I didn’t want Friday night’s ceremonies for Hakeem Olajuwon to pass by without dedicating some time to it here on Yao Ming Mania. Hakeem was elected into this year’s class of the Basketball Hall of Fame, and Rockets’ owner Leslie Alexander did some wonderful things to commemorate the honor.

Before Friday’s game, the Rockets unveiled a new monument outside of Toyota Center with a ceremony, then at halftime they had another ceremony where a new banner was hung from the rafters with Olajuwon’s jersey as well as “Hall of Fame 2008” inscribed on the bottom of it.

For more photos from the ceremonies, click here (thanks to Raymond for posting in the forum).

They were wonderful moments. It reminds me of the halftime ceremony a few seasons ago, which I attended, where the Rockets honored Hakeem after he anounced his retirement. I’m eternally grateful for what Hakeem did for the city of Houston. Those championships in 1994 and 1995 were some of my favorite sports memories ever, as well as the run his Houston Cougar teams made to the Final 4 back in the early 80’s.

And thank you Les Alexander for building a tradition here in Houston for honoring great players like Hakeem, Clyde Drexler and Calvin Murphy, coaches like Rudy Tomjanovich, and GMs like Carroll Dawson. Maybe the same thing will be done for Yao Ming in about 10 years.

Not to be a spoil sport, but I’m a little disappointed that Muslims are not allowed to have statues made in their likeness. Although the statue of the jersey is nice, it’s a little redudant since a likeness of Hakeem’s jersey is hanging from the rafters of Toyota Center. I don’t know what else the Rockets could have done, though, to have something that was a little more unique. A large photo of Hakeem shooting a fallaway jumper after a “Dream Shake” might have been okay, but large photos don’t have the same permanence as a statue or monument.

Anyone have any better ideas?

On a completely different note, I had a couple of thoughts from Friday night’s game against the Suns, but I’ll save that for later over the next couple of days. I want people to soak in all the photos from the ceremonies honoring Hakeem without me cluttering it up with other random thoughts. Hakeem deserves that.

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 13th, 2008 at 12:53 am and is filed under Miscellaneous. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.