Dream Shake

There is a point to this, and ultimately, it is that I want to write about sports. Yes, there is an idea, and yes, I will get to it. It is simple, though it may not have occured to you today, which would be nice.

Back in 1994 and 1995, when the NBA's most dominant player was entertaining his dreams of being a baseball player, the Houston Rockets snuck up and won back-to-back NBA championships. The undisputed leader and best player on the team (perhaps in the league) was named Hakeem Olajuwon. He wore number 34, and he was my first 'favorite player'. I've had lots of favorite players since. Currently, it's whichever player can best help me cover a particular point spread, which is sad. I want to write about gambling and fantasy sports at some point, just not right now. Back to Olajuwon. He was tall. 7 feet, in fact. But he was smooth. His nickname was 'The Dream'. In that era, there lots of dominant centers, which is were Olajuwon played. There was him, David Robinson, Shaq, Patrick Ewing, Alonzo Mourning, Dikembe Mutombo, and probably some I'm forgetting. But if you name the dominant centers today, well, the list is shorter. All the big guys are more versatile, and play power forward. Olajuwon was a true center. He's one of a very select few players who ever recorded a quadruple double. Jordan never did it. But Olajuwon did. In his prime, he was unstoppable. The Rockets lived and died with him. There offense, and I'm not making this up, consisted of Hakeem on the post, and four guys who could shoot threes. They'd dump it inside to him, and if he couldn't make something happen, he'd kick it out to one of the three point guys. Vernon Maxwell, Kenny Smith, Sam Cassell, and Robert Horry either made or started their careers doing this. Clyde Drexler came later, and was crucial to the '95 win, but I don't want to get into that right now. Hakeem wasn't loud, he was just confident and subtle. It resonated with the 14 year old me, for whatever reason.

Anyway, when the Rockets won their first title, the entire team exploded in the middle of the court. This is common. You've seen it before. It isn't anything special. But then the camera caught something, and it may have changed my life forever. The guy who made it all possible, the leader, the most dominant player, was sitting on the scorers table with this look of stunned satisfaction on his face. Someone ran up to him, and he waved them off. He was just soaking it all up. He wasn't being rude, I don't think, it was just. He wanted to see it, not experience it. Not right away. I really get this. It makes A LOT of sense.

So here is the idea: See things. You don't have to be a part of everything. Just see it. Understand something outside of itself, and from that perspective. It's different. It's like reading about it in a book. I'm not saying it's right or wrong, but it is different. And there's value in that. Absolutely there is.