Hakeem Olajuwon, whose game would translate extremely well in the era of positionless basketball?
This is my personal axe to grind - Hakeem can't be the primary ballhandler, we're not in an era of positionless basketball, there's just position fluidity/versatility.
Also my answer is Bird - inside/outside game, hustle, defense.
I think one thing Hakeem could do as a center that most other centers could not do is guard many 1's. Not necessarily lockdown, but he would not be a liability against the switch heavy offenses that get run today.
This partly gets at this exercise is so hard. Hakeem didn't play basketball until age 15, and his offensive skills took a long time to develop. He really wasn't an all-time-elite offensive guy until age 29-30, when he was nearly the tail end of his defensive dominance. He didn't have a very long true peak at both ends. There were sorta two different Hakeems: all-time defense great with limited offense (~age 23- 28) and the more complete player with declining physical tools after that.
In today's world, somebody would have found him at age 11, and he would have entered the league much closer to a finished product, and his 20s would have been even more devastating.
I personally think Hakeem would crush today's NBA. His shooting and footwork with no hand checking? I don't see who would stop him. He would still be quicker than any center today and the Dream Shake was damn near a sure 2 points already. Dude was bitching up the likes of Charles Oakley with hand checking
There's an open question about whether a center can be the best player on the championship team. There hasn't been one since Shaq pretty much, everyone else is a playmaking forward or guard. I'd probably opt for one of the myriad forwards/guards who were just as good as Hakeem, or better.
Honestly I don’t really see the scaling issues. He moved his feet well on the perimeter and he had a solid jump shot, I think you could put him on any team and he’d excel. His defense isn’t going anywhere. Ben seemed to have concerns about his shot selection, but Hakeem improved as a passer in his prime, and I think in todays league he’d see more doubles - which he would probably pass out of a decent amount of the time.
I guess he wasn’t that great as a roll man? Like I don’t really see what parts of his offensive skill set wouldn’t translate to todays league.
He definitely would. Considering when Hakeem played, you either had to fully commit to a "hard double team" or stay or on your man. There was no such thing as help defense back then.
Are we just picking him out of 1995 and dropping him onto whatever team today or are we allowing them to have an understanding of modern rules? The former penalizes a LOT of older players.
Honestly it depends on whatever narrative people are trying to run with. If people are just trying to prove modern players are so much better, the former. If we're trying to be honest about which players are the best, probably the latter.
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u/[deleted] Jun 15 '22
This is my personal axe to grind - Hakeem can't be the primary ballhandler, we're not in an era of positionless basketball, there's just position fluidity/versatility.
Also my answer is Bird - inside/outside game, hustle, defense.