring game was more polished and under control carving out shots like some sort of basketball ballerina all of his moves flowed together which made them so difficult to slow down a spin one way then back the other throwing up fake and then a hook from there he could fake the hook to set up his fade away to the opposite shoulder and at around 250 pounds he was able to pivot with power and find clean shots in traffic even double teams couldn't always stop his fade away because he could twist and contort into the shot comfortably and dream could also face up from the perimeter and wheel his way into those michael jordan once called him a seven foot guard because hakeem's handle was secure enough to drive into open space and that quickness was a challenge for most opponents who worked really hard just to keep up only to be juked right into highlightville after all of that big men still had to worry about his spin oh that is so nasty hakeem's array of pirouettes and dizzying pump fakes crescendoed in the 1995 western finals against david robinson who was often left on an island to defend him inviting akeem to shoot into that single coverage this series wasn't actually that different from olajuwon's normal scoring these years there were a number of those savage fade aways some of which were still really difficult and didn't always go in along with an assortment of drives up fakes spins and hook shots a lack of double teams made life easier for akeem who obviously welcomed the chance to dance with robinson in an isolation game alajawan is one of the few players who improved his scoring numbers in the playoffs and from 1993 to 95 he was just behind the all-time scoring juggernauts in volume while scoring on positive efficiency as a primary scorer he compares favorably to other contemporary big men however the brilliance of akeem shot making was a double-edged sword these moves were difficult for defenses to take away without hard double teams but they also were hard shots to make most players manufacture easy points against weak defenses but are forced into harder low percentage shots against elite ones but akeem's attempts were already difficult in the first place he just made a bunch of them and since he could generate these shots almost on demand stronger defenses couldn't really take away his scoring because he was already taking those hard shots this kind of resilient or inelastic scoring meant elijahuan's numbers weren't dented that much when he faced stiffer defenses compared to other players in this series elijahuan shows some of the smallest change among volume scorers when facing high-end defensive teams versus facing weak defensive teams one way to limit hakeem's scoring was by sending effective help that forced him into a pass he was dangerous enough that defenses frequently doubled him and that created plenty of outside shots for teammates but elijah won was not a natural passer his instinct was to catch and immediately shift into a scoring move which is why he jacked up so many wild shots when he was younger in 1993 hakeem said he finally grew comfortable trusting his teammates to knock down their open shots and coach rudy tomjanovich implemented a more elashawon centric offense with shooters around hakeem in a kind of spoken wheel model he was more patient in spots allowing the defense to commit to a double team before making a decision and this substantially helped his playmaking during these years by punishing defenses with some basic passing instead of his own scoring his balance and body control allowed him to flow from his scoring dance steps into passes if he felt too much pressure this is a stark contrast to robinson in the last episode who could get locked up by hard doubles hakeem on the other hand easily segued from a dream shake to a pass this helps replace some difficult shots with passes he misses a teammate in close but at least finds the open shooter and here he feels the double misses a more advanced interior pass but still calmly kicks it to a teammate now even in those years olajuwon still took his fair share of double team shots where he left shooters stranded his instinct to just catch and immediately look to score was still strong even at his peak but i think a bigger weakness was a lack of vision this looks like it's in his periphery but he misses it and he rarely ever hit these kinds of passes it's still there when he shoots some of this was a byproduct of playing with his back to the basket and not turning and surveying the court but elijah wasn't someone who mapped the floor or kept an eye on advantages like this his primary focus was reading the double team and here he spins away from it and loses track of where his teammates are to be fair he could hit passes if he felt an extra defender on a drive and he certainly had the athletic dexterity to drop dimes in those situations still more of his passing was out of the post and the results from there were certainly mixed maximizing akim's playmaking really required shooters who were spaced around the three-point arc and this likely raised his offensive value in 1995 when the nba shortened the three-point line higher percentage shooters amplified akeem's playmaking by charging more for those double teams in the post in 1995 the rockets set a new nba record for threes in a season making nearly eight per game at 37 percent then in the playoffs they were closer to nine threes per game at a hefty 39 the record they broke was held by the 1994 rockets who made five a game in the regular season and then nearly seven at 36 percent in the playoffs and you'll never guess who held the playoff record before that the 1993 rockets they made five per game at 37 percent some of those playoff