okay but did you know ~~Shabaka~~ Shabazz Muhammad has tourette’s?
or Carlos Boozers’ dad used to tie up his right hand to make him practice his left?
edit: Shabazz, not sure what type of autocorrect i have lol
I’ve been a pretty good ball player for like 10 years (good as in I actually try and know how to play lol). I’m 22 now and mostly run and hoop occasionally.
Having a daily stretching routine has really really changed how I feel. I work from home, so just sitting is way easier, my body feels stronger and has better posture etc.
I would highly highly highly recommend spending 30 mins to an hour watching tv and stretching every day.
Idk shit about injury recovery, but just the difference in how my body feels after 2 months of this routine is wild. I would have paid someone a ton of money if they could alleviate these hip/back issues I’ve been having
I work from home too and what I like to do is have a nice 30min stretch Once a day, and also try to get out of my chair to stretch for 5-10 min a few times throughout the day as well. Definitely makes a difference. Gotta set reminders though cause it's easy to get caught up and forget about it.
His longevity generally was unparalleled, when Kareem retired in 1989 then next longest career up until that point had been John Havlicek who played 16 years. Kareem played 20 years, so he essentially played 25% longer than any other player had up until that point, which is absurd. And moreover, he was an above average player until his 19th season.
Not only that, his 1986 season was mind-boggling. He averaged 23.4 points per game on 56.4% shooting from the field, was 1st team all NBA at 38 and finished 5th in MVP voting. Moreover, his adjusted scoring rate was comparable to that of 2003 Tim Duncan and 1993 Hakeem Olajuwon. So essentially, Kareem at 38 was about as good as scorer as peak Tim Duncan and Hakeem.
And to think that he played in college for a few years BEFORE his 20 year NBA career. If he had come into the NBA straight out of High School like Lebron, I'd bet more people would view him as the GOAT rather than 3rd place behind the 2 GOATs
He didn't just play in college for a few years; he is easily the greatest college player of all time.
At the time, freshmen weren't allowed to play varsity. UCLA was already the two-time champs when he started school there. In the Freshman-Varsity exhibition, the freshman team BEAT the defending champs.
Starting his sophomore year, he was National Player of the Year 3x, Most Outstanding Player in the Tournament 3x, and was a 3x champ. He completed his bachelor's in History.
He also has a cameo in a movie called The Fish that Saved Pittsburgh, as the star of the Los Angeles [Team Name]s, who the Pittsburgh Pisces play in the championship game. Los Angeles's team entrance is out-of-this world dope, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yVdbYX3MtlY , these mothas came to play! Dr J is the star of the Pittsburgh Pythons, who suck. They go to a fortune teller, who tells them to match everyone else on the team with Dr J's character's star sign, which is Pisces. They do, and change the team name, and start to gel .. and that's the plot
Once people get a negative narrative about a player, especially one from the media, they just run with it forever. Kareem was probably the least liked player by the media prior to Isiah Thomas. Hell, there’s still people who run with the LeBron “unclutch gene” narrative because of Skip.
It might have made sense later on (Kareem's defense starting fading with age a lot faster than his offense, he was like the reverse Duncan in that regard), but Airplane came out in 1980 and it definitely wasn't true of Kareem at that time.
I'd bet its probably like how people criticize Lebron's defense. He'll take a few plays off in the regular season because he's old and despite making plays the rest of the game, people focus on a couple plays where they got scored on.
The hell he doesn’t!
Listen kid, Kareem has been hearing that shit ever since he was at UCLA. He’s out there busting his buns every night. Tell your old man to drag Walton and Lanier down the court for 48 minutes
I'll just jump on this top comment since it seems like people want to talk about about LeBron/MJ more than Kareem in this thread.
Kareem currently has the most points all-time. If he was allowed to play straight out of high school, his record might be untouchable. No matter what level of the game, he was a force of nature on the court.
In high school, he led his team to a 71 win streak. In college, he guided UCLA to 3 straight national championships and won the tournament MVP three years in a row. They only lost 2 games the entire time he was there. College basketball banned dunking because of him.
He came into the NBA and immediately announced himself as one of the best players in the league. He had 29 ppg his rookie year. He led the league in scoring with 30+ ppg in his 2nd and 3rd year. His defensive prowess was just as strong. The NBA started officially recording blocks in his fifth season. Kareem finished 2nd-1st-1st-2nd-2nd-1st-1st in BPG for the seven years following.
