Had Hakeem Olajuwon been playing basketball in today's media-saturated world of social networking and 24-hour rolling news, he would be one of the most recognisable athletes on the planet.
Instead, one of the greatest centres to play in the NBA was able to shun the limelight, dedicate himself to Islam and retire to a life of relative obscurity.Olajuwon was the No 1 draft pick of 1984, selected ahead of Michael Jordan and Charles Barkley.
Over the course of the next 17 years he led the Houston Rockets to two championships and became the first player in NBA history to be elected MVP, championship finals MVP and Defensive Player of the Year in the same season.
Yet while these achievements are remarkable in themselves, it was Olajuwon's ability to play at a high level during Ramadan that caught the eye.
While fasting and having taken on no fluids for more than 12 hours ahead of game time, when tip-off arrived, his statistics would go up rather than down.
In February 1995, he was named NBA Player of the Month, despite Ramadan having started on February 1. In a 1997 report, the New York Times described a fasting Olajuwon as "depleted" and "dominant" in a match against Jordan's Chicago Bulls.
"I always felt bad for him," Robert Horry, a teammate of Olajuwon's from 1992 to 1996, said recently.
"I don't mean for that to come across wrong, but when you are playing an NBA game, you gotta have massive reserves of energy.
"There are 48 minutes to a game and for you to play 42 minutes of that 48 and not even be able to take a sip of water, that is just phenomenal."
Olajuwon now lives in Jordan with his wife and children, but Horry occasionally meets him in Houston whenever he visits.
When that occurs, the former players - both of whom stand just under 7 feet - call each other "Softie".
Throughout an interview with The National, Horry referred to Olajuwon by his nickname "Dream".
"I rate Dream as one of the top five players ever to play the game of basketball. He could do anything; there is nothing on the court he couldn't do," he said.
"He gets a lot of credit from players, but because he was a quiet guy, and the access to him was so low, he never had the shoe commercials that would have pushed him out into the public. Now there is so much social media and stuff that even players who could never have played when we played are thought of as great."
Horry recalls a television commercial Olajuwon did for Taco Bell, a US fast-food chain specialising in Mexican food.
Appearing alongside Shaquille O'Neal, the two men are seen riding a tandem bike, with Olajuwon at the back. "We used to joke about that," Horry said.
"We'd say, 'Dude, you won the championship and you take the back seat to Shaq on the bike? You need to be on the front.' But that was the type of guy he was. He never wanted recognition. He just wanted to play ball."
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| Hakeem Olajuwon and Pele |
Aware that their star's Islamic beliefs forbade a statue bearing a likeness or picture, a 12-foot-high bronze sculpture of his famous No 34 jersey was erected instead.
The following year, Olajuwon spoke about his religion and life in Jordan, saying he prefers to endure Ramadan in the United States, as it proves more of a challenge.
"If people are eating and drinking in front of you, the willpower of the Muslim should be stronger. That is what the training is for," he said. "It's like somebody who swims in a pool or somebody who is swimming in the ocean. The ocean is stronger so makes a better swimmer.
"I find in the Arab world that when they are fasting, they say they are weaker and they don't work as hard. But it should be the opposite."
When asked if he had shared this belief with his Muslim friends in Jordan, he laughed: "Yeah, but they think I'm crazy."
Horry added Olajuwon never forced his religion onto teammates and never expected them to hide away to consume fluids.
"Even on the bench we would be drinking, but we totally respected his religion," Horry said. "We would base our practices around it, with time factored in for him to go pray and we showed such respect to him because we knew he was such a vital part of the team. Whatever Dream wanted, we would do."
“What’s more important is that they can manage their fame for a good cause -- there are lots of people like that,” he stated. “But you also have a lot of people where they don’t know how to handle success and end up destroying their career. Someone who is rich, but who doesn’t have [positive] principles -- these people have no value.” - Hakeem Olajuwon
Olajuwon was born to Salim and Abike Olajuwon, working class Yoruba owners of a cement business in Lagos, Nigeria. He was the third of eight children. He credits his parents with instilling virtues of hard work and discipline into him and his siblings; "They taught us to be honest, work hard, respect our elders, and believe in ourselves" Olajuwon has expressed displeasure at his childhood in Nigeria being characterized as backward. "Lagos is a very cosmopolitan city...There are many ethnic groups. I grew up in an environment at schools where there were all different types of people."
During his youth, Olajuwon was a soccer goalkeeper, which helped give him the footwork and agility to balance his size and strength in basketball, and also contributed to his shot-blocking ability. Olajuwon did not play basketball until the age of 17, when he entered a local tournament. It has been said that a coach in Nigeria once asked him to dunk and demonstrated while standing on a chair. Olajuwon then tried to stand on the chair himself. When redirected by staff not to use the chair, Hakeem could initially not dunk the basketball.
Despite early struggles, Olajuwon quickly became taken into the game: "Basketball is something that is so unique. That immediately I pick up the game and, you know, realize that this is the life for me. All the other sports just become obsolete."
