Hakeem Olajuwon fasting during Ramadan left teammates in awe, but him simply feeling ‘lighter’

Olajuwon had been contemplating whether he should fast on game days during Ramadan. In that month, commemorating the time when the Qur’an was revealed to the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH), adult Muslims, whose health permits, abstain completely from food, drink, and sexual activity from dawn to sunset. It’s a time of spiritual discipline, reflection, and gratitude. One turns inward, trying to get as close as possible to the Divine. Ramadan also binds the community closer together, reminding all of the suffering and poverty that many of its members endure.

Olajuwon hadn’t yet fasted during actual games. “I cannot do it on game days,” he told reporters in February 1993. “So what I have to do is make up for the days I miss after the season.” But a conversation with Denver guard Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf, another Muslim player, inspired him to contemplate fasting on game days. Olajuwon wasn’t aware at first that Abdul-Rauf, with whom he had prayed before, had done it.

After a game in Denver in January 1995, the two caught up with each other. “I got to get something to eat. I’ve been fasting,” Abdul-Rauf said.

“You fast?” Olajuwon asked.

“Yeah, man. I’ll tell you. I can’t explain it. My focus is on a whole ’nother level. You would think it would be down. It’s like . . . magnified.”

“Really?” Olajuwon responded, surprised. “Well, you fast. I’m going to fast.”

“Alhamdulillah!” Abdul-Rauf said, which translates as “praise be to God.”

“We’re athletes,” Abdul-Rauf says now, reflecting on that conversation, “but we’re also competitive in terms of, if we see somebody that has some good qualities and it sounds good, well, shoot, I’m going to try it.”

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Hanif Khalil, Abdul-Rauf’s manager and a Houstonian who had prayed alongside Olajuwon as well, explains the dynamic: “That’s one of the things in Islam, is that in the sight of Allah, that we don’t compete as far as bank accounts. We don’t compete in worldly affairs or anything like that,” Khalil says. “But if there is a healthy competition, it is in the deed of piety and good works. . . . Hakeem is a fierce competitor. If he sees that Mahmoud is [fasting], it’s almost a competition in good deed . . . a healthy competition.”

Olajuwon began to publicly discuss the idea because he decided he would fast during games throughout Ramadan. “When you are on the road, you are allowed to make it up. But to go all the way instead of delaying it to make it up [is exciting],” he said in February 1995. Olajuwon was referring to the stipulation that he was considered a traveler, and the Qur’an permits one to postpone fasting and make up the days at the end of Ramadan. “He didn’t want to do that,” says Rudy Tomjanovich, the Rockets coach. “He wanted to do it the proper way.” Olajuwon believed that the traveler rule didn’t apply to him because it was meant for ancient times when traveling by camel over difficult terrain. That didn’t compare, he felt, to an NBA player’s travel by airplane.

Olajuwon knew fasting on game days would be difficult, an extraordinary exercise of self-restraint. It would be a shock to his system. But it became a joyous time for him, something he looked forward to—albeit something that came with great sacrifice. “It is a way of purifying the body and the mind and it makes me feel good,” he said at the time, adding that it requires discipline. “Yes, it is hard. But that is why it helps in the long run. You learn to appreciate the gifts God gives us, even something as simple as a glass of water. We take so much for granted. We ignore the value of so many blessings.”

However, the Rockets staff members were concerned. They reasoned that players, especially centers as mobile as Olajuwon, expended a tremendous amount of energy running up and down the court. “You worry about dehydration as much as anything,” says Bruce Moseley, Rockets team physician from 1993 to 2003. “Because they sweat so much. They exert themselves so much. It’s pretty constantly for about two and a half hours. The normal NBA player will sweat an enormous amount of body fluid.” Moseley and the rest of the Rockets staff monitored him more closely during Ramadan.