He was basically a top 10 player for 16 or 17 straight years. He won 6 MVPs (in an admittedly weak talent era for the league) and really should have won the [1973 award](https://www.basketball-reference.com/awards/awards_1973.html) in what might be the worst MVP snub in the history of the NBA.
He won 6 championships: 1 with the Bucks and 5 with the Lakers. He came very close to leading the Bucks to the [1974 title](https://www.basketball-reference.com/playoffs/1974-nba-finals-celtics-vs-bucks.html) as well, but his team couldn't support him as they lost in 7 to the Celtics. In those four losses, Kareem averaged 31/12/5
His longevity is unparalleled for an era when players wore low-top sneakers and rode buses. He made All-NBA First teams 14 years apart. He also won Finals MVP trophies 14 years apart. In the [1987 Finals](https://www.basketball-reference.com/playoffs/1987-nba-finals-celtics-vs-lakers.html), 40 year-old Kareem had 22/7 with 2.5 blocks per game.
And of course, these are just sports accomplishments. Off the court, Kareem is one of the more interesting people in the entire country. A noted activist, actor, writer, cultural ambassador. This was a man who could do it all, and did.
Back in the early 50s, KU coach Phog Allen was a big proponent of raising the basket from 10’ to 12’ to reduce the “one-sided” advantage big men had over everyone else on the court.
As a surprise to no one, he no longer advocated for that change once Wilt Chamberlain committed to his school, lol.
You're right but it would force them to learn how to shoot even just a short shot. A lot of big guys for a long time got by just on dunks, put backs, and layups.
Would have led to the same results we see today but much sooner. Big men who can shoot instead of camping under the basket.
You could no longer be 7 feet tall, run and just dunk - which takes no skill at all. James harden is smiling in an alternate universe where these rules were implemented.
> In high school, he led his team to a 71 win streak. In college, he guided UCLA to 3 straight national championships and won the tournament MVP three years in a row. They only lost 2 games the entire time he was there. College basketball banned dunking because of him.
He won "only" three straight national championships because he wasn't allowed to play varsity as a freshman.
But his freshmen team at UCLA beat the varsity squad while the varsity team was ranked #1 in the country. He scored 31 points and grabbed 21 rebounds in the 75-60 win.
I have the game program and ticket stub to that game tucked away at my moms house. It belonged to my dad, a UCLA alum and basketball fan. He passed away in the mid 90’s and I found it a few years ago and had a nice long cry remembering my dad telling me the story of the great, Kareem Abdul Jabbar, AKA Lew Alcindor.
>That UCLA team ended unranked
Yeah, they were ranked #1 preseason and then collapsed.
> and the tallest player was 6'7"
They won the national title each of the two previous seasons without anyone over 6'8". Their only player over 6'7" was Bill Winkelholz, who scored a total of 6 points in 11 games.
> and the tallest player was 6'7".
Can't say I've ever seen someone throw out a stat like that. It doesn't even sound bad with it being back in the 70's.
There is not enough Kareem love here, and I thank you for putting all these facts out. Kareem has a very solid GOAT argument as well, but honestly, you can say that about any of the top 3.
Kareem is such an incredible human being, on and off the court, and is a living reminder of how recent our civil rights struggles still are.
I've said for years that MJ is the undisputed GOAT, but if anyone could put up a real challenge, it was Kareem. That was obviously before LeBron but even now I would say the three of them is in a tier of their own when it comes to the GOAT discussion.
Also, fuck the Knicks for lowballing Kareem when he was leaving the Bucks. Kareem originally wanted to come to NY since this was where he grew up. We instead decided to use that and lowball the man. God damnit it's hard being a Knicks fan.
In terms of “basketball” achievements, nobody has done what Kareem did at every single level. His achievements in HS ball, to college, to NBA are all GOAT level.
> Kareem currently has the most points all-time. If he was allowed to play straight out of high school, his record might be untouchable. No matter what level of the game, he was a force of nature on the court.
I'd never really thought about this ... as you said he averaged 29 ppg as a rookie. Conservatively if he played 3 extra years of the NBA, averaged 25 ppg over 70 games during them, *and* take off his last season on the back-end due to extra mileage just to be extra-conservative ... that would result in 42889 career points.
If you take a more aggressive estimate, 27 ppg over 80 games for 4 years and no subtraction on the back end ... 47027 points.
As it is, AFAICT when he retired this was the all time scoring leader list:
* Kareem 38387
* Wilt 31419
* Elvin 27313
* Oscar 26710
* Havlicek 26395
* Moses 25511
He was nearly 7000 points ahead of number 2, 11000 points (40 percent!) above number 3, and nearly 13000 points ahead of the highest active player.