percentages might be boosted by hot shooting but playing inside out was clearly the viable way to construct an offense around olajuwon and the results were pretty good but not great the shortened line in 1995 made this a more attainable strategy basically doubling the number of legit 35 three-point shooters in the league overnight but houston's offense wasn't great because of akeem's passing limitations he didn't look for extra passes like this naturally and so it's unclear how he would fit next to another offensive star the other tools were there to fit next to a playmaking perimeter weapon first he was a really solid mid-range shooter and that allowed him to play the pick and pop game effectively dream was nimble enough to move into some of these shots and the data we have on his long twos near the end of his career suggests he was fairly efficient from the outside he wasn't as big and explosive as someone like robinson either as a lob threat or headed downhill but his agility made him a strong finisher and this meant he was always a scoring threat as a role man using his gracefulness to carve out finishes near the rim furthermore hakeem was also a fantastic offensive rebounder some of this is related to his shot blocking where he could move and jump in one motion the other part is that he just constantly pursued the ball on misses and all those jukes and shakes along with his physical strength made him a pain to keep off the offensive glass he was particularly dangerous sneaking in from the perimeter swimming past two players here to steal shaq's board so the building blocks were certainly there for alajuan to play a fairly effective off-ball role it's just a question of how many post touches and hero ball shots he was willing to forgo his defensive prowess alone makes him interesting to build around because in theory he guarantees his team a passable defense and with the right pieces he can anchor an elite one before hakeem's defense started to slide in 1995 those first two tomjanovich teams held opponents about four points below their regular season efficiency in the playoffs that's around the 70th percentile historically which is impressive for not fielding a defensively slanted team like detroit's bad boys or the twin tower spurs some of this impacts stem from mckeem's man to man defense his shot blocking instincts made shooting around him tricky while his agile feet kept quicker big men in front of him his balance and timing gave post players a ton of trouble which stood out in the 1994 finals against patrick ewing ewing struggled to find any clean shots when isolated against olajuwon and ended up posting an unheard of 39 true shooting in that seven game series hakeem had incredible hands too probably from the handball and one of his defensive tricks when guarding the post was to time up a quick push flick once his man started dribbling sometimes just getting the ball to the post was a chore against him because he gobbled entry passes better than just about any center ever he was constantly repositioning himself into a slight overplay to take away the passing angle then quick enough to toggle back to the other side in a bait and switch all of his handsiness produced historically great steel rates among big men he posted eight of the top 100 seasons in steals per possession including the highest on record in 1989 hakeem also borrowed a little bill russell move where he kept his left hand low to target passes when he left his feet back in episode 2 we saw bill walton limit other all-star centers as scorers but akeem was even more impressive against all stars at his defensive peak he held them over 5 percentage points below their normal true shooting while denting their volume numbers match by only a few of the other defensive giants since we have plus minus data going back to 1994 we can get an idea of how valuable all this defense was using that same hybrid metric from the last episode his impact looks great but it's short of the all-timers keep in mind though his 1993 numbers were likely even better and he seems to improve in the playoffs the box score numbers we do have for those post-seasons view him as around a top 15 peak and that's with limited information to capture his defensive worth given how much of houston's success was driven by a strong defense i think it's fair to assume much of olajuwon's impact was defensively driven which is hard for the box score to capture in a sense hakeem's isolation scoring and monster defense were functionally closer to a young will chamberlain players who can carry subpar offensive talent but who might not help good offenses as much hakeem's three-point shooting offenses did generate better results than those early will teams but i have some doubts about how he'd scale up next to another high-end talent given his passing limitations and shot selection on the other hand he did have the tools to add off-ball value as a rebounder and pick and roll partner while providing an inside out option for any offense and his prodigious defensive timing mobility and aggressiveness made him arguably the best defensive player of the three-point era and at his apex one of the very best big men of all time for more historical content and to support this channel head over to patreon.com thinking basketball and check out thinking basketball the book on amazon that goes deeper on a number of ideas explored in this series there are also longer discussions on many of these players on the thinking basketball podcast and if you're curious about stats from this video there's an entire stat series on this channel otherwise thanks so much for watching i hope you enjoyed this one and that wherever you are you're having a great day [Applause]

