Mirin Fader, author of the fascinating new Hakeem Olajuwon biography, discusses the book

Mirin Fader, author of the fascinating new Hakeem Olajuwon biography, discusses the book 

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:06):
Welcome back Sports Talk ninety nine and five. Randy Kennedy
in the Threaded Fashion and Studio. Glad you guys are
with us and right now thrilled to be able to
talk to mir and Fader. She is the author of Dream,
The Life and Legacy of a cheme Elajahwan, and she
joins us now book is just out, Mirian. Congratulations, awesome book, Cherl.

Speaker 2 (00:27):
Thank you so much. Good to be here.

Speaker 1 (00:29):
All right. So, Marion, I always say I read a
lot of biographies and sports biographies and otherwise. Always one
of the main ways I judge it is how far
do I get before I get to a part of
the book where, Oh, I know what's going to happen
in this game? Right, I understand about this. I was
like one hundred pages in here before we got to
the part where I'm like, okay, I remember watching this game.
So how much of the work is that when you're

(00:52):
just trying to write the stuff that none of us
have any idea about until you really deep dive into it.

Speaker 2 (00:58):
Oh my god, that's so true, huge part of it,
because I think we love sports, not just because of
these incredible feats on the court, but we love the
stories behind them. And if you do this long enough
like we have, you know some stories are true and
some are not. And the beauty of this is like
unpacking those myths and finding the stories behind the games

(01:18):
that you've seen. And you know, Hikein is like one
of the most undercovered athletes of our time. It's really weird.
I think there was so much ground to cover just
because not much had been explored.

Speaker 1 (01:28):
Okay, so let's start with Hukeem or Hukim.

Speaker 2 (01:32):
Let's start with that, right, right, Okay, So his name
has always been Hakeem with an H. But when he
gets to the University of Houston, I found that a
secretary accidentally wrote his name with an a aquem and
I think it's because when you hear it sometimes the
H seems silent. But because Hakeem is such a respectful, humble,

(01:52):
you know, kind person then and now, he never corrected anyone,
and his teammates basically said, you know, he just wanted
to be polite, So he sticks with the wrong name
for about ten years until midway through his NBA career.
I couldn't do it, No, I couldn't.

Speaker 1 (02:06):
I've seen other athletes that way too, and they're like
even like, you know, Tony Dorset was Tony Dorset before
he got to the NFL, and he said, oh on Dorset,
Well you could have told us that before you won
the Heisman.

Speaker 2 (02:16):
Right right, Like I feel bad now that you know
a lot of people didn't know, and they weren't trying
to be rude, they just thought that was his name.

Speaker 1 (02:24):
And also you outline in the book that it even
got up adopted a little bit back in his home
country right where we just started calling him yeah, just without.

Speaker 2 (02:33):
The age, yes, and you know, the newspapers even did it.
So it's to me, I think that's the most shocking
part of it all. It's like the way a story
can just be perpetuated by so many different things and
then the man of the hour is just like, yep,
that's my name. And University of Houston hilariously didn't put
the name the last names on the back of their jersey.

(02:53):
That he was so cool that they had the first
name on the back.

Speaker 1 (02:57):
Well they were cool, there's no doubt about that. Okay,
So two major stories that I wanted to get to
before I opened the first page, before I opened the
book up. And it is a great book. I can't
recommend it more highly Dream by mir and Fader. So
the first one is how did he get from his
home country in Nigeria to the University of Houston to

(03:18):
play for the Cougars. Do we have in the book is?
You know? Lays out a couple of different possibilities here,
But how did he get to Houston?

Speaker 2 (03:26):
Yes, so the story that people think they know is
that there was a white American coach from North Carolina
who happened to be in Africa coaching. He spots a
team at a local tournament. He says, Wow, you're amazing.
I'd like to help you come play in America. The
next day, as the fairy tale goes, they get the
proper visas and paperwork, and this man, whose name is

(03:49):
Chris Pond, says, I can get you visits at all
these universities. I've booked one at Saint John's for you,
Georgia Providence, University of Houston, a lot of different places.
Next day, there at JFK in New York, ready for
the Saint John's visit, and Hakeem gets a shiver down
his spine. He says, it's too cold. I can't play there.
I've got to go to the University of Houston, as

(04:09):
the legend goes, and then they become this amazing team
and Hakeem is a Hall of Fame player. The problem
is that in the real course reporting for this book
and doing some old school journalism and just calling all
those coaches who are still alive, they say that they
never had any contact with that recruiter, Chris Pond, and
that they never had any visits scheduled for a LaJuan.