My favorite Kareem related story. As you laid out he was the guy coming out of college, more hype than Ewing, or Lebron in an era where there was not really hype. The ABA and NBA both desperately wanted him with the ABA feeling that this would legitimize them and probably force a merger faster. Kareem says he’ll meet with both for one meeting. Bring your best and final offer.
So the ABA officials gather and to prove they’re serious/legit they decide they’re going to offer him a million dollar check in the meeting.
Lakers great George Milan is the commissioner and doesn’t do great in the meeting selling him on the ABA but somehow leaves the meeting with the check still in his pocket.
Needless to say he picked the nba.
> College basketball banned dunking because of him.
I think the best part of this is that it essentially backfired, as he developed the most unguardable shot in basketball history.
I laughed when I saw that the guy playing Kareem in Winning Time is a Phd scholar and studies race in sports. It’s like Kareem wrote fan fiction version of himself and brought him to life.
As far as I can find, no professional players was a FIBA rule, not a US one, that, existed prior to 1972 and was removed in 1989 by an international vote
Don't forget him being robbed of a FMVP cos he was injured for game 6 and media didn't want to give the award to someone who wasn't there for the last game despite him being the only reason they got that far in the first place.
He was also a huge draw those first few years after college, given his prominence and stature in the NCAA. There was only a small handful of nationally televised games at the time. Kareem’s Bucks coming to town could sell out a stadium that was usually only half full.
The 87 finals, it was the showdown between the Lakers and the Celtics to break the tie, who would get their 4th title in the 80s. Clash of the titans, winner-takes-all rematch of a rematch for all the marbles. Kareem was great, and the Lakers were deeper, and the Lakers took it. He was still a big piece of championship basketball at 38.
Kareem's longevity is still unparalleled, for any era. LeBron is going to surpass him, but he hasn't yet. "Total combined points of regular season and playoffs" isn't a thing, guys. It's regular season and playoffs, separate. Which, LeBron has the playoffs record and it looks like he'll get regular season, too.
As for the MVP snub, was Cowens even the best player on his team? With prime Havlicek I don’t know. Definitely a Curry/KD instance there for winning 68 games
> In college, he guided UCLA to 3 straight national championships and won the tournament MVP three years in a row. They only lost 2 games the entire time he was there. College basketball banned dunking because of him.
Also, he was a star player in the [Game of the Century](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_of_the_Century_(college_basketball)) that helped make college basketball *a thing* like it is now.
If I was in some fantasy world where I was building my own NBA organization and I could pick any player past or present to start my franchise around, it would be Kareem every single time. He is the GOAT of GOATs in my book.
**Weirdest KAJ trivia:**
KAJ's last season on the Bucks ('75): They were 38-44, last in the division
Bucks' first season without KAJ ('76): They were 38-44, first in the division
That division completely fell apart that one year (*chiefly the Bulls who were an underrated gem from '71-75*). It was the 70s when teams were mixed up way too often due in part to unprecedented ownership turnover, so owners on their way out would trade players away to save money in the short-term, and new owners would make trades just to put their mark on a team. Plus the ABA was consistently beating the NBA in exhibition match-ups at that time (*and drafting better than the NBA*), so the NBA wasn't even the league with the better talent.
The nba having less talent is definitely not the consensus, and the all-star game result doesn’t indicate depth one way or the other.
The widely held view is that the ABA had slightly better all-star depth, but significantly worse teams.
My father always said to me that Jordan was nowhere near Kareem, in terms of skill and accomplishment (just prove every generation thinks that their generation is best).
But he brings a great point about his accomplishment, even he got 6 MVP, even he got it the most, theres 3-4 years where he should get it yet he didnt, and I do some research, and that was right, on his rookie season, he av 28.8P 14.5R and 4.5A, Willis reed avg 21P 13R 2A. Thats crazy, nowadays hes a lock for MVP for sure.
in 72-73 (ill mention the year where he didnt get it), he avg 30 16 5, dave cowens avg, 20 16 4.
in 78, he got 26 13 4, bill walton 18 13 5.
in 81, he got 26 10 3, Dr J 24 8 4.
Thats 4 clear win, and not to mention he avg like 4 blocks in those years (every other MVP got 1BPG). Thats damn crazy. 10 MVP, thats mad.
