Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (born Ferdinand Lewis Alcindor, Jr. on April 16, 1947 in New York City, New York, United States) is an American former professional basketball player and current assistant coach. Typically referred to as Lew Alcindor in his younger days, he changed his name when he converted to Islam.
Considered one of the greatest players of all time, the 7ft-2in (2.18 m) Abdul-Jabbar played center for UCLA from 1965–69. Later, he played professionally for the Milwaukee Bucks (1969–75) and the Los Angeles Lakers (1975–89), accumulating 38,387 points, the NBA’s highest career total. He was famous for his "Skyhook" shot which defenders found virtually impossible to block. His on-court success was superlative, as he won a record six NBA Most Valuable Player Awards, while playing on six NBA championship teams; at UCLA, he played on three NCAA championship teams under coach John Wooden. His high school team won 72 consecutive games and his UCLA teams were an unmatched 88-2. After a then-record 20 professional seasons in the NBA, Abdul-Jabbar retired from the game in 1989. Following his success as a professional athlete, Abdul-Jabbar has become known as a successful basketball coach, author, and part-time actor.
Early Years
He was born to Cora and Ferdinand Lewis "Al" Alcindor in Harlem, New York City, in 1947, and at birth weighed 12 pounds, 10 ounces (5730 gm), and was twenty-four and a half inches (69 cm) long. He was raised as a Roman Catholic. From an early age he began his record-breaking basketball accomplishments. In high school, he led Power Memorial High School to three straight New York City Catholic championships, a 72-game winning streak, and a 96–6 overall record. He scored 2067 points in his high school career
College
Heavily sought by collegiate basketball programs, he played for the UCLA Bruins from 1966 to 1969 under coach John Wooden, contributing to the team’s three-year record of 88 wins and only two losses (at the time freshmen were not eligible for varsity athletics). During his college career he was twice named Player of the Year (1967, 1969), was a three-time First Team All-American (1967-69), played on three NCAA Basketball champion teams (1967, 1968, 1969), was honored as the Most Outstanding Player in the NCAA Tournament (1967, 1968, 1969), and became the first-ever Naismith College Player of the Year in 1969. In 1967, 1968 he also won USBWA College Player of the Year which later became Oscar Robertson Trophy.
The dunk was disallowed from college basketball after the 1967 season, primarily because of Lew’s dominance of the sport.
While playing for UCLA, he suffered a scratched left cornea on January 12, 1968 at the Cal game. He would miss the next two games against Stanford and Portland. This happened right before the momentous game against Houston. His cornea later would be scratched again during his pro career and he would then wear goggles for protection.
Game of the Century
On January 20, 1968, Lew and the UCLA Bruins faced the Houston Cougars in the first-ever nationally televised regular season college basketball game. In front of a record 52,693 fans at the Houston Astrodome, Elvin Hayes scored 39 points and had 15 rebounds–while limiting Alcindor to just 15 points–as Houston beat UCLA 71-69. The Bruins 47-game winning streak ended in what has been called the "Game of the Century". Hayes and Alcindor would have a rematch in the 1968 NCAA Men’s Division I Basketball Tournament where UCLA would defeat Houston in the semi-finals 101-69.
Conversion to Islam
Lew Alcindor graduated with a B.A. in History from UCLA in 1969. Also during his studies at UCLA he converted to Islam and took his current name. The name translates to "noble servant of the Powerful"; al-Karim and al-Jabbar are two of the 99 Names of God in Islamic tradition. He converted after meeting Khalifah Hamaas Abdul Khaalis, a former Nation of Islam leader and founder of a Washington, D.C.-based mosque of the Hanafi Madhhab. In 1973, he traveled to Libya and Saudi Arabia, making pilgrimage. He details this conversion in his autobiography Giant Steps, written with co-author Peter Knobler.
School Records
As of the 2006 season, He still holds a number of individual records at UCLA. This is remarkable, since his freshman statistics do not count.
- Highest career Scoring Average: 26.4
- Most career Field Goals: 943
- Most season Points: 870 (1967)
- Highest season Scoring Average: 29.0 (1967)
- Most season Field Goals: 346 (1967)
- Most season Free Throw Attempts: 274 (1967)
- Most single game Points: 61 and Most single game Field Goals: 26 (vs. Washington State, 2/25/67)
Professional Career
Milwaukee Bucks
The Harlem Globetrotters offered him $1 million to play for them, but he declined, and he was picked first in the 1969 NBA Draft by the Milwaukee Bucks, only in their second season, who won the coin-toss for first pick over the Phoenix Suns.
