Mailbag: No room for Kareem on short list of championship players?

Usually the mail is answered during my Weekly Countdown column on Fridays, but the holidays are momentarily negating that schedule. So here is the best of what was found hiding among the spam.

There was no small amount of mail regarding my list of the nine players who have won 28 of the last 29 championships since the Magic Bird era began ...

I really enjoyed this piece and the depth of your descriptions; however, your exclusion of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar -- could Magic have won any titles without him? Kareem won a title without Magic (albeit with the Big O), and I feel as though you should give Kareem as much if not more credit than you do Kobe Bryant and Dwyane Wade
-- Patryck, Chicago

Your list doesn't even include Kareem, who won six championships. Magic should be the accompanying player alongside Kareem, who did this with two different teams. And, with Kobe and Shaq, Kobe made all the clutch shots in the playoffs. They couldn't even give Shaq the ball down the stretch of close games because of his free-throw shooting.
-- RPM, Los Angeles

Are you another pro-Boston guy with regard to your hate for Kareem? Is that why Kareem failed to make the list?
-- Bob, Palm Springs, Calif.

In answer to Bob's first question: The last time Abdul-Jabbar helped beat the Celtics in the NBA Finals was 1987. That would be a long time to maintain hatred, especially over something so relatively unimportant as a basketball game.

But I never hated him. And I'm not looking to discredit Kobe either. I was pointing out in this column that you can distill the pool of NBA championships over the last three decades to a small group of nine players. But of course that's not the only way of looking at it. In the bigger picture, Magic would not have won without Kareem, and Shaq would not have won without Kobe

In this column, however, I was focusing on the leader of the recent championship teams. When it comes to the '80s Lakers, the leader was unquestionably Magic Johnson. As terrific as Abdul-Jabbar was, his Lakers didn't win a championship until Johnson arrived. Magic drove that team, he won three MVPs during their championship era ... I could go on and on.

During the Lakers' more recent run of three championships, Shaq was league MVP while averaging 28.6 points, 12.4 rebounds and 2.6 blocks over those three seasons. He was the dominant force in basketball.

Do you think people really understand how talented and great of a player Hakeem Olajuwon was? I would say he's on par with Tim Duncan, as Duncan has had some great people around him. I know Olajuwon had Ralph Sampson around, though I'm too young to remember him. I am not taking anything away from Duncan, but Olajuwon seemed to do the most with the least. Do you think Olajuwon will ever get his due?
-- Dan McDermott, Huntersville, N.C.