When one hears the name Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, most people picture a tall bald skinny man in a thick pair of athletic goggles posed with a basketball high above his head launching his signature skyhook at the rim for two points. Older fanatics of the game may draw their memory of the UCLA star who won three consecutive championships under legendary coach John Wooden and is still regarded as one of the greatest collegiate athletes in American history. Perhaps the most vivid portrait of the athlete is his: 6 NBA championships, 6 MVP awards, 2 NBA Finals MVPs, and his possession of the league's all-time scoring record (which will be broken by LeBron James this winter). Film fanatics will remember his role in Game of Death, fighting opposite Bruce Lee or heckling a young fan while flying an aircraft under the alias of Roger Murdock in the cult comedy classic Airplane. As a person, Abdul-Jabbar is often viewed as difficult to understand. The baller is closed off, hunched over with a stern gaze, and possesses a slight bitterness in his voice (especially towards reporters). At his home in the suburbs located on the outer rim of Los Angeles, Abdul-Jabbar starts each morning with a three-hour or more writing session. A routine that he practices daily and has become quite good at in the last few years. This post-retirement hobby is a muse that the young basketball phenom developed in his younger days as a youth.
The only child of Corra Lillian (a department store price checker) and Ferdinand Lewis Alcindor Sr. (a transit police officer and jazz pianist), was born on April 16th, 1947 in New York City as Ferdinand Lewis Alcindor Jr. At 6 feet 8 inches tall, teenaged Lew Alcindor enjoyed afternoons at Rucker Park in Harlem trying to “prove himself” as a basketball player on the court. He adopted a gritty mentality playing in pickup games against the cities’ toughest opponents. Outside the lines, the young teen walked with a slight chip on his shoulder as he maneuvered through the racist underbelly of New York. At the pulse of the Harlem riots, Lew Alcindor found work contributing to an independent black newspaper to help aid in their coverage of the riots that broke out that summer. At this time was found by day at local libraries with a book tightly tucked under his arm or found at night in a jazz club across town.
At Power Memorial Academy, Lew Alcindor became a superstar and started to draw comparisons to NBA legend Wilt Chamberlin. In his senior year, he lead coach Jack Donohue’s team to two national championships (and earned a runner-up spot in his final year), his 2,067 points were a New York City high school basketball record and lifted them to a 71-game winning streak (with a 79-2 overall record) by the end of time at the school. Although he was successful, Lew Alcindor possessed a strained relationship with coach Donohue in his final season. The strain was created after the coach called the athlete a nigger at some point during the duration of his senior year. An instance that the young athlete never forgot. The 7-foot-2-inch tall Lew Alcindor evolved into a sensation under coach Wooden at UCLA after he graduated from Power Memorial. The pair won three men’s basketball national championships and dominated with so much success that the NCAA banned dunking for a brief period to limit Lew Alcindor’s offensive game (a rule famously coined as the “Lew Alcindor Rule”). In the classroom, Lew Alcindor became a determined academic student who occasionally dabbled in psychedelic drugs to broaden his mental scope of life and used these trips to expand his overall perspective of life.
During the summer of 1968, Lew Alcindor decided privately converted to Islam to break away from his Catholic upbringing and legally changed his to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (a decision he didn’t announce publicly until 1971). In that same summer, Abdul-Jabbar refused to play in the 1968 Olympic games to protest the unequal treatment of African American players in the United States. Abdul-Jabbar stated that his refusal was “to point out to the world the futility of winning the gold medal for this country and then coming back to live under oppression,” the statement created a media frenzy around the young star. Coincidentally, the announcement came nearly one year after his appearance at the historic Cleveland Summit, where Lew Alcindor stood by other African-American athletes such as Jim Brown, Muhammad Ali, and Bill Russell in one of the most famous athletic protests in history. These two years publicized his involvement and kick-started his career off the court career in Civil Rights activism. Abdul-Jabbar eventually graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in history from UCLA in 1969. Following graduation, the hooper became interested in (aikido) mixed martial arts. An interest that years later would land him training in Bruce Lee’s gym during the prime of his career.