(04:30):
I think now, in all the reporting I've done for
this book on this, I think the plan was to
go to Houston all along.

Speaker 1 (04:36):
Well, and that was a reporter. You're not supposed to
assume anything. But when you started the book, did you
think that's the story you were going to tell and
you just had to go find out all the details
about it?

Speaker 2 (04:46):
Absolutely, because it's the story everyone loves.

Speaker 1 (04:50):
Yeah, it's in the.

Speaker 2 (04:51):
Thirty for thirty in ESPN. I mean, it's the one
truth that people think they know. They know very little
about him, but that is the one that is every
final four. I swear I see an article. Oh man,
imagine if Saint John's had a LaJuan, that would have
been the best player to ever play there, and so,
of course, you know, there's an old school saying in journalism,

(05:13):
if your mother tells you she loves you, look into it.
That's kind of how I approached it.

Speaker 1 (05:20):
So he shows up at Houston, and it's not like Eureka,
now we've got the greatest player in America or the
best player in the NCAA. It wasn't that at all, right,
it was just like, who's this guy pulling up?

Speaker 2 (05:33):
Exactly? I mean that he was no dream. Let's just
say that he was a beginner. He had amazing shot
walking abilities, he was a defensive player, but really didn't
even know the rules of the game. He was still learning.
I mean, he didn't know how to do a simple
drop stuff. He had never waitlifted before. And to make
matters more interesting, it wasn't like it is today where

(05:55):
there's international players on every college roster, let alone the pros.
I mean, nobody had really seeing somebody not only from America,
but not from Texas, right and definitely not from Africa.
So people were kind of like, I'm like, where did
this guy come from? What's his deal? Is he any good?

Speaker 1 (06:11):
And so how long before you could say, hey, he
is pretty good?

Speaker 2 (06:16):
I think you saw some glimmers like he could just
do things in practice, even in those early gyms, in
the first couple of months where it was like Guy Lewis,
the coach, Guy y Lewis was like, well, if he
can do that, I can teach him the rest. And
you would see, you know, glimmers of his freshman year
where he would have games where he'd you know, rip
down fourteen rebounds. He'd be like, wow, man, if he
got a jump shot, could he be a double double machine?

(06:38):
And then second year they were saying, oh, he's kind
of good. He might be as good as that guy
at Georgetown. What's that guy's name again? Oh yeah, Patrick Ewing,
something that would have seemed like an improbable sentence just
the year before. So, I mean, he makes it progress
so quickly, I think because he's competitive, he's receptive, he's humble,
but he's also got teammates and coaches that want to

(06:59):
make him better.

Speaker 1 (07:00):
The book is called Dream. It is just out as
by a mir and Fader. Also she's the author of
Jannis about Yanda's Anta Takupo, And certainly that's part of
this legacy. Mirror is that you know, the last six
MVP awards had been won by international players, not by
people who were born in America, going all the way
back to James Harden, and we can certainly trace that

(07:22):
lineage back to Hakim Olajuan.

Speaker 2 (07:24):
Right, Yeah, And I hope people reading this book do
begin to trace it back more to a LaJuan. I think,
at least for me, just growing up as somebody who
loves basketball, I was always taught that the game really
began to get globalized when the Dream Team came on
the scene in ninety two. But I never heard about
Haikem being spoken about in those terms as this kind

(07:45):
of pioneering figure. But he was, and he started the
globalization much earlier. I mean I talked with college coaches who,
after Hakeem was so dominant college, they all started making
trips to Africa, like, oh wait, we were allowed to
recruit internationally. We can, And so I just think that
he's not really given the credit. But yeah, you look
at how many African players grew up dreaming of playing

(08:07):
college hoops and NBA hoops because of the game. I
think we just got it brought in our history more.
You know, when you think of international guys, you think
of Dirk. Right, you think of Paige of Sooyogovich, but
he deserves to be brought up more in these conversations.
I think.

Speaker 1 (08:23):
So I got to ask you, Marion, our profession does
not come off looking very good from the early nineteen
eighties and journalism. I gotta I gotta tell you several times,
I know, I know, I don't know that it was
bigotry or racism. Maybe it's some percentage of that, as
it was just lazy of people like, Okay, this guy's
from Africa, therefore let's write stories about him being from

(08:46):
the bushes, right right.

