One Final Game: The last great performance for NBA legends

One Final Game: Hakeem Olajuwon

Date: November 20, 2001

Hakeem Olajuwon was one of the greatest defensive players in the history of the NBA, a two-time Defensive Player of the Year who made 9 All-Defensive teams. He was a dominant offensive force, certainly, but his ability to shut down the other towering centers of the 1990s helped lift the Houston Rockets.

By the end of his career, Olajuwon was playing out his swan song season with the Toronto Raptors, and his impact on the court was significantly muted from his prime. He turned 39 during the 2001-02 season, what would be his final year in the NBA. He averaged a career-low in minutes and in scoring, but on one night in the season’s first month he exploded for one last great game, including some elite defensive impact.

In a close loss to the Detroit Pistons, Olajuwon scored 14 points, towards the upper end of his scoring output that season. What is impressive is that he also contributed 20 rebounds, 15 of them on the defensive glass, and he rejected five shots. That’s right: a man about to turn 39 turned away five shots in a single game. He was the oldest player to put up a 20 and 5 night in NBA history, beating Marcus Camby by almost exactly a year.

The Dream would only have two more double-doubles the rest of the season, and 14 rebounds were the most he would pull down from there. The Raptors would go on to play those same Detroit Pistons in the playoffs at the end of the year, and Olajuwon would muster just 19 rebounds total in five games.