“Certainly, I had concerns,” says Ray Melchiorre, former Rockets trainer. “But I knew he was eating good when he did eat. He prepared for it.” Olajuwon often ate a bowl of oatmeal and drank juice and water in the mornings before prayer. And he took such care of his body and his fitness that he knew he could sustain the fast.

The Rockets, despite their initial reservations, supported his decision. “We respected his personal choice,” Tomjanovich says. “We wanted to let him know that we were 100 percent behind him.” That was evident in other respects, too. Staff members scrambled to find prayer rooms for him on the road. Much of that duty fell on Jay Namoc, the equipment manager, who made sure Olajuwon had his prayer rug and compass, and would ask other teams for a private locker room or an auxiliary space. “He just needs it for a thirty-minute block of anywhere he can pray that’s private,” Namoc would say.

It wasn’t always easy to find a space. “We had some rooms where he would be praying in these little closed closets,” Namoc says. Often, there wasn’t a clean room available. “He didn’t care how bad it was inside,” Namoc says, “as long as he had a place to put his rug down and pray.”

Eventually, David Nordstrom, the equipment manager, spearheaded the construction of prayer rooms both in the Summit and in the team’s practice facility. Rockets trainer Keith Jones was also instrumental in making sure Olajuwon had everything he needed to pray. But for the 1994–1995 season, he made do with whatever room he had.

His first game-day fast was on February 2, 1995, and Olajuwon played spectacularly. He dropped forty-one points in a win over the Utah Jazz, all the while being defended by the relentlessly physical Karl Malone. The next game, a nationally televised Sunday showdown against Charles Barkley and the Suns in Phoenix on February 5, he put up twenty-eight points, eleven rebounds, three assists, and three blocks in thirty-nine minutes. The Rockets won the game 124–100. “You do wonder how the heck he does it,” Tomjanovich says. “He was so good. God. It’s just amazing.”

Photo by Andrew D. Bernstein/NBAE via Getty Images

Olajuwon averaged 29.5 points, 10.1 rebounds, 3.8 assists, and 3.4 blocks during that month of Ramadan, winning NBA Player of the Month honors. “I saw it,” Bullard says. “I don’t believe it.” Olajuwon also lost ten pounds in the process. “There are 48 minutes to a game,” Robert Horry, former Rockets forward, later recalled, “and for you to play 42 minutes of that 48 and not even be able to take a sip of water? That is just phenomenal.”

In the coming years he’d have some of his career-best performances during Ramadan. In 1997 he averaged 25.4 points, 8.3 rebounds, and 3.4 assists in 37.2 minutes a night. Against the Nuggets, he had 48 points and 10 rebounds in 43 minutes. Against the Bulls, he tallied 32 points, 16 rebounds, 5 blocks, 4 assists, and 4 steals in 39 minutes, snapping Chicago’s nine-game win streak. “He’s unsolvable,” Michael Jordan said afterward. Barkley, who had joined the Rockets in 1996, agreed: “To be able to play like that without water for the whole game, it’s one of the most amazing things I’ve seen in my life.”

Not only did Olajuwon seem to play better during Ramadan, but he also seemed to feel better. “Your stomach begins to shrink up after a period of time,” says Anthony Falsone, former Rockets strength coach. “But he got stronger. He was a guy who, the mental part of it was so strong. He would say, ‘Anthony, I feel so good.’ We’d be two weeks into it. In my mind, I’m going, There’s no way he feels stronger. He’s like, ‘I’m stronger. I’m lighter. I’m quicker.’”

As Olajuwon said at the time, “Many people think playing basketball is more difficult because of the absence of food. But when they see the benefit and that it is the opposite, [they can see] that we have more energy, [are] much quicker, faster, more focused.”

“If only they knew,” Olajuwon said about NBA players and how good it felt to fast, “they would be fasting.”

He was posting video-game stats on the order of forty points and fifteen rebounds on national television against some of the toughest in the league: Jordan, Ewing, Robinson. Name an elite player, and Olajuwon dismantled him—with nothing in his belly. “It was remarkable,” Moseley says.

