“Gilbert, I respect his game to whatever degree, but when you try to compare that to ‘The Dream,’ Hakeem Olajuwon, big man back in the day, the skill-set and the footwork that Hakeem had, [Arenas] needs to go back and look at some more film because I don’t think he really knows what the hell he’s talking about,” Sampson said on SiriusXM NBA Radio. “You gotta understand that footwork, and the game today, is all about footwork.”
Source: Angelo Guinhawa @ Clutch Points
Source: Angelo Guinhawa @ Clutch Points
More on this storyline
Sirius XM NBA: “Go back and do your homework before you open your mouth”. Ralph Sampson, Hakeem Olajuwon’s former teammate, tells @JumpShot8 & @SamMitchellNBA that he disagrees with Arenas’ comments on “the Dream”. pic.twitter.com/BxRii4RIb9 -via Twitter @SiriusXMNBA / September 21, 2023
Arenas paired those comments with a 2012 report from Newsday’s former Knicks beat writer Alan Hahn, who was writing about then-Knicks center Amar’e Stoudemire working out with Olajuwon in the offseason. Hahn wrote at the time: “The cost of learning The Dream Shake? $50,000 a week is what we were told.” That caused Arenas to put on his best bewildered face and yell commentary filled with more vulgarities than a Quentin Tarantino script. That may be a dated reference, which Arenas won’t appreciate since that’s his main gripe about anyone training with Olajuwon. “He ain’t been good since the ’90s,” Arenas said. “That means all the moves in the early 2000s? He don’t know. 2010? He don’t know. 2020? He don’t know. He don’t know! Who the (expletive) you gonna do those moves on?” -via Houston Chronicle / September 20, 2023