A Giant (Misunderstood) Legacy
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar as Renaissance GOAT
Sorry, MJ and Lebron. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar may well be the greatest basketball player of all time. The True GOAT. While his basketball resume has never been seriously questioned, Abdul-Jabbar has always been among the most controversial, successful, mercurial, disliked, courageous and ultimately misunderstood American athletes from the 20th century through today. At 74 years of age, not much has changed.
Born Ferdinand Lewis Alcindor in 1947, the future basketball superstar eventually converted to Islam in his early twenties and changed his name to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, a move which only served to isolate him even more from an already wary fanbase in Milwaukee and the rest of the country. His high school team, Power Memorial High, won a record 71 games in a row with Abdul-Jabbar in tow and at UCLA, the Bruins won three national championships with Alcindor earning Most Outstanding Player honors in all three tournaments.
In 1971, Alcindor’s second year in the NBA, the Bucks won the league title behind his efforts and the recently acquired point guard Oscar Robertson, creating an odd but potent duo that made another Finals in 1974 (losing to the Boston Celtics in seven games).
In an early version of what is known widely today as “player empowerment”, Abdul-Jabbar quietly forced his way out of Milwaukee in a trade to the Los Angeles Lakers in the summer of 1975, where he would spend the remainder of his career before retiring in 1989 at the age of forty-two.
With the Lakers, Abdul-Jabbar won five more titles, three more league MVP awards and a score of All-Star and All-NBA honors along with becoming the game’s all time leader in career points scored (a record which will likely be claimed by Lebron James sometime in the next couple of seasons barring some injury or other catastrophe).
Perhaps more than any other athlete in American history, Abdul-Jabbar’s range extends far beyond his historic run as a hoops legend. He has written nearly a dozen books, including comics, about racial justice, Black history and multiple autobiographies, reflecting a range of interests of a man who is easily among the most enlightened and intellectually curious athletes America has ever known.
Abdul-Jabbar has appeared in numerous films and television shows (his role as disgruntled pilot Roger Murdock in 1980’s Airplane! remains one of the most enduring athlete-as-actor comedy turns in modern movie history), even appearing as a contestant on Dancing With the Stars (2018). The former Laker made a documentary about the New York Renaissance basketball team (2011) and was the subject of his own 2015 biographical special, Minority of One.
Abdul-Jabbar was appointed to roles in former president Barack Obama’s administration (President’s Council on Fitness, Sports & Nutrition), as Cultural Ambassador (former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton) and, perhaps most eclectic, the Citizens Coinage Advisory Committee for the United States Mint (Abdul-Jabbar is a coin enthusiast who deeply admires former Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton).
Examining Abdul-Jabbar’s varied and widely diverse resume on and off the court is both astounding and at times exhausting, resembling a lifetime more Forrest Gump than former professional athlete. He seems interconnected with anything and everything but simultaneously nowhere. It is precisely this aspect of Abdul-Jabbar’s life which makes him immensely admirable while also difficult to peg for many fans and observers alike.
America likes its famous people to neatly fit categories with clearly defined parameters, resulting in people who can be anything we want them to be, playing more a prescribed version of themselves than who they actually are. Today, Abdul-Jabbar is at least simply misunderstood. Decades ago, during the heyday of his basketball career, the man was widely perceived as sullen, disinterested, introverted and, at worst, unlikeable. For most people, he just didn’t seem to like anyone else nor did he seem to care.
Abdul-Jabbar would likely have earned enshrinement to The Basketball Hall of Fame based solely off his time in either Milwaukee or Los Angeles, creating what was essentially a two part career over two decades. Despite the heroics of Jordan, Lebron or a host of other luminaries in NBA history, Abdul-Jabbar could easily make a case for being the greatest basketball player of all time. If one accounts for success on all three levels—high school, college and the pros—it’s virtually undisputable.
