It was a scorching hot Thursday …

It was a scorching hot Thursday afternoon on Broadway in New York City back in September 1995, just three months after the Houston Rockets bested the Orlando Magic in the NBA Finals. The teams’ two superstars, Hakeem Olajuwon and Shaquille O’Neal, were sitting atop a dais at a makeshift stage for a press conference at the partially-constructed All-Star Cafe. In two days’ time, the two 7-footers were set to pull off what Michael Jordan and Magic Johnson could not. They were going to be the leading men in a pay-per-view blockbuster extravaganza featuring multiple NBA stars playing each other in games of one-on-one.