Hakeem Olajuwon

The Full Biography

Hakeem Olajuwon. Center. The Lagos kid who made a set of footwork into a Houston religion, then spent the years after the titles as a teacher of big men who can never quite learn the first language.

This is his story.

The image most people still carry is a Dream Shake, a fade, a man in red who treated the low block like a chessboard. Two titles. What the still cannot show is Hakeem Abdul Olajuwon of Lagos, Nigeria, a soccer and team-handball kid who barely knew the sport when Houston recruited him, and a second life of Islam practiced in public, a 1994 MVP, and a coaching whisper that still draws NBA stars to a gym in the offseason.

He was born on January 21, 1963, in Lagos. The family had a cement business. He was not a basketball child in the American sense. Soccer taught him the feet. Team handball taught him the pivot and the fake. Basketball arrived in his teens, late enough that the first American coaches who saw him still had to teach the sport as a language. The University of Houston, Phi Slama Jama, Clyde Drexler — a fraternity of dunks that lost two Final Fours and still became weather. Guy Lewis ran the Cougars as a flying circus. Olajuwon, still learning the rules, became the rim. In 1983 Houston lost the national title to North Carolina State on a last dunk that the country still names. In 1984 Georgetown and Patrick Ewing ended the next Final Four. The losses did not make him small. They made him exact.

The Rockets took him first in 1984, ahead of Michael Jordan, a trivia sentence that Houston does not treat as trivia. They already had Ralph Sampson. The Twin Towers were a design, not a nickname only. He blocked, he rebounded, he learned the post from Moses Malone and then invented a shake the older men could not copy. In 1986 he took Houston to the Finals against the Boston Celtics. The Celtics still had Bird, McHale, Parish. Sampson’s back was already a problem. Houston lost in six. The city learned what a franchise looked like before it had a parade.

What came next was not a lucky streak. It was a run built on a body that had been taught, then rewritten.

The first Houston years were a two-man design. Sampson was already there, seven-four, a franchise of his own. They were called the Twin Towers. In 1985–86 the Rockets beat the Lakers in the West and met Boston in the Finals. Larry Bird, Kevin McHale, Robert Parish. Sampson’s back was already a problem. Houston lost in six. Olajuwon, still a young center learning an American season, had already been the best player in a Finals his team did not win. The city learned what a franchise looked like before it had a parade.

By the end of the 1980s Sampson was gone and the franchise sat on one man. Olajuwon led the league in rebounding and in blocks in stretches that the box score still treats as architecture. He was a twelve-time All-Star. He made All-NBA and All-Defense as if those were the same job. On March 9, 1991, he corrected the spelling of his first name from Akeem to Hakeem. He said he was not changing it. He was putting it right. He had become a more observant Muslim. He studied the Qur’an on planes and after games. He treated Ramadan as a working fact during seasons — no food or water from dawn to sunset — and in February 1995, with the fast in the calendar, he was named NBA Player of the Month. The press sometimes used the faith as a headline. He used it as a calendar.

The Dream Shake is not one move. It is a sequence: a drop step, a fake, a fade, a counter to the counter. Defenders who guessed right still guessed late. David Robinson, Patrick Ewing, Shaquille O’Neal — the centers of that decade all had a night when the shake made them look as if they had arrived at the wrong address. He could score with either hand. He could block a shot and keep the ball in play. He could steal from the high post. The nickname, The Dream, had started as a Houston courtesy. It became a scouting report.

In 1993 he won Defensive Player of the Year. In 1994 he was MVP, Defensive Player of the Year, and Finals MVP in the same spring — a triple no other player has matched. The Rockets beat the New York Knicks in seven. He guarded Patrick Ewing in those last games as if the paint were a room he had already measured. Game six in New York, then game seven: the city that had drafted Ewing watched Houston take the first parade. In 1995 the Rockets did it again, as a sixth seed, through a Western bracket that still looks impossible: Utah, Phoenix, San Antonio and David Robinson. Clyde Drexler had come home midseason in a trade that returned Phi Slama Jama to a different building. The Finals were Orlando — Shaquille O’Neal, Penny Hardaway — and Houston swept. Olajuwon was Finals MVP again. Two titles. No Michael Jordan in those Finals, the bar conversation always adds; Jordan was in baseball, then back, and the conversation has never tired. The ledger can hold the conversation and the footwork. The footwork is the part that does not need a footnote.

