What eBay Hath Wrought 81: The Dream and the Reign Man

This is a bit of a filler post, but I have been trying to add a couple more things to my Hakeem Olajuwon collection, especially from the late 90's Metal-themed sets. I guess I feel a little bit of guilt for neglecting The Dream for a dozen years while I found my way through early adulthood. Shawn Kemp came along in this eBay purchase presumably because the seller had these two cards from the same set and bundled them together. I can't bag on the guy too much, but Olajuwon is famous for winning two championships and having amazing footwork and touch for a big man, while Kemp was famous for high-flying dunks until he fathered a bunch of kids and got too fat to fly high anymore.

Fun fact: I did have a pair of the Reebok Kamikaze II's in high school, which were modeled after the pair Shawn Kemp wore in the All-Star game. Last year Reebok released a retro pair in a very similar color scheme, and I got them and wear them regularly. Olajuwon had one shoe release during my high school years, and I bought a pair, but they were Spalding-branded and didn't quite live up to the hype. His heart was in a good place as he wanted them to be affordable for kids who couldn't get the Jordans and the Pennys, but unfortunately budget-branded shoes just weren't cool. Now he's got some shoes out through some kind of boutique brand and they are expensive and butt-ugly.

Unfortunately, Olajuwon never hoisted that third championship trophy over his head. The Rockets had a couple of decent runs after the '94 and '95 seasons, but never were able to put the whole thing together. The return of a guy named Michael Jordan from his baseball experiment may have had a little to do with that, but I mostly blame the Utah Jazz.

Someday I will stop running filler posts, but right now I am supposed to be studying for an Accounting midterm and writing a paper for Business Law. That dangum guy over at Baseball Card Breakdown posted one of the Smiths' songs as part of his Topps Archives box break the other day; I started listening to more of them while I was working on my schoolwork last night, and heaven knows I'm miserable now.

If you want a series of posts with a narrative, as well as a healthy dose of nostalgia and fun for members of a certain generation, go check out the whole four-part picture story he did while opening his box of cards. They are admittedly a take-off on Zippy Zappy's Clone Breaks posts, but I think they stand on their own merits just fine. And like the Star Wars movies, some folks like The Junior Junkie have already chosen to view them in a certain order that they claim tells the story in a better way than the original. He chose the controversial IV, III, II, I order of viewing, which changes the viewer's question from 'what will happen next?' to a more navel-gazey 'what events could have led to this ending?' To think all that destruction came because Han Solo wanted a vacation...