Hakeem Olajuwon left Lagos, Nigeria in 1980 and barely a year after taking up basketball, he blossomed into the game’s first international star in Houston, first collegiately with the Cougars and then with the NBA’s Rockets.

In an 18-season career he was a nine-time NBA all-star and two-time league champion. He played his last season with the Toronto Raptors. Olajuwon was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame in 2013 and is a member of the NBA's 75th anniversary team.

In “Dream: The Life and Legacy of Hakeem Olajuwon,” biographer Mirin Fader draws on some 250 interviews to present a silent sports star who experienced a religious metamorphosis. A fiery competitor who led by example in all aspects of his life, paying it forward with teammates and current NBA stars through the type of mentorship he benefited from early in his career. She also utilizes her extensive research to debunk myths surrounding Hakeem’s life and career.

Fader is a senior writer with The Ringer. Her début book, “Giannis: The Improbable Rise of an NBA MVP,” reached The New York Times best-seller list.

Every hockey fan knows how it always ends for the Vancouver Canucks — no Stanley Cup — but Ed Willes digs in the corners to poke at the why, with a wry perspective.

The veteran journalist (Regina Leader-Post, The Province) presents a case study, with novelistic detail, about the West Coast NHL franchise. Weaving a thread — one of instability at the top — through the history (and prehistory) of the team, Willes explains why the Canucks have fallen short of winning the Stanley Cup, but have never been boring across five-plus decades of torment.

Relying on firsthand research and contemporary accounts from fellow Vancouver sports journalists, Willes provides painstaking details about the life-arcs of stars such as Henrik Sedin, Daniel Sedin, Pavel Bure, Markus Näslund, and Todd Bertuzzi. The author also playfully teases out the franchise’s many what-ifs.

Willes is also author of “The Rebel League: The Short and Unruly Life of the World Hockey Association” (2005) and “End Zones and Border Wars: The Era of American Expansion in the CFL” (2013).

Atiba Hutchinson finally has space to contemplate the inner strength it takes to chase goals that were often, and understandably, hard to define.

In “The Beautiful Dream,” the retired captain of the Canadian men’s national soccer team (CMNT) lets fans and readers in on a footballer’s journey. Now retired as a player, Hutchinson delves into his early life as a first-generation Canadian growing up in Brampton, Ont. in the 1980s, and ’90s and how he navigated the uncertain path to professional success in Europe during the days when a true domestic league hardly existed.

That perseverance led to a 20-season pro career that included championships, adulation, and celebrity outside Canada. And, after several frustrating World Cup cycles, Hutchinson was the 39-year-old captain when Canada broke through to qualify for the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022.

Hutchinson joined us from his home in Turkey to discuss his life story. He joins Dwayne De Rosario as the second CMNT alumnus to appear on SportsLit.