You can talk about potential and perfect storm of luck and team personnel. Does a player lead any particular defensive category, 3800+ blocked shots?!
The real secret is that Dream is smart, applied his intelligence, and worked to marry his thoughts with his physical environment. You'll often see players do an amazing thing, but it was in the moment and they can't recreate it at will because they don't have the intellectual capacity to break it down and the fortitude to physically work on the little bits until the whole is complete. Then there are others who can understand it but can't use it or anticipate it well enough. Think physics. Some of us can read about physics and get the general concepts, some of us can do the math, but to come up with a new theory based on math that changes the field, that's Einstein. That's genius. Dream also did this on the defensive end and because he was so good, the lessons he taught himself about defense could be used as countermeasures when he was on offense and vice-versa. If you're the best and in your mind you're constantly playing against yourself, most of the competition is not going to stand a chance. Dream is a basketball genius combined with the physical gifts of a lesser god. No wonder we have only seen shadows and pale imitations, but never another close to him.
Footwork + humility & Moses Malone http://archive.nba.com/2015/news/fe...em-olajuwon-fran-blinebury-feature/index.html
Those clips of the classes he had with Yao and Dwert were hoots. Yao was like, I get it but no way am I fast or graceful enough to pull it off. While Dwert was like, I spin here, juke there , enter sound FX now and BOOM. Easy peasy... Meanwhile in Dream's head, easy peasy paycheck youngin.
Good point on Dream attacking on the catch this is what Yao never learned to do. He took forever cause he would set then survey and then attack
Olajuwon had the experience of two final fours and three nba finals. The results of the experience is two nba championships. Olajuwon leads all time blocked shots so the dude was significantly more talented than the competition.