So why is he so infrequently mentioned in the increasingly exhausting GOAT debates that dominate online and real time conversations? Why, after demonstrating a concerted interest to get into coaching in the mid-1990s, did Abdul-Jabbar’s overtures to the basketball world largely go unheeded (since retirement from playing in 1989, Abdul-Jabbar has been an assistant coach with the Los Angeles Clippers and Seattle SuperSonics along with serving as a scout with the New York Knicks. His lone head coaching experience came in the United States Basketball League, where he led the Oklahoma Storm to the league championship in 2002. Since then he has been an off and on again tutor for post players, including the Lakers).
For many fans today, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is a relic from the past, a basketball ghost in a Lakers jersey and goofy goggles, existing in a game and during a time where big men roamed the floor only to get easy shots down low, keep guards feeding them the ball, rebound and block shots. Centers, it was thought then, were the key to any championship team.
Now, of course, the game is radically different. Guards dominate, either from beyond the three point line or spacing the floor for easy cuts to the basket or more jump shots. Centers have largely been relegated to glorified basket hangers, big bodies to clog up the lane and protect the rim. Simply put, Abdul-Jabbar doesn’t fit today’s game or even how fans today understand the game no matter how dominant he was in his day. Although he has been retired for over two decades, Jordan’s game and persona fit far more deftly into today’s culture and sport.
So forgotten is Abdul-Jabbar that he gets only cursory mentions for any GOAT discussion, a bizarre fact considering his incredible resume and extensive career. In 2003, SLAM Magazine ranked the all time greatest players in basketball history and ranked Abdul-Jabbar seventh. This is, without question, absurd. But nonetheless, it happened.
He was ahead of his time in fitness and conditioning, including yoga, martial arts and Pilates into his preparation routine as much as basketball drills. He worked out with Bruce Lee (even playing a villain in one of Lee’s films) and picked the training brain of Muhammad Ali.
Perhaps because of this forward thinking, Abdul-Jabbar was remarkably durable, regularly playing in all 82 regular season games in addition to deep playoff runs during his twenty year career (in twenty seasons he failed to make the playoffs in only twice, 1975 and ‘76, his first two with the Lakers). The lowest game total played for a single season was 62 (1977-78) and he finished with impressive and eerily consistent career scoring averages for both the playoffs (24.3) and regular season (24.6). He averaged double digit numbers for rebounding through the first ten seasons of his career and only dropped to below eight per game in the 1985-86 season, four years before he would retire for good.
Off the court, Abdul-Jabbar was always a veracious reader and possessed deep interests in a myriad of subjects not related to basketball, a trait which has served him well post-playing career in many ways, including his work as an author and social and cultural commentator. Articulate and insightful, his interviews reflected a man who, despite his chilly and laconic demeanor, thought deeply and passionately about people and the issues affecting society.
This trait, for all its positives, set him apart from the sports culture in most respects. Many athletes simply don’t care about these things as deeply or if they do, rarely write or comment on them publicly, partially out of fear of repercussions to their “brands” (think of critics admonishing Lebron to “shut up and dribble”. James, to his credit, has been very outspoken about a wide range of topics, perhaps taking a page from Abdul-Jabbar’s book).
On the court, his go-to move—a legendary hook shot known simply as the Skyhook—completely changed the game of basketball and became, as his Lakers coach Pat Riley said, the “greatest offensive weapon in all of sports”, a high, arching, near-impossible shot to block, one which afforded Abdul-Jabbar thousands of career points and even greater success for his teams when in the half-court set and in need of a key basket.