Speaker 2 (08:48):
Yeah. The word that I just keep thinking it is
just ignorant. People just didn't know. They really had never
seen somebody from Africa. I didn't know anything about it.
There's a book that I read for this book called
Africa is Not a Country. And I think that kind
of was the mindset then of like, you know, they
didn't realize it was I hate to say it, but

(09:10):
didn't realize it was a confident continent. And I think
some writers, and you know this in our field, like
they try to be really clever and try to do
a literation and rhyme, and so you would see them
sort of making these just awful, you know, distasteful statements
that rhymed, and you know, I just kind of got
the sense they thought they were really clever, but you knows,
as cringey and as really just kind of baldly ignorant

(09:33):
things that were said about him. I also did want
to say in the books there were a lot of
journalists that did treat him with dignity and respect, and
I actually I really include a lot of journalists just
in my books in general, because I so love this profession,
and you know how hard it is to do what
we do, and digging through the archives and seeing how

(09:55):
journalists frame up athlete, it's just so critical to understanding
perception of them.

Speaker 1 (10:00):
And in fact, not only is it was the stereotype
not true, but this was not some you know, country guy.
He's very much a metropolitan guy before he got to America, right, yeah.

Speaker 2 (10:13):
Like Lego's, you know. And I hadn't been to Legos,
so you know, I myself didn't know much, but I
knew he came from a very big city. And of course,
you know, English is a national language of Nigeria, so
not only was he speaking English his whole life, he
got in trouble for speaking tribal languages because his school
was a British boarding school, and so he was used

(10:35):
to being in a big city where they're shopping and
fashion and culture, and he and his family regularly went
on trips abroad, so you know, they were a very
middle class family. He had siblings that went to college abroad,
so it's definitely he was. He was so shocked when
he came to America that people literally said to him, Hey,
do you come from the quote jungle. I mean, he

(10:56):
was stunned. Right, He's used to shopping in Milan and
all these places and it he was just very bothered
by the fact that people didn't know that.

Speaker 1 (11:06):
And I'm not sure that I knew that until reading
your book. I mean, like I said, I got one
hundred pages in before I got to the part where like, oh,
they're gonna play Georgetown. I remember that. So right, you
did a great in fact in the book, you know,
you quote him as saying that, oh, New York City,
that's nothing. Come to my hometown. You'll see what a
real city looks.

Speaker 2 (11:23):
Like, right right. I loved that, and it's true, like
he would tell all the tvates you got to go
to Lagos. You think this right here, the big apple.
Oh no, oh no, You've got to go to Legos.
I loved that.

Speaker 1 (11:37):
So he was a great college player, no doubt about it.
I think that he was kind of on that you know,
beginning end of when people started really paying very close
attention to college basketball and watching all the games on
TV and all that. But really, I think the story
that people know about him Miren is his draft class.
So he's going to come out of college at Houston
after his junior year, And I'm telling you, I think

(11:59):
it's probably the best passage in the book to me,
is just that the what ifs of that draft. Just
talk about that draft that he was in, and obviously
some other names that people will recognize.

Speaker 2 (12:11):
Absolutely. Yeah. So this was the last draft where they
did the old fashioned coin flip to determine who would
be the lasting number one. And it's because obviously we
know now that Houston would pick a lage one with
the number one pick, which gave them back to back
number one picks before they had Ralph Sampson number one,
seven foot four out of Virginia, and so all the

(12:31):
other teams are like, whoa whoa, WHOA, Like, how is
this team getting these picks? We can't have this system anymore,
so it's changed to a lottery system. But prior to
Houston getting the coin flip, the Bulls were involved, the
Trailblazers were involved. There was a player named Michael Jordan
at North Carolina that was pretty good, but nobody was like, WHOA,
that's Michael Jordan. He's going to be the next greatest

(12:52):
player to ever win. You know, back then, centers were
valued above everything else. If you didn't draft the center,
you couldn't win. This idea of drafting a guard first
was seen as absurd as good as Jordan was, and
so I talked with a lot of the people involved
in the Bulls said that if they had the number
one pick, they would have picked a LaJuan. Even when

(13:14):
they picked Jordan, the Bulls and owners said to the
GM Rod Dooran, this better workout, so you know, hakeem
to have, yeah, the respect even then, it's unbelievable. And
then to me to this day, the fact that nobody
from Houston is like, man, I wish we would have
drafted Jordan. So you've got all these players. There's John Stockton,
Charles Barkley, Sam Bully ended up being a historical failure

(13:38):
for Portland, and names were being thrown out. You could
have had Jordan in Houston. There could have been a
trade with Ralph Sampson. You could have had stopped in
with the Bulls. I mean, there was all these different
names being thrown around, but ultimately everyone respected LaJuan, who
hadn't even really developed his offensive arsenal as by far
the consensus number one pick.

