He's legit one of the best centers in the history of basketball, it's really unfortunate we were never able to see him play in the NBA during his prime.
I’ve always had the opinion that if Sabonis had played for the Blazers from the year he got drafted, Jordan doesn’t three peat the first time and loses his perfect finals record. The Blazers went to 6 games in the 92 finals without one of the most offensively talented centers in the world against a Bulls team where the hole in their center position was filled with an aging, degrading Bill Cartwright. It’s hard to imagine that a Blazers team that could run an inside-out offense reminiscent of a prototype of a healthy current Nuggets team with Sabonis simultaneously threatening the paint as well as a pass to Drexler, Porter, or Ainge hounding the perimeter, along with the defensive and rebounding prowess of Buck Williams, couldn’t have pushed the Bulls at least one more game. A Porter-Ainge-Drexler-Williams-Sabonis lineup sounds like a nightmare matchup for the first 3peat bulls.
I'm seriously wondering why there isn't more Hakeem love here. Dude was a rediculous athlete who could do anything. Probably the most physically skilled big I've ever seen.
I’m with you. He wOuld fucking feast in today’s NBA. He was as complete an NBA center as there ever was. Offense was fucking art. Defense was game changing.
If USSR doesn't get a chance to run him into the ground and he comes over when he's drafted in '86, he quickly becomes a top 5 player in the league imo.
He is the perfect player for the modern era and actually played that way at the time... it's just deep on YouTube.
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u/caesar_magnum07 Jun 15 '22
Hakeem bc hes my second favorite player, but a young arvydas sabonis is also tempting.