Lew Alcindor’s entry into the NBA was timely, as center Bill Russell had just left the Boston Celtics, and Wilt Chamberlain, though still effective, was aging, at 33 years old. Alcindor’s presence enabled the 1969-70 Bucks to claim second place in the NBA’s Eastern Division with a 56-26 record (up from 27-55 the previous year), and he was an instant star, ranking second in the league in scoring (28.8 ppg) and third in rebounding (14.5 rpg), for which he was awarded the title of NBA Rookie of the Year.
With the addition of Oscar Robertson, Milwaukee went on to record a league-best 66 victories in 1970-71, including a then-record of 20 straight wins. Alcindor was awarded his first of six NBA Most Valuable Player Awards, along with his first scoring title (31.7 ppg). In the playoffs, the Bucks went 12-2 (including a four-game sweep of the Baltimore Bullets in the NBA Finals) and Alcindor was named Finals MVP. On May 1, 1971, the day after the Bucks won the NBA championship, he adopted the Arabic name Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, meaning "noble, servant of the powerful one [i.e. of Allah]."
Abdul-Jabbar remained a dominant force for Milwaukee, repeating as scoring champion (34.8 ppg) and NBA Most Valuable Player the following year, and helping the Bucks to repeat as division leaders for four straight years. In 1973, Abdul-Jabbar won his third MVP Award in five years and was among the top five NBA players in scoring (27.0 ppg, third), rebounding (14.5 rpg, fourth), blocked shots (283, second), and field goal percentage (.539, second).
While remaining relatively injury-free throughout his NBA career, Abdul-Jabbar twice broke his hand. The first time was during a pre-season game in 1974, when he was bumped hard and got his eye scratched, which angered him enough to punch the basket support stanchion. When he returned, after missing the first 16 games of the season, he started to wear protective goggles. The second time he broke his hand was in the opening game of the 1977-78 season. Two minutes into the game, Abdul-Jabbar punched Milwaukee’s Kent Benson in retaliation for an overly aggressive elbow. He was out for two months.
After a few seasons in Milwaukee under his new name, Kareem said that being in the Midwest did not fit his cultural needs and requested a trade to either New York or Los Angeles.
Los Angeles Lakers
While Milwaukee was slowly improving, the Los Angeles Lakers were winning their own way. During the 1971-1972 season, the L.A. Lakers, led by Gail Goodrich, Wilt Chamberlain, and Jerry West, won an NBA record 33 consecutive games on their way to their first championship in Los Angeles. In 1975, the Lakers acquired Abdul-Jabbar and reserve center Walt Wesley from the Bucks for center Elmore Smith, guard Brian Winters, and rookie "blue chippers" Dave Meyers and Junior Bridgeman. And in 1979, they would acquire 1st overall draft pick Earvin "Magic" Johnson , who would average 19.5 points and 11.2 assists in his 14 years in the NBA, with 3 MVP awards and 10,141 assists. The trade and draft paved the way for a second Abdul-Jabbar dynasty as the Lakers went on to become the most dominant team of the 1980s, appearing in the finals eight times and winning five NBA championships.
While in LA, Abdul-Jabbar started doing yoga in 1976 to improve his flexibility, and was notable for his physical fitness regimen. He was also a pupil of the martial arts master Bruce Lee, and studied Lee’s Jeet Kune Do style.
In 1983, Abdul-Jabbar’s house burnt down, incinerating among his belongings his beloved collection of jazz albums. Many Lakers fans started bringing him albums and other items to replace his losses, which Abdul-Jabbar found uplifting.
On June 28, 1989, after a record-setting twenty professional seasons, Abdul-Jabbar announced his retirement. On his "retirement tour" he received standing ovations at all the games, home and away. In his biography My Life, Magic Johnson recalls that in his farewell game, many Lakers and Celtics legends participated. Every player wore Abdul-Jabbar’s trademark goggles and had to try a sky hook at least once, which led to comic results. The Lakers made the NBA Finals in each of Abdul-Jabbar’s final three seasons, defeating Boston in 1987, and Detroit in 1988. The Lakers lost, however, to the Pistons in a four game sweep in his final season.
