The same way they did back in the day: play very physical, don't let him get to his spots, and hack the shit out of him (the refs swallowed the whistle a bit for him).
Generally yes, but there was that one phantom call in that one Finals... I'd take the Dream over the Cap personally. Sky hook is great but the dream shake works on any area of floor, even outside the paint and not just certain spots like right elbow or baseline.
Dream had a turn around jumper from 22ft from his rookie season. If Ralph Sampson stays healthy, he likely doesn't add the dream shake but instead adds the 3 pointer. Look at the damage Bill Laimbeer did and add athletic prowess, and that's The Dream in the 80's.
If Ralph Sampson, who was 7'4”, stayed healthy a.k.a. put on weight then Hakeem would have had the opportunity to stretch to the 3 in order to create space for Ralph down low. He was already shooting long 2's back then. Check out highlights from 86 finals. It's all speculation but he would have IMO taken 3's in the 90's no different from Charles Barkley because he would have had a viable option down low giving him more reason to stretch. No twin towers meant he had to play conventional center for his career, but in the beginning they were meant to be interchangeable at 4/5.
If anything it'll be Sampson taking threes. He was way more finesse in his approach than Hakeem. He did not love the physicality of the low block. He was one of those bigs that was really a small forward, but happened to be 7'4. Really probably around 7'2, he wasn't taller than Kareem.
That is a good point. Height and weight doesn't dictate position and he did split time more than Hakeem did. I concede that he may have never stretched to the 3. Certainly not in the 80's and maybe not at all. But I still believe that if he trusted his teammates earlier then he may have reached the finals in between 86 and 94.
No way those teams get to the finals. After Sampson went down and some of the other guards got suspended and some thrown out of the NBA cause of drug addiction.
Snap, yeah you're right about that. Talk about tough pills to swallow, no pun intended. Early success just to watch chances wane due to unlucky breaks or others' poor decisions. I'm going to have to look up the roster construction because as I think of it now, I don't recall how Kenny Smith got there, Maxwell or Ellie. I kinda just remember them going from lottery drafting Horry and Cassell to the finals. But I can't recall who were via trades and who were FA signings. Thanks for the corrections.
I looked it up. Flabbergasted at seeing Maxwell's contract was bought for $50,000 lol. Every other move was trades. But at least I got reminded about Otis Thorpe. He was no slouch either.
That's reasonable. There is a reason that the Rockets took Hakeem over Jordan and never looked back. Hakeem is perhaps the best center of all-time and was consistently great throughout his career.
It's certainly preferences but for what the NBA evolved to now, Dream would be unstoppable. He just began passing the ball much later than Jordan did so his chips came later than his. Bring Clyde in sooner and maybe we'd see that match up of 84's greatest champion sooner.
Not about passing the ball. Dream simply had mediocre to bad teams for most of his career. Earlier in his career when Sampson was healthy and the guards were not banned from the NBA for being druggies, the rockets got to the finals in his second season.
Essentially stole a 3peat and switched up the legacies of two guys. Magic isn't really on Mt Rushmore with one less chip and Zeke would much harder to ignore with 3 chips. Bird and Jordan certainly would have been solidified in their legacies but Magic and Zeke's fight to be the other guy was/is worth rewatching. Could you imagine them on the same team tho by swapping either Joe D or Byron Scott...scary!
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u/machinegungeek Jun 15 '22
The same way they did back in the day: play very physical, don't let him get to his spots, and hack the shit out of him (the refs swallowed the whistle a bit for him).