Speaker 1 (14:00):
It is crazy to think about, and you know from
reading your book there were a couple of spots in
there when I was like, wow, this might work out.
The Rockets may get Elijahwan and Jordan this draft even Oh,
I know they didn't get it, but it wasn't that far.

Speaker 2 (14:13):
Fed, so it could have happened. Oh my god, I
can't even That would have been so incredible, especially because
you know how Hakem could just run the floor, runs
like a d er. Can imagine those two in their
prime together, I.

Speaker 1 (14:27):
Mean and the Bulls. If the Rockets had said, hey,
we'll give you Ralph Sampson, just give us this pick
at number three, I mean, there's certainly a possibility they
would have said, sure, Ralph Sampson. Why would we want him?

Speaker 2 (14:39):
Right? And Ralph? People forget Ralph was supposed to be
the next coming of you know, Bill Russell, Kareem Abdul Jaboirs.
I mean, he was a highly, highly coveted player. So
you know, there were a lot of possibilities. In fact,
the one thing I did mention the Sixers were involved
in all this, and back then, you know, the Sixers
were so good. I think so many things could have happened.

(15:00):
It's interesting to me that it would work out where
he ken gets to stay in the same city that
he went to college.

Speaker 1 (15:07):
In that draft, by the way, was Elijah On, Sam Buie,
Michael Jordan, third, Sam Perkins from North Carolina. Four, Charles Barkley,
who we know very well went number five, and then
other great players as well, including John Stockton, a Hall
of famer, I mean, just on and on Michael Young,
his Houston teammate in the first round that year. That
was a we thought it was a really good draft.

(15:29):
We had no idea what kind of draft it really was.

Speaker 2 (15:33):
Oh yeah. And also with you know, your connection to Barkley,
it was interesting talking to Rod Thorn and he was like,
I really like Barkley. I just thought it was undersized.
I didn't know how he's going to compete. I didn't
know how he was going to get those rebounds. I
just think history is so funny. You know. We try
to predict, we try to project, but ultimately you have
no idea how somebody's going to do until they do
it right.

Speaker 1 (15:53):
Meer and I saw him play in high school, and
I said, then he can't make it in the SEC.
So even worse, I take it a step further. He
couldn't even play in the SEC, much less the NBA.
So I'll cop to that one.

Speaker 2 (16:07):
Yeah, what can you do? What can you do?

Speaker 1 (16:10):
Hey? I noticed in the book you quoted Ronnie Arrow,
who later became the head coach at South Alabama. Do
you know how many people you interviewed for the book?
Do you keep up with the number?

Speaker 2 (16:21):
Yes, two hundred and sixty six, not that I was
counting or being excessive or anything. Wow.

Speaker 1 (16:29):
That is that's awesome. It is a it's a great,
great book. You got another one in the works.

Speaker 2 (16:33):
Mire, I do. I do. I have a book three
in the works, but I haven't announced it. But I
just want to keep writing basketball books forever. I love
this so much. I love the history. I think we
should appreciate our superstars that have come before more so
hopefully all will read the third one.

Speaker 1 (16:50):
You know. A good place to announce it is iHeartRadio.
If you just get the idea, you will do that.

Speaker 2 (16:54):
I got you, I got you.

Speaker 1 (16:57):
This book is just out. It is Dream, the Life,
Life and Legacy of Hakeem Elijahan. Mir And Fader. Great writer.
She's also a staff writer, senior staff writer at The Ringer.
I could not recommend this book highly enough. Like I said,
you get one hundred pages in before you get to
something where you're like, oh, yeah, I knew about that.
It is really really great stuff. Marion. We could talk

(17:17):
all day, but I appreciate you coming on and hopefully
a whole bunch of people will pick up a copy
of Dream.

Speaker 2 (17:25):
So much. I can't wait for us to do this again.

Speaker 1 (17:27):
We will definitely do it. There you go, Mehr and Fader.
The book is Dream, the Life and Legacy of Hakeem Elijahwan.
Absolutely awesome work there. This is Sports Talk ninety nine five.