THE FUSE

The teenager who would become one of the greatest centers in basketball history spent his Lagos boyhood guarding a soccer goal, not a basketball rim. Hakeem Olajuwon did not seriously pick up the sport until he was around 15, and he arrived in the United States in 1980 a raw, towering project at the University of Houston, more curiosity than prospect. Four years later the Houston Rockets made him the first overall pick of the 1984 draft, selecting him ahead of a North Carolina guard named Michael Jordan. The kid from Nigeria had become the most coveted young big man in the world.