I can assure you I won’t ever again discuss baseball at such great lengths. The trade of Oswalt was merely a topic which had been heavy on my heart and I was in need of some medium to vent – naturally I picked my blog as my outlet of choice.
Dwight Howard has been working out with Hakeem, reportedly. Olajuwon has become something of a Gandolph-esque ‘elder’ figure amongst current players, providing tutelage under his own terms. Each time news breaks of Dream tutoring some player, from Josh Smith to Kobe Bryant, two reactions arise from the fanbase which indicate a misunderstanding of the situation:
1) Confusion over why Olajuwon has not reached out to Yao Ming and vice versa
2) Confusion over why Olajuwon does not simply take his services to the bench and become an assistant coach
To address the first, there is really nothing Olajuwon can impart to Yao Ming. You can’t instill ‘attitude’ within a person as it is an innate quality, and even then, I do not feel that Yao Ming is necessarily as meek as people say. Moreover, Yao isn’t capable of mastering Olajuwon’s moves with his size and lack of dexterity. Contrary to popular wisdom, Patrick Ewing really was the right guy (in theory) for Yao to learn from because the former made his living off the mechanical ruggedness which Yao developed in the JVG era.
(sidenote: For as much grief as JVG takes from Rockets fans, I really hope people realize just how far Yao came while under him. It was under Van Gundy that the Rockets center developed into the most lethal post threat in basketball, not Rudy T. If anything, Rudy T. was holding Yao back.)
The second reaction mischaracterizes Dream’s motivations. It’s not a ‘love of the game’ or ‘love of teaching’ or some other trope that drives Hakeem; it’s a love of teaching great players.
I think he considers himself as sort of an ‘elder’ in a secret society, giving his time to only those he deems worthwhile. He’s not going to waste his efforts training David Andersen or some similar shmuck. For Dream, I think it’s sort of a pedagogical elitism where sacred wisdom is not for the masses but for only those who have proven competent and shown potential for its proper usage. To that end, we can see why he picks the mentees that he does.