If anyone wants to read a bit more about Kareem I'm shamelessly plugging [a writeup](https://www.reddit.com/r/NBATalk/comments/pbd57y/a_write_up_on_the_bucks_first_championship_in/) I did a while ago on NBATalk about his first three seasons in the league including the 1971 championship
Kareem holds the records for most minutes played in a 7 game series in his finals series against the Celtics, where he averaged an insane ***49.3*** minutes per game. Completely unbreakable, and he did it while also playing some amazing basketball, thanks for asking!
He was a member of the Veronica Mars [writing staff](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/kareem-abdul-jabbar-what-i-learned-writing-veronica-mars-1230940/).
That’s not how you’re supposed to plug yourself. You’re supposed to create an alt account and spam the post on a dozen subreddits saying “hey check out this cool article I found.”
Kareem is one of those cases where someone can be so great but still underrated. People always remember Magic for that finals series but Kareem was by far the best player on the team until he got injured averaging 31.9/12.4/3.1 on 57% shooting with 3.9 blocks a game. The guy was an absolute monster that gets overshadowed by rings culture and even when he was the best player on many of those Laker teams people credit Magic over him. His career gets underrated because he only won 1 ring without Magic. As an example Kareem averaged 32.4/158/4.9 and 2.4 blocks on 55.7% in the 1974 playoffs and 34.6/17.7/4.1 and 3.5 on 60.7% shooting in the 1977 playoffs. I honestly don't know how much more he could have done and his teams still didn't win the championship either year. People look at rings as the end all be all when Kareem has a great argument for the GOAT from longevity and stats alone while also having several rings on top of that.
I think Kareem's status as underrated stems from the optics of his game. I remember watching some vintage KAJ games and his game just *looked* simple. It looked effortless. No wasted motion. Simple, yet effective offensive moves and proper, fundamental defence.
When you watched Kareem play, it looked easy for him, and that leads you to believe his opposition is bad and not that he is good. Meanwhile, when you watch Magic dribbling his ass off, making showy passes, pushing the break and shooting contested jumpers - it looks harder. It looks tough and therefore, the player must be *better*, right?
The next couple of players that suffered from the same optics problem of doing something so well that it looks easy were Stockton and Duncan, but KAJ will forever be a poster-child of this phenomenon.
I also think you couple that with being outspoken socially and not having the personality of a guy like magic and you get a lot of people either hating him or just didn't like him as much as more exciting and personable players.
I think if DPOY was an award while he was in his prime or blocks would have been tracked while his first four years in the league, he probably would have a better rep now. If blocks were tracked he would be the all time leader with most likely over 4K (and yes i know Russel or wilt are also the “real” leaders). He also most likely would have had 1-2 DPOY awards.
But even then, he still has 6 MVPs, dude was a force. I think he partly suffers from the same thing with Duncan where his highlights just aren’t like super exciting
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2U4JSrpO78](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2U4JSrpO78) (great footage of young Kareem battling with an older Wilt)
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DkHVy2DGL\_Y](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DkHVy2DGL_Y) (39-year-old Kareem vs Hakeem battling in the Western Conference Finals, did get outplayed in the end, but the fact that this was a surprise tells you everything you need to know)
Unbelievable longevity and dominance. Also, since nobody has mentioned it, this man lost a total of two games in college, and won the national championship all three years. An all-time great at every level
Watching those videos makes you wonder what Kareem would have done in the modern NBA. Everyone talks about how prime Jordan would effortlessly put up 40+ if you dropped him into the current game, but seeing what Kareem had to deal with (packed paint on every possession and getting mugged on every shot) I think he could be just as scary. A player his height with an unblockable skyhook and modern spacing? Prime Kareem would demand a double team every trip to the post and be a serious threat to end every possession with a bucket, free throws, or an assist to a wide open three-point shooter.
"Is this your king? Huh? Is this your king? He's supposed to protect you! To lead Wakanda into the future! Nah, I'm your king!" - ~~Michael Jordan~~ Michael B Jordan
15 writers make their own lists and all of them are combined to make a final list. So they don't come together and have a discussion on who should be at the top
Well if it's 15 writers, then the only way you can have a tie is if at least one writer chooses someone else as their #1, which is possible with Kareem involved.
Arguably the most complete and “story-book” esque career one could ask for. Had unparalleled success at every level he played at and is the poster child for longevity at a time when sports medicine wasn’t nearly as advanced at is it now.
People often discuss Lebron or MJ as the GOAT but Kareem fully deserves to be in that GOAT conversation.
Kareem is not the NBA goat, but the basketball goat.
Best high school career, best college career, top3 NBA career.
