Book of Basketball

by Simmons Bill

And that’s how it went for Moses Malone. He stayed out of trouble, showed up on time, cashed his paychecks and always gave a crap.6 Why spend eight thousand words describing him when you could just remember all those backboards he demolished, or all those opposing centers who made Rocky’s “I can’t keep him off me” face. He kicks off the Pantheon for one reason and one reason only: at his peak, Moses guaranteed you a title as long as you surrounded him with a solid supporting cast. There’s something to be said for that.

  11. SHAQUILLE O’NEAL

  Resume: 17 years, 13 quality, 16 All-Stars … Finals MVP: ’00, ’01, ’02 … ’00 MVP …

  Runner-up: ’95, ’05 … Simmons MVP: ’05 … six top-5 MVP finishes … ’93 Rookie of the Year … Top 5 (’98, ’00, ’01, ’02, ’03, ’04, ’05, ’06), Top 10 (’95, ’99), Top 15 (’94, ’96, ’97,

  ’09) … best or 2nd-best player on 4 champs (’00, ’01, ’02 Lakers, ’06 Heat) and 2 runner-ups (’95 Magic, ’04 Lakers) … league leader: scoring (2x), FG% (9x) … career: FG % (2nd), 24.7 PPG (13th), 11.3 RPG (25th) … 2-year peak: 29–14–4 … 3-year Playoffs peak: 30–14–3, 55% FG (58 G) … swept in Playoffs 6 different times … 25K-10K Club

  After I wrote a column about Shaq’s initial quest to enter the Pantheon (May 2000), a reader identified only as Plixx2 emailed to say, “I enjoyed the Pantheon and agree that Shaq is close, but not close enough. I think in 10–15 years people will look at Shaq’s career like they look back at Peter North’s career … dominant, but not the best.”7

  Solid analogy at the time, even better now. Dominant, but not the best. Memorable, but not the best. Unstoppable, but not the best. Shaq won three Finals MVP’s in overpowering fashion, but he only took home one regular season MVP. He won four rings and could have won a fifth if Dwyane Wade hadn’t gotten hurt in 2005 … but he somehow got swept out of the playoffs six other times. He became such a singular fantasy advantage that my league forced teams to pay a Shaq Tax for two straight years (pick him and lose a sixth-round pick) 8… but his free throw struggles made him such a liability that he was pulled late from a few close playoff battles. 9 He only took basketball seriously for one entire season (1999–2000) and intermittently for the other sixteen … and yet, his playoff performances from 2000 to 2002 rank among the all-time greatest. He played for four teams in all (nobody else in the top fifteen played for more than two except Moses) … but made the first three better when he arrived and significantly worse when he left. We have written him off multiple times during his career (either as a potential superstar, a superstar, a super-duper star, a fading superstar or a viable starting center) … but each time, he made everyone eat their words.

  On the other hand, Shaq left everyone with superstar blue balls. He became rich and famous before accomplishing anything worthy of those words; midway through his rookie year in Orlando, he’d already signed a seven-year, $40 million contract, starred in Blue Chips, recorded a rap album and become a household name. There were “the next Wilt” flashes for the next three years but never anything too lasting, with resentment building that Shaq personified the dangerous Too Much Too Fast Too Soon era. Orlando shocked Jordan’s Bulls and made the Finals. (Here comes Shaq!) Then Houston swept them as Hakeem administered young Shaq a first-class spanking. (There goes Shaq!) He ditched Orlando for the Lakers and gave them post-Magic relevancy again. (Here comes Shaq!) They did nothing for three years other than get juicy title odds in Vegas and choke every spring. (There goes Shaq!) He matured into a dominant force, won an MVP and rolled to his first title. (Here comes Shaq!) He suffered through four alternately satisfying and frustrating Laker years, feuding with Kobe, battling weight issues, mailing in regular seasons and ultimately kicking ass in the Playoffs for two more rings. (Here/there comes/goes Shaq!) Once he moved to Miami and transformed the Heat, we appreciated him a little more fully—his locker room presence, his passing ability, how teammates had a knack for peaking when they played with him, how he quietly had the most engaging personality of anyone—and I wrote during that season, “Shaq is like DeNiro in the seventies and eighties—everyone in the cast looks a little better when he’s involved.” His fourth title in Miami gave his career some extra weight; his recent resurgence in Phoenix opened the door that he might break some records or come close. Who can predict anything with Shaquille O’Neal? I will never count him out, and I will never count him in. Four things epitomize the Shaq era over everything else:

  1. His per-game averages for the 2000 Finals: 45 minutes, 38 points, 17 rebounds … 38

  percent from the line.10 That’s Apex Shaq in a nutshell.

