Hakeem, Bill Simmons and nationalities...and how it never mattered (UPDATED)

So, on Twitter today I got into a discussion with ESPN's fantastic columnist Bill Simmons (@sportsguy33) about a comment he made in his new column (Read that here). Here's the part we talked about:

Dirk Nowitzki: Was moving into the Barkley/Malone big-picture historical discussion before an injury derailed his MVP campaign.
Manu Ginobili: Reclaimed "Only a few guys get better when it matters and he's one" and "Night in, night out, it's just hard to imagine anyone being more entertaining" status after bad ankles nearly derailed his career. Hey, here's another fun 2011 subplot: the three best foreign players ever who didn't play college ball in the U.S. (Dirk, Manu and Pau, in that order) playing on the same team.

The point I made was this: Isn't Hakeem Olajuwon foreign? I mean he was born in Nigeria, and didn't immigrate to the States until college. On the flip side, Patrick Ewing was born in Jamaica, but moved to the U.S. with his family when he was 11.



At the same time, Olajuwon played for Team USA when the Olympics rolled around. But, couldn't that be because there was no chance of his native Nigeria making it far enough to qualify?

So the question becomes, how do we rank Olajuwon's nationality? Because if he's considered foreign, he far surpasses Dirk, Manu and Co. As much as I love Dirk, he doesn't hold a candle to Hakeem, who it could argued is one of the greatest big men of all time.

--As it turns out, Simmons had the college quantifier in the whole time, as was graciously pointed to me b a commenter. Sorry for not reading more carefully and for wasting a little time. It was fun though.

Dirk will go down as one of the top 50 players of all time, in my opinion. But, Olajuwon will go down as a top-20 guy, if not higher. So, that's my thought. He's foreign, growing up playing soccer in Nigeria.

What do you think?