Channel: Thinking Basketball

Views: 364,254

Keywords: NBA, NBA film analysis, NBA Analytics, Thinking Basketball, NBA highlights, NBA film breakdown, NBA scouting reports, scouting reports, Best NBA players, Best NBA players all time, Top NBA players, Greatest NBA players of all time, NBA GOAT, Best NBA players ever, NBA peaks, Best NBA peaks, NBA history, Michael Jordan, LeBron James, Kobe Bryant, HD highlights, 90s NBA, 80s NBA, 70s NBA, Spurs, 1995 Western Conference Finals, Hakeem Olajuwon, Dream Shake, best post moves

Id: a1cp6_ucC9M

Length: 22min 5sec (1325 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 11 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/mmmmm_pi]

Loving this series.

Interesting point in the video about how Hakeem's playoff performance only dipped a small amount because his shot mix was relatively hard to begin with. Basically, he was already taking the hard shots defenses wanted him to take.

Line most indicative of how much the game has changed:

• "In 1995, the Rockets set a new NBA record for threes in a season, making nearly 8 per game"

[u/Squirrel_Dude]

Really interesting how dominant Hakeem was in terms off limited other big mens' efficiency and volume in their scoring, especially when he probably played during the best era for centers in NBA history.

[u/[deleted]]

This series is one of my favourite things I’ve watched in ages. His channel in general is great.

[u/DaBombDiggidy]

Playing big man going up it was so great to be able experience Hakeem and Shaq live. Between the two of them you have the absolute peak of finesse vs brute force. The parallel isn't lost when looking at Jordan and Lebron as well... I'm personally not one for rankings it's just been a treat to be able to experience these displays of greatness in my life time. Fuck I love this sport.

[u/downeastsun]

I'll be really interested to see how Hakeem's peak stacks up with Duncan, Shaq & even KG in Taylor's estimation. I've always had Hakeem half a step up on them in my personal rankings, but I do wonder if I'm blinded by how aesthetically pleasing his game is to me and his insane stock numbers.

[u/ColeYote]

Always felt he deserves more love in GOAT discussions. One of the best defenders of all time and #13 on the points leaderboard.

[u/CreatiScope]

More people on here need to listen to this podcast and watch his videos.

[u/Boxcar-Mike]

I'll check this out, thanks. I hope he covers how great Hakeem was at head fakes. He was so good at faking out defenders.

[u/To_me_my_board]

I started watching basketball in the late 80s, and I have yet to see a player who had more of an impact on the floor at both ends. Jordan included.

The video outlines his amazing shot blocking, but what makes his defensive all the more impressive the the number of altered shots he created, the amazing help defense he provided, AND the number of steals he collected.

When he switched off the big bad and a guard would try to get the ball back to the guy Dream was guarding, he'd pick off or deflect a lot of those passes.

Putting his steals into perspective: over the course of eight seasons, he averaged over 2 steals a game when you look at that period in its totality.

In the last five years, guy who averaged less than he did throughout that eight years led the league in steals.

The shots that he didn't block were often altered, turning into the kind of circus shots that only Jordan could hope to convert.

And the help defense he provided was incredible. The video actually highlights a lot of plays where he did this.

In that era, guy drove to the basket a lot more. You get those close, high percentage shots, and hopefully draw a foul. Obviously not at many threes as today. When his guards lost somebody, he could pick those guys driving the lane up and contest.

The blocks. The steals. They only reveal a fraction of what he did. The altered shots and deflections weren't recorded, and they were insane!

Not to mention the tough one-on-one defense he provided in the post.

Once he mastered the passing game, and he had three point shooter, that team was unstoppable.

To be honest, had the league NOT brought the 3pt line in during Jordan first year back with Chicago, the Rockets may very well have three-peted.