The move is not a trick. The move is a decision you have already made with your feet.Hakeem Olajuwon, on the Dream Shake

He became a United States citizen in 1993 so he could play for the Olympic team. In Atlanta in 1996 he won gold with the group the country called Dream Team II — Charles Barkley, Karl Malone, John Stockton, Shaq, a roster that did not need him to be the first option and still needed him to be the rim. The years after the second title were not a collapse. They were a star whose biggest climate had already been spent, still the best player in a building that could no longer build a second parade around him. Charles Barkley arrived for a stretch. The West had grown younger. He was traded to Toronto in 2001 and finished the 2001–02 season there, a professional ending, not a farewell tour. He is the NBA’s career leader in blocked shots — 3,830 — and he also stole the ball more than two thousand times, a combination that tells you the shake was only half the job. He finished with 26,946 points. The Rockets retired 34. He had already been named one of the NBA’s fifty greatest. The seventy-fifth anniversary list put him back in the sentence. The Hall of Fame took him in 2008.

The gym — Houston, summers, big men flying in to learn a move they will not master — is the second career. He opened a Big Man Camp in the 2006 offseason. Kobe Bryant came. Dwight Howard came. LeBron James came. Giannis Antetokounmpo came. They leave with a move they cannot quite do. That is the point of a language. He has not become a nightly analyst. He has become a teacher. That is rarer.

The turn is 1994–95, and then the gym. A lot of great centers become a statue and a microphone. He became a curriculum. The Olajuwon after the titles is quieter than the shake. The shake still employs him without his having to jump.

He has children and a Houston life that is not a nightclub. Friends from the Rockets years describe a man who could be distant and suddenly tender, a competitor who did not need a microphone to be the best player in the building. The teacher is the same man with less sweat.

The later years

Home, after the last Toronto season, was not a broadcast booth. He moved for a stretch to Jordan with his family to study. He kept a ranch near Houston. He splits the year the way a man splits a faith and a city: the mosque and the gym, Amman and the ranch, a schedule that does not need a camera to be a schedule. He buys in cash when he can. Interest is not a small print item in his house. The Rockets still treat 34 as weather. He still treats Houston as the place the work was done.

In 2006 he opened the Big Man Camp in earnest. It is not a fantasy clinic with a photograph at the end. It is a few days of footwork, counters, the fade that looks like a trick until you try it. He has charged what the market will pay — the figure the columns repeat is about a hundred thousand for a short private stretch — and the buyers keep coming. Yao Ming had already been in the building as a Rocket. The next generation paid to stand where Yao had stood. Olajuwon does not sell the Dream Shake as a brand extension. He teaches the decision under it. Players leave saying they understand. Film of the next season usually shows they do not, not yet. That is still the point.

He founded and supported Islamic work in Houston, including the Islamic Da’wah Center. Muslim Family Night at Toyota Center is a civic object now. He sits for the questions. He does not orate. He reports, the way he once reported a scouting report: what the month of fasting does to a body, what a prayer schedule does to a road trip, what a Nigerian boy owed a Texas city that drafted him first. He was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 2008 and into the FIBA Hall after that. The NBA’s seventy-fifth anniversary list put him back in the sentence with the centers the league still uses as a measuring stick. He did not need the list. The list needed the footwork.

The public man after the titles is a teacher, a neighbor, a father, a man who will still put on a Rockets night when the franchise asks and then go back to the ranch. He has not run for office. He has not become a brand of old highlights. The clip of the shake against David Robinson still plays every May. The work he loves now is the gym in July, a big man who has already been paid, learning that the first step is not a dunk. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s skyhook was a single weapon. Olajuwon’s curriculum is a language: how to feel a defender’s weight, how to keep the ball alive, how to make the second fake the one that matters. Players pay. They film. They leave talking as if they own it. The next season’s tape usually shows they do not, not yet.

Houston still claims the two parades. Lagos still claims the boy. Amman claims a chapter of study. The ranch claims the quiet. He is in his sixties. The shake is a clip. The curriculum is the life. Michael Jordan’s shadow is a bar conversation about 1994 and 1995. The footwork is a ledger that does not need the conversation. The Da’wah Center is a Houston fact. Muslim Family Night at Toyota Center is a civic object. He sits for the questions about Ramadan and a road trip, about a Nigerian boy and a Texas draft, about why a man who could have been a nightly analyst chose a gym instead. He does not orate. He reports. That is the same habit the 1994 spring had used on a different subject.

After the spotlight moved

It moved to the next big and then came back every time a center tried to shake. Houston still claims the two titles. Lagos still claims the boy. The gym claims the summers. The Hall of Fame claims a bust. The blocks record claims the rest.

He came out of Lagos, dunked with Drexler, went first, built a shake, won two, prayed on the calendar he chose, and then taught the move to men who will never own it. If you only remember the fade, you have the still. If you remember the cement house, 1994, and the gym, you have him.

Portrait: Uncredited (San Angelo Standard-Times) · Public domain · via Wikimedia Commons

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