Hakeem Olajuwon refuses to be a bystander as the NBA’s low post-scoring big men move toward extinction. Once the very best in the world at shimmying and scooping and driving from the post, the Rockets legend instead took up the task of teaching post moves to the next generation.

You can lead a big man to the block, but you can’t make him use it. So when Sporting News asked Olajuwon who has used his advice best, the answer was not Dwight Howard or Tyson Chandler or the Lopez twins. Not even LeBron James. Nope, it was one of his shortest pupils.

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“I’ve worked with a lot of players, but the one who really capitalized on it the most is Kobe Bryant,” the Basketball Hall of Famer said of the 6-6 retiring Lakers legend. “When I watch him play, he'll go down in the post comfortably, naturally, and he'll execute it perfectly.”

Now employed by the Rockets, the team that he led to two championships in the 1990s, Olajuwon cannot work with the NBA pupils of his choosing — only Houston's guys now — but he still wants to see the game grow.

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That’s why he joined the Allstate NABC Good Works Team, where he helped host a basketball clinic in Texas during the Final Four weekend. Olajuwon called the initiative, which is led by fellow former NBA All-Star Grant Hill, “rewarding” and was glad to honor college athletes who achieve on and off the court.

Olajuwon spoke with Sporting News on Sunday from Houston, host of the Final Four, the same stage where he made his name in runs to the 1983 and 1984 NCAA championship games at the University of Houston. What follows is an edited transcript of a conversation focused on the evolution in the NBA.

SN: How much do you think this tournament, a lot of these bad games, have been a product of the one-and-done era, of the next Hakeem Olajuwon only spending one year in college instead of three or four?

Olajuwon: Of course if you have guys leaving after one year, that means the quality goes down. Definitely. The development, when guys then take two years to develop in the NBA league, too. If you play sophomore and junior years, you become a more seasoned player. So that's definitely affected the quality of the tournament.

It's affecting the quality generally of players. They are going into the league not truly matured. They haven't played enough basketball to experience and get the confidence and level to adjust when they get to the big leagues.

SN: Moving to the NBA, particularly to your career a little bit. I'm looking back, and one of the great things about your career span was you got to measure yourself against so many great centers. Why do you think there are so few dominant big men, not just in the way the game is played but in terms of there just aren't as many great players at that size anymore?

Olajuwon: Every team's always looking for that diamond. The big man for any team is a diamond that everybody looks for. Even today, if you can find them anywhere on the globe, you bring them over. So it's always something that everybody looks for.

But the game has been impacted by fundamentals. The dominating big man, that role, has not been a focus to develop big men to be dominant forces. Why is it easy for a big man to dominate? Because it's easy to dominate from that position. Look at the offensive end: Pound it inside and have a go-to move, and you're going to force a double-team because no players want to guard you in the post one-on-one. So you're forcing a team to double- and triple-team, and that opens up opportunity for other people. You create opportunities for teammates on the other end.

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