The greatest revelation from the 30 for 30 on “Phi Slama Jama” is that St. John’s appears to have missed out on Naismith Hall of Famer Hakeem Olajuwon.
In the documentary that aired Tuesday night on ESPN, former Houston captain Eric Davis told the story of how Olajuwon, a native of Lagos, Nigeria, came to be a part of the Houston program that reached three straight Final Fours from 1982-84.
“Hakeem lands at JFK in New York and St. John’s is supposed to meet him,” Davis recalled. “No one’s there. He has three other tickets. One for Louisville, the University of Houston and Providence. He walks outside at JFK and it’s cold.”
Said Olajuwon: “As soon as I walked through that door, the breeze hit me from outside. I couldn’t even go outside, so I just went straight back in. What am I gonna do?”
Davis: “He sees a baggage handler that happens to be Nigerian and he asks him, ‘Hey, which one of these have weather similar to Lagos, Nigeria?’ The baggage handler looks and he says, ‘Houston.'”
Olajuwon: “So I changed my ticket to Houston. So I went to Houston and nobody was there.”
Davis and Houston’s Mike Young then went to the Houston airport to meet Olajuwon on the orders of legendary coach Guy V. Lewis.
“Look for a kid from Africa, probably going to be about 6-foot-7,” Lewis told his captains.
Turns out, Olajuwon was a 7-footer, not 6-7.
“He’s a 7-footer alright, but he only weighs about 170 pounds,” Davis recalled of first seeing Olajuwon.
“Hey coach, it’s Eric Davis,” Davis told Lewis by phone.
“You got the kid?” Lewis asked.
“I got him,” Davis said. “You know he’s 7-feet tall.”
“Well, shit,” Lewis said.
Said Jerome Solomon of the Houston Chronicle: “Basketball-wise, he was a kindergartner. He didn’t know much about the sport, he didn’t know how to play the game.”
Added Davis: “He is a competitor, he is a warrior. You couldn’t coach that. We had the greatest gift in the world. And you know what, wherever that baggage handler is, wherever he’s at, thank you. Thank you.”