  2. Bill Russell’s teams finished 716–299 in the regular season for an absurd .705 winning percentage. That’s the standard. From 1994 (his second season) to 2006 (his fourteenth), Shaq’s teams finished 654–298 (.687) and never won fewer than 50. But because of his dreadful free throw shooting, Shaq was yanked in and out of the lineup in close playoff games more than any other Pantheon guy. This can’t be forgotten—it was the turd in the punch bowl of Shaq’s career. Kinda like how Pacino was secretly five foot six and they could only cast shorter costars for him. No, really. 3. In my annual “Who has the highest trade value?” column for 2002, I picked Shaq first with the following explanation: “Seems a little dubious that he’s ranked this high, right? After all, he turned thirty years old this season, he’s always threatening to retire and he was responsible for Kazaam. 11 But here’s the thing … If the Lakers ever traded him, Shaq is competitive enough and vindictive enough that he would postpone his eventual retirement plans, then devote the next decade of his life to winning championships, haunting the Lakers and making them rue the day. And the Lakers know this. When motivated and hungry, he’s the most dominant player in the league. Nobody can stop him. Nobody. Not even Duncan. And that’s why the Lakers would never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever trade Shaq, not under any circumstances …

  which makes him the undisputed number one player on this list.” Of course, they traded him two years later. And he did come back to haunt them. You couldn’t make this stuff up.

  4. All three times upon leaving a team (1996, 2004, 2008), Shaq shrewedly created a controversy to deflect that he was leaving because it was time to go. He blamed Penny Hardaway’s budding hubris for splitting Orlando; really, Shaq just wanted to live in California and play for the Lakers. When they dumped him because of his poor conditioning and because he made it clear that he’d go on cruise control without a mammoth extension, he deflected local blame by declaring war on Kobe (one of his smartest political moves and another reason why Shaq should run for office someday). When Miami dumped him because he looked washed-up and out of shape, he went right after Pat Riley and played the “I’m totally betrayed” card. Much like preelection Obama was a savvier politician than people realized, Shaq was a savvier athlete than people realized. Nobody made more money playing basketball. Ever.12 And no NBA player resonated on so many levels: with teammates, opponents, fans, media members, critics, little kids, you name it. I talk to NBA people all the time; rarely have I ever heard even a seminegative story about Shaq. If anything, you tend to hear more stories that make you say, “Really? That’s awesome!” Like the time Steve Kerr told me that Shaq headed to Wal-Mart after Phoenix home games, spent a ton of money, then hung out by the cash register to pay for other customers. Shaq made me laugh more than any player except McHale or Barkley, coming up with clever nicknames like “Shaqapulco”

  (his Miami estate) and analogies (like when he compared his three most famous teammates to Corleones, with Wade being Michael, Kobe being Sonny, and Penny being Fredo). 13 The league was just more entertaining with him in it.

  One last thought: of any two old-school/new-school players, Shaq and Wilt resemble each other the most. Switch situations for ’59 Wilt and ’92 Shaq and Shaq matches Wilt’s numbers (and possibly exceeds them), while Wilt wouldn’t have topped Shaq’s best work. So why rank Wilt higher? Because Shaq left something on the table. He was given t
oo much too soon: wealth, attention, accolades, everything. He never had a rival center like Russell to push him in his prime. He never had to worry about his next paycheck. He could coast on physical skills and that’s mostly what he did. Shaq turned out to be the least competitive superstar of his era, someone who enjoyed winning but wasn’t destroyed by losing, someone who kept everything in its proper perspective. Chuck Klosterman pointed this out on my podcast once: for whatever reason, we react to every after-the-fact story about Michael Jordan’s “legendary” competitiveness like it’s the coolest thing ever. He pistol-whipped Brad Sellers in the shower once? Awesome! He slipped a roofie into Barkley’s martini before Game 5 of the ’93 Finals? Cunning! 14 But really, Jordan’s competitiveness was pathological. He obsessed over winning to the point that it was creepy. He challenged teammates and antagonized them to the point that it became detrimental. Only during his last three Chicago years did he find an acceptable, Russell-like balance as a competitor, teammate and person. But Shaq had that balance all along. He always knew what he was. 15