Post-NBA Career
Since 2005, Abdul-Jabbar has served as special assistant coach for the Los Angeles Lakers.
Abdul-Jabbar had been interested in coaching since his retirement, and given the influence he has had on the league, he had presumed that opportunities in that realm would come easily. However, during his playing years, he had developed a reputation of being introverted and sullen, often refusing to speak to the press, leading to the impression that he had nothing to say. In his biography My Life, Magic Johnson recalls instances when Abdul-Jabbar brushed him off when Magic (as a ballboy) asked for his autograph, Abdul-Jabbar froze out reporters who gave him a too enthusiastic handshake or even hugged him, or refused to stop reading the newspaper while giving an interview.
It is widely believed, including by Abdul-Jabbar himself, though he acknowledges his own culpability in creating that impression, that this reputation has contributed greatly to the lack of coaching opportunities that have thus far been presented to him. In his words, he said he had a mindset he could not overcome, and went through his career unable to realize how much impact he had on and off the court. Abdul-Jabbar said: "I didn’t understand that I also had affected people that way and that’s what it was all about. I always saw it like they were trying to pry. I was way too suspicious and I paid a price for it.". Since he began lobbying for a coaching position in 1995, he has managed to obtain only low-level assistant and scouting jobs in the NBA, and a head coaching position only in a minor professional league.
Abdul-Jabbar has worked as an assistant for the Los Angeles Clippers and the Seattle SuperSonics, helping mentor their young centers, Michael Olowokandi and Jerome James, respectively. Abdul-Jabbar was the head coach in 2002 of the Oklahoma Storm of the United States Basketball League (winning that league’s championship that season), but he failed to land the head coaching position at Columbia University a year later. He then worked as a scout for the New York Knicks. Finally, on September 2, 2005, he returned to the Lakers as a special assistant to Phil Jackson to help develop the team’s young center Andrew Bynum. Abdul-Jabbar has also served as a volunteer coach at Alchesay High School on the Fort Apache Indian Reservation in Whiteriver, Arizona since 1998.
Film Career
Playing in Los Angeles facilitated Abdul-Jabbar’s trying his hand at acting. Abdul-Jabbar made his movie debut in Bruce Lee’s 1978 film Game of Death, in which his character Hakim fought Billy Lo (played by Lee). His character was the last and most dangerous guardian that Bruce Lee’s character had to face. In the extended footage of the final fight scenes of the film, which last about half an hour, Abdul-Jabbar and Lee fight on the highest level of a pagoda which Lee’s character had to fight his way up. From Lee’s viewpoint, the highest level on the pagoda is where Jeet Kune Do, represented by Abdul-Jabbar himself, is found. Through the entire fight, both men not only fight with an ease hard to obtain, but they both make it known neither of them fear death.
In 1980, he played co-pilot Roger Murdock in David Zucker’s comedy, Airplane!. In this acclaimed movie, Abdul-Jabbar has a notable scene in which a little boy looks at him and remarks that he is in fact Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Staying in his role, he asserts he is merely Roger Murdock, but the boy continues that he thinks he is "the greatest", but that his dad thinks he does not "work hard on defense" and "never really tries, except during the playoffs". This causes Kareem to blow a fuse, grab the boy and snarl he has heard "that crap since UCLA", he "busts his buns every night" and he should tell his old man to "drag Bill Walton and Bob Lanier up and down the court for 48 minutes". When Murdock passes out later in the film, he is carried out wearing Abdul-Jabbar’s goggles and yellow Lakers’ shorts.
He has had numerous other TV and film roles, often playing himself, such as in the hit Chevy Chase movie Fletch, the ABC sitcom Full House, and Fresh Prince Of Bel-Air, and Scrubs. He also appeared in the telemovie version of Stephen King’s The Stand. He played himself in Slam Dunk Ernest starring Jim Varney and made a brief non-speaking cameo appearance in another David Zucker comedy, 1998’s BASEketball. In addition, Abdul-Jabbar was co-executive producer of the 1994 TV movie, The Vernon Johns Story.
