Giannis Is Now Working With Hakeem Olajuwon And The Idea Of Him Developing His Own Dream Shake Is Terrifying

There are several ways an NBA player establishes themselves as a superstar. There's being an All Star, making All NBA, winning a title or multiple titles, setting records etc. Those are all fine and good, but there's something out there that only happens for the best of the best that many players can only dream (pun intended but not intended) of being tabbed of having the privilege of doing.

Getting the call from Hakeem Olajuwon.

Confused? That's understandable. 

You see, over the years when it comes to offseason training, we see clips all the time of open runs with NBA players, or guys working with their trainers in an attempt to improve on a certain skill leading up to the season. But for the true elites? The best of the best? They go to Hakeem

I don't want to sound too much like an old, but I feel like the current generation doesn't really give Hakeem The Dream the respect he most definitely deserves. I get it, he played at a time that was basically a billion years ago for today's NBA fan, but you could make the case that Olajuwon is one of (if not the) most dominant two way big men in the history of the NBA. Defensively? Monster. Offensively? Revolutionary. 

So why am I blogging this and what does it even matter? Well guess who got the call this summer

Giannis famously refuses to train with current NBA players, but when you have the chance to work with Olajuwon like the greats before you, you do it. Over the years the biggest knock on Giannis has been his shooting, people want him to be a three point shooter or even a moderately acceptable midrange shooter. Sadly, that hasn't really happened yet. Giannis is a career 28% three point shooter and has been under 31% every season since his rookie year. Just last season he only shot 34% from the midrange zopne. I feel like he is what he is at this point of his career when it comes to that stuff.

Advertisement

So what does he do? He changes things up and instead works on beefing up his post game. To me, that makes way more sense given his style of play, and it's something that could definitely use some improvement. Did you know Giannis only ranked in the 54th percentile in Post Ups last year? His post up frequency was only 11.4%, which is basically the same as guys like Luka, KAT, Evan Mobley etc. The biggest knock on Giannis is probably the fact that people feel like he just runs through people and dunks. No skill, most are offensive fouls, stuff like that.

Well, now what happens if he adds some sort of Dream Shake to his arsenal? That's a pretty big deal. Finding a way to make Giannis an effective post player so he doesn't have to just barrel into people is the easiest way to help preserve his health, something that probably could have helped this past postseason. As of now, Giannis' only real post move is to just overpower his defender. If he's able to even add one ounce of skill to that arsenal in some sort of new version of the Dream Shake, that's a big deal. A way bigger deal than if he learned to shoot threes in my opinion, because we know he's not going to be a good three point shooter. As we saw with LeBron, as these guys age if they can add a legit post game to their offensive bag, it allows them to reinvent themselves offensively. Is it a surprise that LeBron did this in 2011 and then the titles started coming? 

This is of course a huge year for MIL. A new coach, they re-invested all that money into Khris Middleton and Brook Lopez to keep their aging core together, Giannis basically put the entire franchise on notice that the clock is ticking in terms of competing for titles or he's out, so their window is right now. Having a more offensively dynamic Giannis is obviously a big part of that plan. 

As someone who has had to watch his favorite team deal with Giannis in a playoff series, the idea of Giannis adding some Olajuwon to his game is way more terrifying than any offseason clip we've gotten in the past of him knocking down open corner threes in a shootaround. Even if it's only like 35% of what Hakeem used to do, considering Giannis is basically starting at 0%, this is definitely going to be something to monitor during the year.