Appearing alongside Shaquille O'Neal, the two men are seen riding a tandem bike, with Olajuwon at the back. "We used to joke about that," Horry said.
"We'd say, 'Dude, you won the championship and you take the back seat to Shaq on the bike? You need to be on the front.' But that was the type of guy he was. He never wanted recognition. He just wanted to play ball."
A more significant example can be taken from 2008, when the Rockets unveiled an honorary monument to Olajuwon outside their arena in Houston.
Aware that their star's Islamic beliefs forbade a statue bearing a likeness or picture, a 12-foot-high bronze sculpture of his famous No 34 jersey was erected instead.
The following year, Olajuwon spoke about his religion and life in Jordan, saying he prefers to endure Ramadan in the United States, as it proves more of a challenge.
"If people are eating and drinking in front of you, the willpower of the Muslim should be stronger. That is what the training is for," he said. "It's like somebody who swims in a pool or somebody who is swimming in the ocean. The ocean is stronger so makes a better swimmer.
"I find in the Arab world that when they are fasting, they say they are weaker and they don't work as hard. But it should be the opposite."
When asked if he had shared this belief with his Muslim friends in Jordan, he laughed: "Yeah, but they think I'm crazy."
Horry added Olajuwon never forced his religion onto teammates and never expected them to hide away to consume fluids.
"Even on the bench we would be drinking, but we totally respected his religion," Horry said. "We would base our practices around it, with time factored in for him to go pray and we showed such respect to him because we knew he was such a vital part of the team. Whatever Dream wanted, we would do."
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| Hakeem Olajuwon and Micheal Jordan |
Olajuwon emigrated to the United States to play basketball at the University of Houston. Mistakenly enrolled as "Akeem" but appropriately nicknamed "The Dream" for his eye-opening skills, Olajuwon teamed with future NBA All-Star Clyde Drexler on the high-flying "Phi Slamma Jamma" squads, leading the Cougars to three NCAA Final Four appearances.
After the 1983-84 season, in which he topped the NCAA with 13.5 rebounds per game, 5.6 blocked shots per game and a 67.5 percent field-goal percentage, Olajuwon was selected with the No. 1 pick in the 1984 NBA draft by the Houston Rockets.
Top Rocket
Olajuwon was an instant star in the NBA, displaying stunning quickness and agility en route to 20.6 points, 11.9 rebounds and 2.7 blocks per game as a rookie center. Listed at an even 7 feet (though he was closer to 6'10"), he formed one half of Houston's formidable "Twin Towers" duo with 7'4" Ralph Sampson.
The promise of the Twin Towers faded with Sampson's deteriorating knees, and an increasingly frustrated Olajuwon found himself putting up big numbers for mediocre teams. He became the first player in NBA history to record at least 200 steals and 200 blocks in a season during 1988-89, and led the league with 14 rebounds and a staggering 4.6 blocks per game the following year, though the Rockets fizzled early in the playoffs in both seasons.
Olajuwon reaffirmed the traditional spelling of his first name as "Hakeem" in 1991, a change that coincided with his seeming maturity as a player and leader on the court. He became a more active passer and perfected his "Dream Shake," a series of fakes that left opposing defenders helpless.
During the 1993-94 season, Olajuwon averaged 27.3 points, 11.9 rebounds and 3.7 blocks per game, and the Rockets outlasted the New York Knicks in an exhausting seven-game series to win the NBA championship. It truly was a dream year for "The Dream," who became the first player in NBA history to win the Most Valuable Player, Finals MVP and Defensive Player of the Year awards in the same season.
The following year, the Rockets received a midseason boost by trading for Drexler, Olajuwon's former college teammate, and went on to claim their second straight NBA crown. Olajuwon averaged a career-best 27.8 points per game, and again was named Defensive Player of the Year and Finals MVP.
Having secured his U.S. citizenship, Olajuwon won a gold medal with the 1996 U.S. Men's Olympic Basketball Team. Soon afterward, he was named one of the 50 Greatest Players in NBA History as part of a campaign to mark the league's 50-year anniversary. However, after one more typically huge season, his performance on the court began to taper.
Olajuwon retired after spending the 2001-02 season with the Toronto Raptors. Over the course of his 18-year career, he was named to the All-NBA First Team six times, and to the NBA All-Defensive First Team five times. He finished with impressive averages of 21.8 points and 11.1 rebounds per game, and a record 3,830 total blocks.
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| Hakeem Olajuwon (2nd left) in Nigeria with US delegates to the inauguration of President Buhari. |
A Dream Retirement
After leaving the hardwood, Olajuwon reinvented himself as a successful real-estate dealer in Houston and became a coveted instructor for NBA players seeking to improve their moves around the basket.
When not tending to business in Houston, Olajuwon spends his time with his family at a home in Jordan, where he studies the Koran.
Olajuwon was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 2008, a fitting coda to the career of one of the game's all-time greats.
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| Hakeem Olajuwon and Shaquille O'Neal |
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