When Abdul-Jabbar broke the NBA’s all time career scoring record in 1984, then-Kansas City Kings coach Cotton Fitzsimmons summed up the center’s accomplishment succinctly: "Kareem scored 15,000 of his points with sky hooks, dunks and finger rolls. The other 16,000 he got by using his head. He's predictable, but that doesn't mean you can stop him. You can't." (Sports Illustrated, 4/16/1984)
In what may be the most underrated feat in professional basketball history, Abdul-Jabbar won Finals MVP awards in 1971 and 1985 (Bucks and Lakers titles, respectively), representing a fourteen year span between the ultimate honor for being the best player in the most important series of any basketball season. That’s simply improbable today. Imagine Jordan winning the Finals MVP in 1991 (which he did) and then playing long enough to win it again in 2005 with the same team. Jordan retired for the second time at the end of the 2002-03 season with the Washington Wizards, his knees betraying His Airness for the last time and after a season where he routinely scored in the single digits in games and his team failed to make the playoffs. To extend the comparison, Lebron James won his first Finals MVP in 2012 with the Miami Heat, meaning James would have to win the award in the 2026 playoffs to match Abdul-Jabbar’s accomplishment. Even with James’ Iron Man tendencies it’s hard to fathom.
In many ways, Abdul-Jabbar represents a historical bridge of sorts for professional basketball. He played against hoops titan Wilt Chamberlain during his first years with Milwaukee, saw the decline and rebirth of the NBA’s popularity in the 1970s and 80s before retiring at time just before Jordan and the Chicago Bulls began the remarkable 90s run of six titles in eight years. The Vietnam War was still raging when Abdul-Jabbar entered his rookie season and he retired just months before the fall of the Berlin Wall and collapse of communism in Eastern Europe. That’s a lot of history.
Despite all this, Abdul-Jabbar remains a divisive figure for basketball fans. Part of this stems from his refusal to be put into a box, instead defining his persona on his terms, something which came off to many observers early in his career as aloof and arrogant, off putting and even angry. To many, Abdul-Jabbar seemed perpetually pissed off at the world, especially the white world, something he wrote about more extensively in his 1983 autobiography Giant Steps.
In the book, he referenced his parents’ views on race and interactions with white people, leveling criticism at them for playing too nice and not understanding the depths of rage felt by Black Americans like him and others of his generation. He has since softened his stance on those statements and toward his parents but at the time, the book is a blow torch of criticism of a wide array of subjects. He was, based on all available evidence, the quintessential Angry Black Man.
Abdul-Jabbar, historically a sensitive and thoughtful person, felt the sting of racism from a young age (his high school coach, a man he espoused deep respect—even love—for, once used the N-word directly at him during a game, something which deeply wounded Abdul-Jabbar and surely had a role in his increased intensity regarding racial issues) something that combined with his height (he was listed as seven-feet-two-inches by the time he got to the NBA) made him an outcast, something imposed on him by society and even himself.
He was, in his words, perpetually the black kid in the back of the group picture, standing as if “on a box” over everyone else. It was a position which Abdul-Jabbar dealt with by becoming increasingly distant and keeping most everyone at an arms length reach. He went to UCLA and did not live the life of a standard 1960s jock on campus but involved himself in student issues and rallies, showing up at demonstrations and making his presence known in places where issues of race and class were being argued about and discussed and even fought over by people from all parts of the country.
As his interest in his heritage increased in conjunction with his developing views on racial issues in America, Abdul-Jabbar gravitated toward Islam and while he never joined the Nation of Islam (Black Muslims) he has said on multiple occasions the influence of Malcolm X loomed large for him as a young man in the late 1960s. In 1967, while still a student-athlete at UCLA, Abdul-Jabbar was one of the people in attendance to support Ali at the famed “Ali Summit”, a meeting which supported the legendary heavyweight fighter in his refusal to submit to the draft for the Vietnam War (pictured below).
The 1967 meeting of African American athletes featuring, front row left to right, Bill Russell, Muhammad Ali, Jim Brown and Lew Alcindor (Kareem Abdul-Jabbar). Photograph: Bettmann/Bettmann Archive
After converting to Islam and changing his name from Alcindor (one he deemed a “slave name”) the popularity of Abdul-Jabbar dwindled to the point where only his on court prowess kept him in some strong standing with fans and observers. It is interesting to think how Abdul-Jabbar would have fared had he not ended up being among the greatest American professional athletes of all time. In all likelihood, he would have become the tallest person to do (fill in blank here). His talent and interests were that diverse.