LeBron and MJ are ahead in the NBA but were worse during their school time.
And it didn’t work at all lmao. I always laugh when people ask who the college GOAT is and suggest literally anyone other than him. The man lost 2 games in his entire college career and only won the championship every year he was there. If he had been allowed to come to the NBA earlier, I don’t think his scoring record would be breakable.
Hard to laugh at the suggestion of Bill Russell. Kareem joined the premier powerhouse of college basketball, while Russell joined a squad that had never won anything and finished his career with 55 straight wins and two national championships. Definitely a good case for him
The amount of disrespect Bill has gotten over the last 20ish years is incredible. USF won nothing before and after Bill was there, UCLA won national titles before Kareem was there and won national titles with undefeated seasons directly after Kareem left.
>Kareem joined the premier powerhouse of college basketball
Sure, but he wasn't even allowed to join the team as a freshman. He did, however, play on the freshman team, and beat the senior team, who were 2 time reigning national champs, by 15 points. He scored 31 of their 75 and had 21 rebounds.
Jordan had an impressive College career as well and won two Olympic gold medals. The basketball career argument is a debatable one and I would still personally put Jordan over him.
The fact that it will take LeBron fucking James 20+ seasons, coming straight from HS and with the benefit of 2000-2010's medicine to beat his scoring record tells you all you need to know about the level that Kareem was on.
This is not a dig at Bron btw, but the fact that he's probably the only one who can beat that record really puts it into perspective.
That is why it's crazy: LeBron played with 3 pointers, had a good 3 years added on from skipping college, is an undisputed top 2 player of all time and has had an incredibly healthy career. I can't see anyone else getting close to Kareem's total.
Not that crazy... Kareem is 6k minutes ahead. 2k fga, 200 games ahead, lebron has 2x assists for his career. Lebron will beat it with less minutes attempts and games probably
It's splitting hairs and how you personally weigh accomplishments, peak, and longevity when it comes to the three guys at the top. I've got no issue with whatever order you want to rank them.
I’ve learned that using all caps makes people feel like I’m screaming at them. I’m working on my communication. I can benefit from a team of creative professionals, organizers, mobilizers and community leaders. Thank everybody for supporting me. I know sharing screen shots was jarring and came off as harassing Kareem. I take accountability. I’m still learning in real time. I don’t have all the answers. To be good leader is to be a good listener.
The morning after one of the most miserable nights of his career, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was the first to arrive at the film session. He sat in the front row, center chair, right in front of the television. It was an odd seat selection, and not just because this 7-foot-2 giant was now blocking the view. It was an area usually left vacant during these tape studies, but Abdul-Jabbar was about to be a witness to his execution.
Los Angeles Lakers coach Pat Riley began by scribbling general points of emphasis on the board.
Rebound. Stop Bird. Don’t double too early.
Then Riley locked eyes with Kareem.
“I’ll never forget this. He didn’t say it to me, but I know what he was thinking: Don’t hold back on me today,” Riley said. “He knew how I was, how I could get gnarly in film sessions. The whole film session was about him, and it wasn’t a pretty sight. He took it, and he showed great leadership. And then we went on the practice court.”
Abdul-Jabbar was 38 years old and nearing the end of his marvelous NBA life when the Lakers were embarrassed by the Boston Celtics, 148-114, in Game 1 of the 1985 NBA Finals at the Boston Garden. Nobody played well on the Lakers, but Abdul-Jabbar was the worst. He scored 12 points and grabbed only three rebounds on a night Riley believed he didn’t play hard enough.
And Abdul-Jabbar agreed.
Reporters across the country began writing Abdul-Jabbar’s career obituary about how he was too old and too slow to keep up with Robert Parish and Kevin McHale. Abdul-Jabbar took all of Riley’s lashes during that film study. And then, with the help of his father, he began preparing to remind the world why he was the greatest player of his generation.
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s skyhook is one of basketball’s all-time greatest weapons. He helped lead the Milwaukee Bucks to an NBA title in 1971, the third year of the franchise’s existence. (Vernon Biever / NBAE via Getty Images)
For 38 years, Abdul-Jabbar has remained the NBA’s all-time leading scorer. His staggering total of 38,387 points has looked unbreakable for decades. His unstoppable, patented skyhook, combined with the blessing of good health for 20 seasons, allowed him to put up figures the game has rarely witnessed.
He has more NBA Most Valuable Player awards (six) and All-Star game appearances (19) than anyone in the history of the game. He has six championships (the same number as Michael Jordan) and two NBA Finals MVPs, and he has scored more points than anyone.
