Seventeen years after he helped lead the UConn men’s basketball team to the Final Four, Hasheem Thabeet is finally getting inducted into the Huskies of Honor.
Thabeet is considered one of the greatest defensive players in program history. In each of his last two seasons in Storrs, Conn., he was named the NABC Defensive Player of the Year.
“He was one of the ultimate gamechangers,” Jerome Dyson said. “I always felt comfortable on the defensive end, as long as I protected the outside. If anything was forced in the middle, I knew he was taking care of it.”
Thabeet’s story is as unique as there is. He grew up in Tanzania, where he played mostly soccer until he was 15 years old. That’s when he started playing basketball.
A player of his size is hard to find, standing at 7-foot-3. That caught the attention of scouts at Louisville, who got him to move to Houston, Texas, to play high school basketball at Cypress Christian School.
“I think the Louisville staff got Hasheem over to the high school in Texas,” Central Connecticut State head coach Patrick Sellers, who was an assistant coach at UConn at the time, said. “Then he got there, and they didn’t like him as much as they thought they were. [Then] we started recruiting him.”
When Louisville started to back away from recruiting Thabeet, that was when UConn went all-in.
“Andre LaFleur was the point person for Hasheem’s recruitment,” UConn general manager Tom Moore said. “He was such a unique player because I don’t know that any of us had ever recruited somebody that tall. Andre was almost just like, ‘Am I missing something here?’ I went down to see him, and I said, ‘No way.’ I agreed with Andre. I’m like, ‘This kid could be a real gamechanger.’”
Once Thabeet arrived on campus, he was still learning English and was not as polished as he would become as a basketball player.
“He had really big hands, but he was so used to playing soccer,” Sellers said. “So, I was trying to get him to palm the ball and get his hands stronger… I was showing him YouTube clips of Dr. J dribbling the ball and picking the ball up off the dribble with one hand. I was like, ‘Your hands are so big, you can do this.’”
Sellers mentioned that he would make Thabeet, along with the other bigs, squeeze sand for two or three minutes before practice started to make their hands stronger. He also mentioned that he would give Thabeet gloves that would keep the ball off his palm in another attempt to make his hands stronger.
Thabeet ended up having a successful first season in Connecticut. That first year was highlighted by him tying a program record for most blocks in a single game, finishing with 10 rejections against Texas Southern. Thabeet would match that record twice more in his career. Along with Dyson, his roommate of three years, he was named to the 2007 Big East All-Rookie Team.
Each season saw him improve as one of the best players in college basketball at the time. During his sophomore year, he increased his blocked shot average to 4.5 per contest, which still stands as the second-most in a season in UConn history. He also found more of an offensive game, improving to 10.5 points on average.
After a historic sophomore season, Thabeet came back and had the best season of his three-year career with the Huskies. His junior year saw him named the Big East Co-Player of the Year, sharing the honor with Pittsburgh’s DeJuan Blair. He turned the heads of many NBA scouts, especially the Memphis Grizzlies.
“Ray Jones, at the time, was the top scout [for the Grizzlies],” Sellers said. “He would come watch us at shootaround…He would come to pregame meals. He would sit there and talk, just to see what Hasheem was doing.”
He averaged 13.6 points and 10.8 rebounds per game while shooting 64% from the floor, helping lead the Huskies to the Final Four in Detroit, where they would lose to Michigan State.
A few months later, the Grizzlies ended up drafting Thabeet with the No. 2 overall pick in the 2009 NBA Draft, joining Emeka Okafor (who will be honored next week) as the highest-drafted player in program history. His NBA career did not pan out in what ended up being a terrific draft class, but his impact at UConn should not go unnoticed. After all, he is the most recent Husky to win Big East Player of the Year.
At the time, he had set the UConn record for highest career field goal percentage (minimum of 150 attempts) with 61.1%, which has now been broken multiple times.
Similarly, he had held the single-season record for highest field goal percentage (minimum 100 shots), shooting 64% in the 2008-09 season, which has been broken numerous times.
He sits behind Okafor in career blocked shots per game and total blocked shots, averaging 4.2 in 100 games. He was four blocks shy of tying Okafor’s 156 blocks during the 2002-03 season.
From the moment he set foot on campus, he was loved by both players and teammates.
James Doran, who was the team’s athletic trainer at the time, called him a “gentle giant” and said he was very appreciative of everything. Both Sellers and Dyson talked about how Thabeet would light up rooms and how funny he was.
Thabeet’s life has come full circle. He is now back in Tanzania, playing for Dar City BC of the National Basketball League (NBL), which is back in his hometown of Dar es Salaam.
Now, he will be back in Storrs to be honored for one of the most impressive journeys in the program’s history. From squeezing sand to the Huskies of Honor, Thabeet’s legacy will be remembered forever.
Thabeet will be honored at halftime during UConn’s game against Georgetown on Saturday night at the Harry A. Gampel Pavilion.