You should pick up Mirin Fader’s newest book Dream: The Life and Legacy of Happen Olajuwon. It’s so good!
Earlier this year when I read Charlie Hustle: The Rise And Fall of Pete Rose, And The Last Glory Days Of Baseball, I was thinking “This is good, but it would be even better if Pete Rose wasn’t a giant garbage bag of a person.” I’m so thankful for this book.
Fader does an incredible job in telling the story of Hakeem from when he was a young man growing up in Nigeria to his years in Houston. Maybe the most remarkable part of all of this is that Fader didn’t have access to Olajuwon himself. He does not give interviews for books or stories about himself due in part to his religious beliefs on pride and ego. All of this information came from more than 250 interviews with friends and colleagues throughout his life.
Plus, “Dream” is one of the coolest nicknames in the history of sports.
Thank you Netgalley and Hachette for sending this book for review consideration. All opinions are my own.
You can pick up the book here.
I love stories about amazing athletes who didn’t start playing their sport until their late teens.
One of the most remarkable things about Hakeem’s story is that he didn’t even start playing basketball in Nigeria until he was a teenager. He was a handball player as a kid and had to be talked into playing basketball.
Stories about athletes like Hakeem are even more impressive because he wasn’t playing the sport from the age of three. Imagine how good he would’ve been had he played as a child.
Hakeem’s transformation from out-of-control, young man to calm, mature adult is inspiring.
As a young player in the NBA, Hakeem was out of control. He was regularly fighting opponents during games and fighting his teammates in practice. Then, he rededicated his life to Islam, and his attitude and perspective changed completely.
Hakeem began to play under more control, rarely getting in trouble on or off the court. His purchases of clothing and cars were far less ostentatious. He was a new man.
As he guided the Houston Rockets to back-to-back NBA championships, Hakeem dominated players like Charles Barkley, David Robinson, Karl Malone, Patrick Ewing, Karl Malone, and Shaquille O’Neal.
I wish I could’ve seen him in his prime.
I was too young in the late ’80s and early ’90s to have seen Hakeem Olajuwon at his prime. Plus, my parents were not NBA parents. Growing up in North Carolina, we watched college basketball when I was young almost exclusively. So, I missed his peak when he was the most dominant.
Since reading this book, I have gone back to watch highlights of Hakeem, and for how dominant he was at that time, part of me thinks that he also was way ahead of his time. If he’s playing in the late ’90s to early 2000s, his game would have fit in even better at that time.
He was just such an incredible athlete and basketball player.