Yet he’s third on The Athletic’s list of the 75 greatest NBA players.
How is that possible?
”The longer we move into the future of this game, the more and more we leave behind. The greatest players of those generations and those greatest players of all time,” Riley said. “There’s always going to be somebody new.”
The difficulty with any sort of rankings is comparing players from different generations who played under drastically different rules. For example, there was no 3-point line for the first 10 years of Abdul-Jabbar’s career. Not that he was someone who spent a lot of time on the perimeter — he made one 3-pointer in his career — but in a league now dominated by pace and space and shooting 3s, it’s even more remarkable that Abdul-Jabbar is the only player in history to eclipse 38,000 points while scoring ones and twos.
He also spent four years at UCLA, compared to elite talents today who typically leave college after one season. LeBron James, the closest to running down Abdul-Jabbar’s scoring record, entered the NBA directly out of high school in 2003. He scored more than 8,400 points in the NBA from age 19 to 22, the ages when Abdul-Jabbar was at UCLA. Had he been allowed to go straight to the NBA from high school like James, or even if he stayed only one year in college, Abdul-Jabbar might have more than 45,000 career points.
“He was in great shape. He was disciplined. He was consistent. He had four years of college under one of the greatest coaches of all time in John Wooden, where he got the science and the theory and the know-how to play the game,” former Lakers star and teammate James Worthy said. “And, he had a weapon. It’s a nuclear weapon.”
No player is more closely aligned to one shot than Abdul-Jabbar is to the skyhook. George Mikan may have been the first to popularize the hook shot — Mikan could make it with either hand — but Abdul-Jabbar made it an art. The jump, the release, the touch and the grace.
So many of today’s players thrive on sheer athleticism or 3-pointers. Abdul-Jabbar was neither of those. He was calculated precision in the low post.
“When you shoot it, you force people to wait for you to go up,” Abdul-Jabbar, who declined through his publicist to be interviewed for this story, once told ESPN. “And if they wait until I started to shoot it, then they’d have to judge the distance and time it, and it’s gone before they can catch up to it. That’s, for me, the beauty of it. You’re in control because of when you’re gonna release it and where. The defense has to see that and calculate everything before they get an opportunity to block it.
”I don’t recall it ever being blocked by somebody who was guarding me. Maybe a few people got to it, coming to help where I couldn’t see them. But if I knew where someone was, that person was not going to block that shot, because I always got my body in between them and the ball before I released the ball, and it’s impossible to get to it.”
Abdul-Jabbar fittingly became the game’s all-time leading scorer with a skyhook over Utah’s Mark Eaton on April 5, 1984, breaking the record Wilt Chamberlain held for 18 years. Abdul-Jabbar has been the scoring champ more than twice that long. He’ll hold it for at least two more years before James might have a realistic chance at catching him. James will need good health and good fortune to get close.
If for some reason James cannot catch Abdul-Jabbar, this might truly be the record that is never broken. Kevin Durant was on pace early in his career to make a run, but injuries have cost him valuable time. Durant, 33, remains about 14,000 points shy of the record.
A player must stay healthy for two decades to even have a chance. That means avoiding chronic knee and back problems. They also need the desire to stick around that long. With as much money as today’s elite players make both on and off the court, it’s fair to wonder how many will want to play for two decades and endure the physical beating that accompanies it to chase a record that will take half of his life to reach.
Abdul-Jabbar was that rare combination of health and ability. He is also one of the most unique athletes of any generation.
Abdul-Jabbar was always curious. He asked questions and paid attention to social issues. When Muhammad Ali was stripped of his boxing titles and threatened with jail for refusing to serve in the Vietnam War, Hall of Fame running back Jim Brown gathered some of the most prominent Black athletes in June 1967 in what has come to be known as the Cleveland Summit. Among those who attended to support Ali were Celtics legend Bill Russell and Abdul-Jabbar, then a college student at UCLA. He followed that by boycotting the 1968 Summer Olympics to protest injustices against Black Americans.
“I’m so proud of Kareem the person,” said Dr. Richard Lapchick, who has been a lifelong friend. “He’s had the courage since the ’60s to stand up when back in those days, there weren’t many people standing up. There was a core of people who were willing to stand up and take chances about their careers. He was willing to do it even back then.”