  My theory: basketball was never as much fun for Shaq as everything else happening in his life. Officials allowed opponents to defend him differently, shove him out of position and pull his shoulders on dunks. Teams fouled him in key moments and flashed a giant spotlight on his one weakness. The loathsome Hack-a-Shaq tactics were insulting and maybe even a little humiliating. Even when he kicked everyone’s asses (like from 2000 to 2002), he received a decent amount of credit 16… but not really. The guy couldn’t win. And so Shaq could have earned a top-five Pyramid spot and multiple MVPs, but he happily settled for no. 11, some top-five records, three Finals MVPs and a fantastically fun ride. It reminds me of a life decision I made in college: instead of killing myself gunning for a 3.5 or higher, I worked for our newspaper and radio station, wrote a weekly sports column, then spent an inordinate amount of time hanging with my friends, partying, procrastinating and creating memories. I graduated with a 3.04 and wouldn’t change a thing. Neither would Shaq, who probably finished with a 3.68 in this analogy. If there’s a difference, it’s that Shaq convinced himself that his 3.68 was really a 4.0. And it wasn’t.

  (Important note: Okay, I lied a little. It wasn’t a life decision. I just spent a lot of time procrastinating, hated studying and could always be talked into things like “Want to go outside and play stickball for twelve hours?” or “What if we drunkenly whip a golf ball against the metal door in our hall, then jump out of the way as it comes flying back at us, and the only way you can win is by not getting hit?”17 It’s actually a miracle that I lived through college, much less graduated with a 3.04. I’m done comparing myself to Pyramid guys.)

  10. HAKEEM OLAJUWON

  Resume: 18 years, 14 quality, 12 All-Stars … Finals MVP: ’94, ’95 … ’94 MVP … ’93

  runner-up … Top 5 (’87, ’88, ’89, ’93, ’94, ’97), Top 10 (’86, ’90, ’96), Top 15 (’91, ’95, ’99)

  … All-Defense (9x, five 1st) … Defensive Player of the Year (’93, ’94) … 4-year peak: 27–13–2 … playoff record: most blocks (10) … record: career blocks … season leader: rebounds (2x), blocks (3x) … best player on 2 champs (’94, ’95 Rockets), one runner-up (’86)

  … ’86 plus ’94–’95 Playoffs: 29–11–4 (65 G) … ’95 Playoffs: 33–10–4.5, 62 blocks (beat Malone, Barkley, Robinson, and Shaq) … Playoffs (145 G): 25.9 PPG (6th), 11.2 RPG …

  25K-10K Club

  Here’s a new game show for you: See If You Can Replicate Hakeem Olajuwon’s Career!

  We have the blueprint. Just go out and find one of the best young athletes in a country that’s obsessed with soccer. (The country doesn’t matter—could be South American, could be European, could be African, whatever.) Has to be someone who spent his childhood dreaming of a professional soccer career and developed world-class balance and footwork at a precocious age. (I’m talking thirteen, fourteen or fifteen, or as those years are sometimes called, “the dawn of masturbating.”) We need to make sure he never considers basketball, not even in passing. (Unofficial odds of this happening now that basketball has gone global: 100 to 1.) We need to hope the kid starts growing, only the growth spurt doesn’t affect his world-class balance and footwork. (Unofficial odds of this happening: 50 to 1 … so just between the last two variables, we are now talking about 50,000-to-1 odds.) We need to make sure an authority figure says, “Wow, this kid was put on earth to play basketball” and pushes him in that direction, then the kid takes to the sport naturally, as if he’s been playing hoops his whole life. (Not as likely as you’d think.) We need to make sure the kid voyages to America, finds the right college, makes all the necessary cultural adjustments, figures out the sport and its nuances on the fly, welcomes the attention and pressure and somehow keeps his “little man trapped in a big man’s body” athletic skills. (Okay odds, not great.) We need to make sure this college resides near an NBA team that features one of the six best centers ever during his zenith, and not just that, but we need to hope this guy is nice enough to play pickup with our kid every summer, take the kid under his wing and teach him every conceivable trick. (Hakeem’s mentor? That’s right, Moses Malone. Are you kidding me?) 18 We need to hope our kid emerges as the best young center in basketball and doesn’t handle his chance in America like Borat did. (Definitely unlikely.) We need to make sure the right professional team drafts him and his body slowly fills out without costing him that world-class athleticism. (Unlikely, but not improbable.) We need to hope he develops the best collection of unstoppable low-post moves by anyone not named Kevin McHale. (Now we’re talking lightning in a bottle multiplied by three.) And finally, we need to hope that he has the necessary competitive chops, truly gives a shit, measures himself by his peers and takes great pleasure in destroying them. (Since only fifteen or twenty basketball players have been wired like that over the past seventy-five years, you do the math.)