Perhaps that was because his ability to excel had as much to do with his inner drive, his spiritual sense, as any physical source of strength. His teammates asked him: “How do you do it? Where are you getting this energy?” He’d simply say: “Allah. Allah gives me the energy I need.”

Olajuwon made himself believe he wasn’t tired, wasn’t thirsty. He focused on controlling his desire. He reminded himself of the purpose of his fast and how, although his body was being starved, his soul was being nourished. “He saw it as the fuel that gave him the determination to be the best,” says Ameer Abuhalimeh, the director of Olajuwon’s Islamic Da’wah Center. “He told me many times that in fasting . . . it made him move around the court much easier. Not thinking about food, or not having food in his stomach, made his thinking process much sharper and his focus much sharper, which translated into a better game and better numbers.”

But the reality is that fasting during games is extraordinarily difficult—for anyone. At one point during his fantastic February 1995 Ramadan stretch, he shot just ten of twenty-one in a loss to the Knicks despite finishing with twenty-seven points, nine rebounds, four blocks, three steals, and three assists. He admitted that he felt drained of energy: “I had a burning in my chest all day from not being able to drink and didn’t play the kind of game that would allow us to win.”

Staff monitored the sun during games, constantly checking to see if it had gone down so Olajuwon could take a sip of water or eat a fresh date, which the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) ate to break his fast. During time-outs, Olajuwon would ask: “What time is it? Is it time?”

“Not yet.”

Some of the games in which he fasted began just before sunset, so he could break his fast at halftime. But many times the Rockets had afternoon games with a 1:30 p.m. or 2:30 p.m. tip-off, and he wouldn’t be able to eat or drink until some time after the buzzer sounded. “We were concerned like, ‘Dream, do you want some water?’ even though you knew not to ask him,” Namoc says. “Our concern was his health.”

Sometimes they’d ask him if he wanted some Quench Gum, to generate saliva and give some moisture to his mouth. Bullard remembered seeing salt around the edges of Olajuwon’s lips. “Dream, drink some water!” he said. “You’re getting dehydrated! You have to drink!” Olajuwon calmly responded: “No.”

Not a sip.

Not a drop.

“He refused,” says Joel Blank, Rockets director of broadcasting from 1994 to 2016. “He would say: ‘I can’t go against the principles.’” It was almost as if he were in a trance, so driven toward his purpose. “Oh my gosh. This just adds levels, and layers upon layers of just being in awe,” says Scott Brooks, the former Rockets guard. “There were times that I would say to myself, ‘There’s no way you’re going to be able to do this,’ but he did I’m like, ‘Man, you are not real.’”

Yet Olajuwon didn’t see himself as superhuman, even if everyone else did. He was simply satisfying his obligation as a Muslim, no different from any of his brothers and sisters at the mosque. “For him, the way he saw it, is that he wasn’t doing anything special,” Arch says. “He saw it as fulfilling his commitment.” The only difference in his life, Olajuwon once mentioned jokingly, was that his hotel bills were far less expensive during Ramadan. No room service.

Many of his teammates didn’t even know he was fasting until reporters mentioned it. “He didn’t really talk about it,” says Pete Chilcutt, former Rockets forward. “He just did it. When he came to work, he came to work.”

After his magnificent performance against the Bulls during Ramadan in January 1997, reporters peppered him with questions about how thirsty he must be, how much he must crave a drink of water. He calmly answered their questions, telling them about controlling desire, about being grateful for the blessing of water.

“Before, you take it for granted,” he said. “You can have water at any time. Now, a glass of water becomes like a jewel.”

From the book “Dream: The Life and Legacy of Hakeem Olajuwon” by Mirin Fader. Copyright © 2024 by Mirin Fader. Reprinted by permission of Hachette Books an imprint of Hachette Book Group, Inc., New York, NY. All rights reserved.