Player Profile
His list of personal and team accomplishments is perhaps the most awesome in league history.
- introductory line of Abdul-Jabbar’s nba.com/history biography
Abdul-Jabbar played the center position and is regarded as one of the best players of all time. He is the all-time leading NBA scorer with 38,387 points, having collected six titles, six regular season MVP and two Finals MVP awards, fifteen NBA First or Second Teams, a record nineteen NBA All-Star callups and averaging 24.6 points, 11.2 rebounds, 3.6 assists and 2.6 blocks per game. He is also the third all-time in registered blocks (3,189), which is even more impressive because this stat had not been recorded until the fourth year of his career (1974).
On offense, Abdul-Jabbar was an unstoppable low-post threat. In contrast to other low-post dominators like Wilt Chamberlain, Artis Gilmore or Shaquille O’Neal, Abdul-Jabbar was a relatively slender player, standing 7-2 but "only" weighing 225 lbs. However, he made up for his relative lack of bulk by showing textbook finesse and was famous for his ambidextrous skyhook shot, which defenders found impossible to block. It contributed to his high .559 field goal accuracy, making him the eighth most accurate scorer of all time and a feared clutch shooter. Abdul-Jabbar was also quick enough to run the "Showtime" fast break led by Magic Johnson and was well-conditioned, standing on the hardwood an average 36.8 minutes. In contrast to other big men, Abdul-Jabbar also could reasonably hit his free throws, averaging a lifetime 72% average.
On defense, Abdul-Jabbar was a terrifying defensive presence, proven by his eleven selections to the NBA All-Defensive Team. He abused opponents with his stellar shot-blocking ability, denying an average 2.6 shots a game. As a teammate, Abdul-Jabbar exuded a great natural leadership, being affectionately called "Cap" or "Captain" by his colleagues. He was also known for his strict fitness regime, which made him one of the most durable players of all time: in the NBA, his 20 seasons and 1560 games are performances surpassed only by fellow great Robert Parish.
Abdul-Jabbar made the NBA’s 35th and 50th Anniversary Teams and in 1996 was named one of the 50 Greatest Players of All Time.
Sky Hook
Abdul-Jabbar was well known for his trademark "sky hook", a hook shot in which he bent his body like a straw in one fluid motion to raise the ball (rather just than moving the arm) and let the ball go at the highest point of his arm’s arcing motion. As he stood 7 feet 2 inches tall, the sky hook was nearly impossible for a defender to block without goaltending. It was a reliable and feared offensive weapon and contributed to his high lifetime field goal percentage of .559. As a twist, he was adept at shooting the skyhook with either hand, which made him even more difficult to defend. According to Abdul-Jabbar, he learned the move in fifth grade and soon learned to value it, as it was "the only shot I could use that didn’t get smashed back in my face".
Personal Life
Abdul-Jabbar was married to Habiba Abdul-Jabbar (nee Janice Brown), who bore him four children, daughters Habiba and Sultana and sons Kareem and Adam. They were divorced in 1978. He has another son Amir with Cheryl Pistono. He has also previously dated Pam Grier.
Abdul-Jabbar was known as "Lew Alcindor" early in his life, before he converted to Islam. He explained in an interview with Playboy magazine that he was "latching on to something that was part of my heritage, because many of the slaves who were brought here were Muslims. My family was brought to America by a French planter named Alcindor, who came here from Trinidad in the 18th Century. My people were Yoruba, and their culture survived slavery (…) My father found out about that when I was a kid, and it gave me all I needed to know that, hey, I was somebody, even if nobody else knew about it. When I was a kid, no one would believe anything positive that you could say about black people. And that’s a terrible burden on black people, because they don’t have an accurate idea of their history, which has been either suppressed or distorted."
Abdul-Jabbar was successful in suing Miami Dolphins running back Karim Abdul-Jabbar (born Sharmon Shah) because he felt Karim was sponging off the name he made famous by having the Abdul-Jabbar moniker and number 33 on Dolphins jerseys. As a result the younger Abdul-Jabbar had to change his jersey nameplate to simply ‘Abdul’ while playing for the Dolphins. The football player had also been an athlete at UCLA.
Trivia
- Jabbar is of the Yoruba ethnicity, as is center Hakeem Olajuwon.