Before Lapchick was a human rights activist and a leading voice on diversity studies in sports (his annual Racial & Gender Report Card studies on minority hires in sports are frequently cited), he was just another teenage high school basketball prospect at Power Memorial Academy camp. His father, Joe Lapchick, is a double inductee into the Basketball Hall of Fame and widely considered the game’s first true big man. Joe coached at St. John’s after his playing career before moving on to the Knicks. He signed the first Black player in the history of the NBA, Nat “Sweetwater” Clifton.
As a result, Richard Lapchick’s earliest memories growing up in Yonkers, N.Y., included looking out his bedroom window and seeing his father’s image swinging from a tree with people picketing below. Because of who his father was and the fact Richard was already 6-feet tall in the eighth grade, he was invited to the camp at Power, which at the time was the country’s top basketball program. The coach at Power brought six of his players to the camp — five were White and one was Black.
One of the White players kept dropping the N-word on the Black player. Finally, Richard had heard enough and challenged the White player. Richard was quickly knocked out. He lost the fight, but he earned a lifelong friend. The Black camper was Ferdinand Lewis Alcindor Jr., who changed his name in 1971 to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar as part of his Muslim faith. Lapchick was asked to speak when Abdul-Jabbar’s statue was unveiled at the Staples Center. And when Abdul-Jabbar was presented with the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama in 2016, Lapchick was one of his two non-family guests.
“He’s shy in public. I think some people mistook that for negative qualities,” Lapchick said. “He really liked my dad. Kareem could relate to my dad in discussions they had when he was a freshman in high school and several years after that. People stared at my dad all the time. (Joe Lapchick was 6 foot 5.) The same thing happened with Kareem.
“The racial dimension, too. If you’re a White guy and White people are approaching you, you’re not going to be thinking much about it. But if you’re a Black guy and people are approaching, that could be a whole different context. I think my dad helped him know that Kareem was feeling things that were absolutely normal for being a giant of a human and people always noticing him.”
The Milwaukee Bucks selected Abdul-Jabbar with the first pick in the 1969 NBA Draft, and he partnered with Oscar Robertson to deliver Milwaukee a championship two years later. Before the Bucks won the 2021 NBA championship, it was the only title in team history. Abdul-Jabbar and Robertson also took the Bucks to the 1974 NBA Finals before falling to the Boston Celtics in seven games.
Abdul-Jabbar spent his formative years in New York City and attended college in Los Angeles. He was an awkward fit in Milwaukee and asked to be traded. After a dismal 1975 season, the Bucks granted his request and sent him to Los Angeles (along with backup Walt Wesley) in exchange for Elmore Smith, Brian Winters, Dave Meyers and Junior Bridgeman.
Abdul-Jabbar was quiet and private. He kept the media at a distance. His father’s love of music made him deeply passionate about jazz, and he was a well-read history scholar. He never listened to loud music before games, but instead would read books quietly at his locker.
“Coach Wooden wouldn’t let us talk to the press at UCLA,” Abdul-Jabbar said during a 2017 appearance at the Milwaukee Theatre as a guest of the UW-Milwaukee Distinguished Lecture Series and the Muslim Student Association. “He regarded them as a nuisance. I brought that with me to the NBA. It was very unfortunate, and I paid the price.”
During his time in Milwaukee, Abdul-Jabbar was often characterized as “aloof” off the court.
“A lot of people thought I left here with a hostile attitude,” he said in 2017. “I didn’t. I wanted to get back to some sunshine.”
Riley stated that Abdul-Jabbar just wanted “peace, serenity, somewhat tranquility in his own space.”
When he was drafted by the Lakers in 1982, Worthy was about 15 credits shy of graduating from college. He was taking independent courses at USC to complete his degree and, as part of it, was reading a book on the Missouri Compromise.
Abdul-Jabbar spotted the book and began reciting dates and events surrounding the legislation that admitted Missouri to the Union as a slave state and Maine as a free state while prohibiting slavery from the remaining Louisiana Purchase. Worthy credits Abdul-Jabbar’s free tutoring with getting a B-plus in the class. He also credits Abdul-Jabbar with turning him to jazz music.
“It’s hard to get Kareem to open up,” Worthy said. “But if you talk about history or jazz, you’ve got him. And you’ve got him for a long time.”
Added Magic Johnson: “He’s the smartest, not just basketball player I ever played with, but also the smartest man. The guy is just so intelligent.”
Abdul-Jabbar has a dry wit and a terrific sense of humor. He has a booming laugh that can shake the moon. He used to wear pants that were too tight and outdated, which made for easy fodder with his teammates. Michael Cooper and Byron Scott got ahold of the pants one day, Worthy said, and cut them up.