Abdul-Jabbar spent much of his middle career spurning fans for autographs and isolating himself from teammates and coaches with his aloof nature and a seemingly detached connection to anything outside of his immediate world. He married and had three children (a son and two daughters) with his first wife, divorced and later had a son with his then-girlfriend, a relationship which also ended with a split. He is unmarried today. He had (and still has) connections outside of basketball and reveres his UCLA coach, the late John Wooden. With the Bucks and later with the Lakers, Abdul-Jabbar was a lone superstar who didn’t seem to care about the game or anyone who played it.
The arrival of point guard Magic Johnson in 1979 began to thaw Abdul-Jabbar’s chilly exterior a bit and in the years which followed, a less glowering figure replacing the seemingly impermeable Abdul-Jabbar until finally the center became as amiable as he would ever be but still relatively low key compared to his peers.
In many ways, Magic served to both improve and somewhat obscure Kareem’s legacy. Once Johnson came to Los Angeles, the Lakers improved dramatically, winning five titles in the 1980s and boosting Abdul-Jabbar’s career resume significantly. Conversely, some critics maintain Kareem would not have won more if not for Magic’s arrival and consistent high level of play and leadership during the decade. Both views have validity but to chalk up Kareem’s success as merely because of the arrival of Magic is misleading; Magic also would not have enjoyed his career success without his most dependable assist man.
By all tangible measures, Abdul-Jabbar should loom larger than any Laker in history. His resume—just with Los Angeles—is superior to any Laker in all respects. But despite the success of his 14 seasons there (five titles, three MVP awards, multiple All-Star and All-NBA honors) he simply isn’t held in the same regard as Jerry West, Magic, Kobe Bryant or Shaquille O’Neal (He did get his number retired and a statue outside the arena but so did those guys).
Abdul-Jabbar, in his own way, was as lethal a scorer as Bryant (and way more dependable) and played more effectively for the duration of his career (while Kobe logged twenty years as a Laker he spent much of the last three years a shell of his former self because of injuries). O’Neal was a force of nature (he eclipsed Kareem with three Finals MVP awards) but Abdul-Jabbar was a Laker longer, scored more and won more titles and accolades overall. Magic is tough to outshine on any level but the team didn’t become HIS team until the 1986-87 season when a conscious decision was made by the franchise (and at the behest of Riley) to shift the offensive focus from Abdul-Jabbar to Magic in part to save the center for the playoffs and also to take advantage of Magic’s full range of skills (a wise move that resulted in back to back titles in 1987 and ‘88 and a Finals appearance in ‘89).
Abdul-Jabbar shoulders some responsibility here, too. He could have been nicer. He could have connected with the fans more. He could have made an effort to show he cared before his final farewell season, the first where he was really shown anything close to player love by the fans and franchise. Kareem spent too many years wasting his social capital, not leveraging any Lakers success into anything beyond film and show appearances and some endorsements here and there. In many ways, Abdul-Jabbar didn’t play the game most great players play. He wasn’t as warm as Magic, wasn’t electrifying like Kobe nor an outsized personality like Shaq. People perceived him to lack the robotic killer instinct like Jordan.
Abdul-Jabbar is on an extremely short list of the very best players to ever play the game of basketball. He maybe even be the greatest. Despite loads of statistics and other metrics, greatness still retains no small measure of subjectivity. The cultural dominance of Jordan, Lebron and Kobe are simply too much, their grading curve hitting all the right trajectories today’s fans and commentators value. Kareem is a jazz aficionado in a hip-hop world. There’s no Kareem-style Last Dance, any coaching foray, no signature shoe, no other bright and shiny thing to point to during or after his career. Kareem is respected but not beloved.
But this overlooks the fact he remains perhaps the single most interesting and unique player in league history, a player so accomplished, so consistent, boasting a career so exemplary and long it defies logic to place him anywhere but at the top of the heap historically. But maybe it worked out the way it should have. If he had been more beloved he wouldn’t be Kareem. And maybe that’s what matters in the end.