When Michael Jordan, arguably the greatest basketball player of all time, briefly retired from the Chicago Bulls between October 1993 and March 1995, other players had the opportunity to shine brightly.
One of such players was Hakeem Olajuwon, also known as ‘The Dream’ who led his team, the Houston Rockets, to back-to-back NBA championships in 1994 and 1995.
In addition to the fact that Hakeem Olajuwon was a physical, athletic specimen (he was 7 feet tall!), he moved with such grace and speed on the court that was not common for men of his height.
As a result of the unique combination of agility, style and size, Hakeem Olajuwon was able to dominate the NBA with a particular skill which he referred to as ‘The Dream Shake’
So, how was Hakeem Olajuwon able to come up with such a devastating move that embarrassed opponents game after game? And even more, how can you use the same strategy to come up with good ideas?
The Olajuwon Dream Shake Came From Seeing Everything Connected
As I said in this post, we humans have a tendency to compartmentalize our lives. This tendency is one of the main reasons we find it difficult to come up with good ideas. Since we compartmentalize our lives, we are blind to the inevitable overlaps that invariably appear between different bodies of experience and knowledge.
Hakeem Olajuwon grew up in Lagos, Nigeria, where the predominant game was football (soccer, for my US readers). As a youngster, Olajuwon played as a goalkeeper and consequently developed the footwork and agility that made the Dream Shake easier for him to develop later as a professional basketball athlete.
Hear him explain in his own words:
“The Dream Shake was actually one of my soccer moves which I translated to basketball. It would accomplish one of three things: one, to misdirect the opponent and make him go the opposite way; two, to freeze the opponent and leave him devastated in his tracks; three, to shake off the opponent and giving him no chance to contest the shot.”
Note that at the point when Hakeem Olajuwon popularized the move, he had been professionally playing basketball for nearly 8 years. Basketball was the sport that paid his bills and made him a celebrity figure. In contrast, all the time he was playing football, he did not earn a single cent from his efforts. Yet, because Hakeem Olajuwon saw every experience in his life as connected, he was able to find associations from seemingly different sports. The Dream Shake was born and Olajuwon’s place was cemented in the annals of history.
The Olajuwon Dream Shake Came to the Expectant Mind
After harnessing his ability to see everything connected, the next thing that Olajuwon subconsciously did was to direct his expectations in the desired direction.
This is why I said in this post, your expectations determine your experiences and your reality.
Olajuwon knew he had a good idea from football that he could incorporate into basketball. And after spending time perfecting the Dream Shake, his expectations attracted the desired result.
Below is an excerpt from an interview where Hakeem Olajuwon described The Dream Shake in vivid detail. Also note his choice of words when detailing how he expects his opponents to react to his moves.
“When the point guard throws me the ball, I jump to get the ball. But this jump is the set-up for the second move, the baseline move. I call it the ‘touch landing.’ The defender is waiting for me to come down because I jumped but I’m gone before I land. Defenders say ‘Wow, he’s quick,’ but they don’t know that where I’m going is predetermined. He’s basing it on quickness, but the jump is to set him up. Before I come down, I make my move. When you jump, you turn as you land. Boom! The defender can’t react because he’s waiting for you to come down to defend you. Now, the first time when you showed that quickness, he has to react to that quickness, so you can fake baseline and go the other way with your jump hook. All this is part of the Dream Shake. The Dream Shake is you dribble and then you jump; now you don’t have a pivot foot. When I dribble I move it so when I come here, I jump. By jumping, I don’t have a pivot foot now. I dribble so now I can use either foot. I can go this way or this way. So he’s frozen, he doesn’t know which way I’m going to go. That is the shake. You put him in the mix and you jump stop and now you have choice of pivot foot. He doesn’t know where you’re gonna turn and when.”
Hakeem Olajuwon had a mental map of how he expected the move to work and yes, it worked wonders every time he implemented it. In fact, Hakeem Olajuwon’s expectation was so good that many of the high-quality opponents that had the misfortune of being on the receiving end of The Dream Shake started expecting it too.
Consider Shaquille O’Neal’s musings after being on the receiving end of The Dream Shake: “Hakeem has five moves, then four countermoves – that gives him 20 moves.“
Olajuwon’s markers shared his expectation. They knew what was coming, however, there was nothing they could do against it!
The Olajuwon Dream Shake Came From Celebrating the Mundane
Ask anybody who follows football (soccer) and you’d find out that the goalkeeper has the most boring job on his team.
For large periods of the game, the goalie is not in possession of the ball. In fact, when people are just having a kickabout for fun, it’s usually the least skillful person that ends up tending the goalposts. Either that or the fat kid!
In any case, as a goalkeeper, it is very easy to tune out of the game and lose concentration because of boredom or resentment.
Yet, for Hakeem Olajuwon, it obviously wasn’t the case. One way or the other, he found a way to enjoy the most boring part of football. He did not despise his role as the goalkeeper in his team. Rather, he focused on becoming good at the position and eventually, when the time arrived for him to develop his signature move, the hours spent in his youth honing his goalkeeping skills counted for something.
In Conclusion…
Hakeem Olajuwon was able to create a practically undefendable offensive move in basketball that is still being used till this day. He was able to achieve it by mastering three principles of creating good ideas. First, he saw all the experiences in his life as connected. Second, he had a vivid expectation of how the good idea was going to work. Finally, he found a way to thrive in mundane events.
Can you get the same results in your life too?
Yes, you too can come up with good ideas with remarkable predictability when you follow the three aforementioned principles.
