Olajuwon hakeem biography template

Olajuwon in 2015

• 2× NBA champion (1994, 1995)
• 2× NBA Finals Participant (1994, 1995)
• NBA Most Semiprecious Player (1994)
• 12× NBA All-Star (1985–1990, 1992–1997)
• 6× All-NBA Principal Team (1987–1989, 1993, 1994, 1997)
• 3× All-NBA Second Body (1986, 1990, 1996)
• 3× All-NBA Third Setup (1991, 1995, 1999)
• 2× NBA Defensive Competitor of interpretation Year (1993, 1994)
• 5× NBA All-Defensive Head Team (1987, 1988, 1990, 1993, 1994)
• 4× NBA All-Defensive Second Side (1985, 1991, 1996, 1997)
• NBA All-Rookie Foremost Team (1985)
• 2× NBA rebounding leader (1989, 1990)
• 3× NBA blocks ruler (1990, 1991, 1993)
• No. 34 retired unwelcoming Houston Rockets
• NBA anniversary body (50th, 75th)
• NCAA Final Quaternity Most Famed Player (1983)
• Helms Foundation Contender o
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Olajuwon, Hakeem Abdul

(b. 21 January 1963 in Lagos, Nigeria), basketball player who starred on the University of Houston team and the professional Houston Rockets, whom he led to consecutive National Basketball Association (NBA) titles in 1994 and 1995.

Olajuwon was the third of six children born to Salam and Abike Olajuwon, middle-class Muslims who owned a thriving cement business in Lagos, Nigeria. A gifted athlete, he was a soccer goalkeeper from an early age before learning to play team handball as a junior at Muslim Teachers College, a high school in Lagos. Olajuwon did not play basketball until late 1978 when, at the age of fifteen, he joined the school's basketball team coached by Ganiyu Otenigbade, who taught him to play the center position.

Richard Mills, a U.S. coach who was head of the Nigerian National Sports Coaching Institute, spotted Olajuwon playing in a pick-up game in Lagos and invited him to play with the Nigerian National Team. The other players were older, bigger, and stronger than Olajuwon, who was still in high school, and he saw limited action. Mills then selected the seventeen-year-old Olajuwon for the Nigerian Junior National Team and, just two years after he began playing basketball, Olajuwon starred in the All-Africa games in Luanda, Angola.

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Hakeem Olajuwon

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