  Add everything up and here are your odds that we’ll see another Hakeem Olajuwon: a kajillionpilliongazillionfrazillionfriggallionmillion to one. You will see fifty reasonably close replicas of Jordan (and we’ve already seen two: Kobe and Wade) before you see another Dream. So go on YouTube, watch his highlights and congratulate yourself for seeing the only Hall of Famer who would have made it had he been anywhere from five foot eleven to six foot ten (his actual height). We knew something special could happen when he was whipping through Kareem and the ’86 Lakers like an Oklahoma twister. Strangely, the soon-to-be-ousted champs couldn’t stop heaping praise on him. Maurice Lucas simply said, “The rebirth of a bigger Moses Malone.”19

  Magic decided, “In terms of raw athletic ability, Akeem is the best I’ve ever seen.” Mitch Kupchak summed it up best: “I can compare him to, maybe, Alvin Robertson in terms of being able to do everything. That tells you something, since Robertson is a guard. I’ve never seen anyone that strong, that quick, that relentless and who also happens to be seven feet tall.”

  Thank you, Mitch! You just did my job for me. Hakeem finished his coming-out party by averaging a 25–12–3 (blocks) in the ’86 Finals and holding his own against the greatest slew of big men in NBA history. During a must-win Game 5 where tag-team partner Ralph Sampson was ejected for starting a brawl, an inspired Hakeem exploded for 32 points, 14 rebounds and 8 assists. Put it this way: If I did my “Who has the highest trade value?” column that summer, Hakeem would have finished first even after Jordan’s 63-point game in Boston. But that’s when things peaked for a while. A promising Rockets juggernaut quickly self-combusted in a haze of drugs and bad luck, with Sampson getting shipped to Golden State for lemons Sleepy Floyd and Joe Barry Carroll (cleverly nicknamed “Joe Barely Cares” by Peter Vecsey). 20 Poor Hakeem wasted his youth toiling away on undermanned teams while submitting dazzling across-the-board numbers and at least three “Holy mother of God!” displays of athleticism per game. We always hear about the lack of support for superstars like KG or Oscar, but jeez, the Rockets baked Hakeem a shit soufflé of teammates f
or six solid years (1987–1993). He complained for much of that time, explaining to Sports Illustrated in 1991 that it was nothing personal, but “all I was saying was, you don’t build with these guys. I wasn’t criticizing my teammates. I was only saying that it’s O.K. to have one or two guys [like that], but not a whole team of them. After all, my career’s on the line.”

  21

  By this point, Dream’s reputation as a head case was gaining steam. During his first few seasons, he spelled his name “Akeem” and played with a trigger-happy fury, starting multiple fights and near-fights, constantly blowing up at officials, and pacing around like some menacing hothead at a bar.22 He eventually rededicated himself to Islam, found inner peace, started fasting during Ramadan (even though it chewed up a month of every regular season), changed the spelling to

  “Hakeem” and channeled his hostilities into his play (still superb) … only when he started bitching about his supporting cast, it became difficult to discern whether everything was screwed on correctly. After he battled a mysterious heart ailment during the ’91 season, his stock dropped to the degree that I distinctly remember driving around once and hearing Boston radio host Glenn Ordway—someone whose basketball opinion I had always respected—pooh-pooh a caller’s idea of a Reggie Lewis/Hakeem swap, saying the Celtics would never do it. I loved Reggie as much as anyone, but this was Hakeem Olajuwon! You only had to see him in person once to think, “I will probably not see fifteen better basketball players while I am alive.” When his supporting cast improved for the 1992–93 season—which doubled as a career year for him, not so coincidentally—he broke through during Jordan’s “baseball sabbatical,” winning the 1994 MVP, winning back-to-back Finals MVPs and pillaging Shaq, Robinson and Ewing in the process. At no other point in NBA history has one superstar specifically and undeniably thrashed his three biggest rivals in the span of thirteen months. It remains Hakeem’s greatest feat. He would remain relevant for another five seasons, making All-NBA teams fourteen years apart (second team in ’86, third team in ’99). Now he’s one of the twelve greatest players ever by any calculation. And to think, it all started on a soccer field in Nigeria with somebody saying, “Man, I bet that kid would be good at basketball.”