In the basketball world, Kareem became a once-in-a-lifetime caliber player and was drafted by the expansion team Milwaukee Bucks. During the Buck’s third season of existence, Kareem won the team a championship, took home the league MVP, and became the Finals MVP that special 1971 season. After a spectacular career in Milwaukee, Abdul-Jabbar felt he wanted to reach a broader sports market and was traded to the Los Angeles Lakers in 1975. His tenure with the Lakers earned Abdul-Jabbar 5 more championships, three more MVPs, and another final MVP award in 1985, just almost a handful of seasons before his career ended in 1989. From 2005-2011, Abdul-Jabbar won another pair of championship rings as an assistant coach during the Kobe Bryant years for the Lakers. When talking to Kareem about basketball these days he is reasonably absent from recalling his playing career. In interviews, many are appalled by his lack of discussion about his NBA playing days. It almost seems uninteresting to him to discuss his time as a hooper. On the other hand, Abdul-Jabbar’s writing career has been quite special.
In 1983, he published his biography “Giant Steps,” co-written by Pete Knobler. Abdul-Jabbar selected the autobiography's title to pay homage to the late jazz icon John Coltrane. He published another book, “On the Shoulders of Giants: My Journey Through the Harlem Renaissance,” co-written by Raymond Obstfeld which was loosely adapted into a documentary under a similar title in 2011. Abdul-Jabbar also co-authored a historical non-fiction novel “Brothers in Arms: The Epic Story of the 761st Battalion, World War II’s Forgotten Heroes”; with author Anthony Walton and focused the book on the history of the first black armored unit that fought in WWII. Aside from being a best-selling author, Abdul-Jabbar has held a running column in TIME magazine that explores open discussions about issues involving race, religion, and the media’s portrayal of social issues on the national stage, along with other social topics. In 2014, Abdul-Jabbar published an essay in “Jacobin” that called for college athletes to be compensated for their sacrifices, stating: “in the name of fairness, we must bring an end to the indentured servitude of college athletes and start paying them what they are worth.” Later in January 2015, the writer was invited to Meet the Press to talk about the blame placed on Islam for their violent extremists. Abdul-Jabbar pushed back on the issue and believed “Islam should be held to the same standard for their extremists as Christianity holds their extremists.” When asked about his Muslim faith, Abdul-Jabbar responded: “I don’t have any misgivings about my faith. I’m very concerned about the people who claim to be Muslims murdering people and creating all of this mayhem in the world. This is not what Islam is about, and that should not be what people think of when they think about Muslims. But it’s up to all of us to do something about all of it.” After Donald Trump’s anti-Islam travel ban in 2017, Abdul-Jabbar sounded off on the issue, saying, “the absence of reason and compassion is the very definition of pure evil because it is a rejection of our sacred values, distilled from a millennia of struggle.” Aside from his sound-offs on social and political issues, fiction has also made its way into Abdul-Jabbar’s writing game. In 2019, the basketball star teamed up with Anna Waterhouse to publish “Mycroft and Sherlock”, a modern adaptation of his favorite childhood story.
Outside of writing, Abdul-Jabbar is a philanthropist. In 2011, he was awarded the Double Helix Award for his work raising money for cancer research and acknowledged for his contributions to raising awareness following his 2008 diagnosis of a rare form of myeloid leukemia. That same year the former big man received the award, Abdul-Jabbar announced his cancer was officially in remission, and shortly after received an honorary degree from the New York Institute of Technology. In 2016, President Barack Obama awarded Abdul-Jabbar the Presidential Medal of Freedom Award for his efforts on and off the basketball court. The following year after receiving this prestigious award, Abdul-Jabbar auctioned off $3,000,000 of his sports memorabilia (including his 1987 championship ring) and donated the proceeds to education. During the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, Abdul-Jabbar donated over 900 pairs of safety goggles to the staff working at UCLA for research and testing purposes. One of the writer’s most recent accomplishments was his nomination for a Primetime Emmy Award in Oustanding Narration for his auditory work in “Black Patriots: Heroes of the Revolution.”
On the court, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar dominated the game of basketball. A man destined for NBA stardom and blessed with a genetic makeup that still astounds basketball fans and experts of the league to this day. But off the court, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar became a civil rights activist, an icon of Islam, an international superstar, an actor, a humanitarian, a leader, an author, and so much more in his 75 years of hard work. Abdul-Jabbar continues to be an inspiration for African Americans and individuals of color across the world and is still determined to make it a better place, one word, and action at a time. A commitment the athlete has carried with him well after his career. A devotion to social change that we should all aspire to find and strive to find.