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Message: [QUOTE="nelsonmuntz, post: 3596534, member: 833"] Some of Olajuwon's teams in the middle of his career were not good. Thorpe was decent, but the backcourt sucked and he played several years without a real point guard on the team. Olajuwon went to the press during this time to complain about the quality of the roster. Jordan would have been punching people in the face every practice if he had to play with that level of talent. Olajuwon kept the Rockets competitive in the West throughout that period despite playing on bad teams. He also played in an era where the Center was king. There was not just Ewing, Kareem, Parish and Robinson, but he overlapped with Shaq, Daugherty, Mutombo and Alonzo. There were a lot of second tier centers that were good defensively like Mark Eaton and Tree Rollins. He had to defend good offensive centers like Seikaly, Smits and Duckworth. Olajuwon would often matchup with power forwards, and had epic battles with the Mailman. He would match up against Garnett and Cliff. The pre-zone NBA was the Era of the Big Man, and Olajuwon played against some really good players. The problem I have with both Wilt and Russell is that the overall competition from that era was weak compared to today. They had each other, and most of the rest of the competition was unathletic 6'7 and 6'8 centers. I give Wilt a lot of credit not just for his stats and longevity, but because he usually played hungover and after epic nights with multiple women. Russell is great, but if I was a GM and had a time machine, I would choose Olajuwon in his prime over any of the others. [/QUOTE]

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