Olajuwon, Hakeem A.
Basketball
b. Jan. 21, 1963, Lagos, Nigeria
After graduating from Nigeria's Moslem Teachers College (actually a high school) in 1980, Olajuwon won a basketball scholarship to the University of Houston. He didn't play his freshman year, but worked out with the team, learning the game's finer points, and was a consensus All-American at center in 1984, when he was named the most outstanding player in the NCAA tournament.
The 7-foot, 255-pound Olajuwon led NCAA Division I schools with a .675 field goal percentage, 13.5 rebounds and 5.6 blocked shots per game as a senior. He was the first player chosen in the 1984 NBA draft, by the Houston Rockets.
Not a great scorer in college, where he averaged just 13.3 points a game, Olajuwon developed an accurate medium range jump shot to go with his power and moves around the basket as a professional and quickly became a proficient scorer, averaging 20.6 points a game as a rookie. He finished second to Michael Jordan in Rookie of the Year voting.
Originally named Akeem Abdul Olajuwon, he dropped the "Abdul" while still in college and changed the spelling of his first name to "Hakeem" in 1991. That didn't change his nickname, though—"the Dream" still rhymes.
Olajuwon and 7-foot Ralph Sampson, known as the "Twin Towers," led the Rockets into the NBA finals in 1986, when they lost to the Boston Celtics in six games. But the team was mediocre for the next several years, despite Olajuwon's consistently good and often brilliant play. On March 29, 1990, he recorded the third quadruple-double in NBA history, with 18 points, 16 rebounds, 11 blocked shots and 10 assists against the Milwaukee Bucks.
Things began to turn around with the arrival of Rudy Tomjanovich as Houston's coach late in the 1991-92 season. In 1992-93, the Rockets improved from 42-40 to 55-27 and Olajuwon, who averaged 26.1 points, 13.0 rebounds and 4.17 blocked shots, finished second to Charles Barkley for the league's MVP award.
Houston lost to Seattle in the Western Conference finals that year, but they went all the way in 1993-94, Olajuwon's finest all-around season. He was named regular-season MVP, Defensive Player of the Year, and MVP of the championship finals, where he averaged 29.1 points, 9.1 rebounds and 3.86 blocks in leading Houston to a seven-game victory over Patrick Ewing's New York Knicks.
He followed that with his best season as a scorer, averaging 27.8 points a game. Olajuwon was named Defensive Player of the Year again, but finished second to San Antonio's David Robinson in regular season MVP voting. However, he outplayed Robinson when the sixth-seeded Rockets upset San Antonio in the Western Conference finals, averaging 35.3 points game to 25.5 for Robinson. Facing the Orlando Magic and Shaquille O'Neal in the championship round, Olajuwon averaged 32.8 points, 11.5 rebounds and 5.5 assists as Houston swept to its second straight title. Olajuwon was named MVP of the finals again.
The Rockets were eliminated in the conference semifinals in 1996 and the following year they lost to the Utah Jazz in the conference finals. Olajuwon's play began to decline in the 1997-98 season, when his scoring average dropped below 20 points for the first time. In August of 2001, he was traded to the Toronto Raptors for two draft picks. He retired after just one season with Toronto.
Olajuwon is the NBA career leader in blocked shots, with 3,830, and he ranks seventh all-time in scoring. He's one of only eight players to have more than 20,000 points and 12,000 rebounds and he's the only NBA player ever to have more than 2,000 blocks and 2,000 steals.