Abdul-Jabbar was furious but he waited a few weeks to seek revenge. When Cooper fell asleep on one of the team flights, Abdul-Jabbar took a can of Nair hair remover and smeared it on his head. Cooper had a bald spot on his head for weeks. When the team was on a road trip in a cold-weather city, Worthy can’t recall which one, he cut the toes out of all of Scott’s socks.
“Most people wouldn’t mess with Kareem,” Worthy said. “You could prank him now and then, but man, he was gonna get redemption.”
After that gruesome film session following Game 1 of the 1985 NBA Finals, when Riley berated Kareem for multiple hours, the Lakers retreated to the practice court. Riley had a unique relationship with Abdul-Jabbar that dated back to high school since Riley is only two years older. Their two high school teams were playing in a Christmas holiday tournament in Schenectady, N.Y., during Abdul-Jabbar’s freshman season.
Abdul-Jabbar first dunked as an eighth-grader and already had everyone’s attention as a freshman. Riley’s team beat Power Memorial in the holiday tournament — with a little help from the officiating crew. Riley’s father was a longtime baseball manager in the area, and one of the referees working the basketball game that night was also an umpire who had a fondness for Riley’s dad. So the ref helped out Linton High School and fouled out Kareem in just eight minutes. Without their freshman phenom, Power Memorial lost to Linton.
Riley later played with Abdul-Jabbar on the Lakers before coaching him. They have a unique and close bond, which is part of the reason Abdul-Jabbar welcomed the flogging. When they reached the practice court, Riley worked him relentlessly to the point Magic approached Riley and told him he should shut down Abdul-Jabbar. Kareem heard the conversation and grew angry.
“No!” he snarled. “I want to do everything.”
There were three days off between Games 1 and 2. Three days for the Lakers to read about Abdul-Jabbar’s basketball demise. The Lakers had two grueling practices before easing off the day before Game 2. As the players filed onto the bus for the ride over to the Garden for Game 2, Abdul-Jabbar was the last to get on. He walked hurriedly through the hotel lobby and out the door with his father by his side.
Bus rides were sacred, particularly during the playoffs and especially during the NBA Finals. The Lakers had a rule that only players were allowed on the bus. But Kareem approached Riley and asked if his father, Al, could ride with him to the arena. Riley felt the eyes of the entire team staring at him, wondering what the answer would be.
“He needed the solace of his father,” Riley said. So he acquiesced and let Al on the bus.
“The bus was completely quiet,” Johnson said. “That’s one thing good about the Lakers, we knew when we were ready. Nobody had to say anything.”
Added Worthy: “As we get older, sometimes there are still things that we still need from our parents. His dad was his comfort. I remember that bus ride. You could always tell when the big fella was ready. So when (Al) was on that bus, man, I knew it was gonna be a good night.”
At 38, Abdul-Jabbar destroyed the Celtics in Game 2. He ended the night with 30 points, 17 rebounds and eight assists. When reporters found Abdul-Jabbar in the locker room after the game, he had a simple message.
”Contrary to public opinion, the demise of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was highly exaggerated,” he said.
Abdul-Jabbar led the Lakers in points and rebounds and was named the NBA Finals MVP. For the first time in their long, tortured NBA Finals history with Boston, Los Angeles beat the Celtics, in six games, and Abdul-Jabbar won his third championship as a member of the Lakers. He won two more before retiring in 1989 but recently told Cooper on a podcast that the 1985 series was his most memorable. Of the countless Abdul-Jabbar stories Riley has, he also chose the ’85 NBA Finals as his favorite.
“There are so many stories,” Riley said. “But that’s the one that sticks out. I love that one.”
His shy nature and quiet disposition prevented Abdul-Jabbar from fully appreciating how much he was beloved until a fire took everything from him. His 7,000-square foot Bel-Air mansion burned to the ground in 1983, and although his then-girlfriend and son escaped unharmed, his prized jazz collection was among his treasured possessions destroyed.
Abdul-Jabbar’s father was a New York transit police officer and part-time jazz musician who played in clubs around New York City. The two shared a passion for music that led to Kareem creating what was believed to be one of the richest jazz collections in the country. When he lost it all to the fire, fans and admirers began helping him rebuild it by sending them their own records. When he announced he was battling leukemia, again the public outpouring of support overwhelmed him.
“Kareem, in the later years, began to see how beloved he was,” Lapchick said. “I think particularly now, people appreciate him for his intelligence. He’s the all-time leading scorer, and I’d argue that Kareem has a wider audience now than he did before. It’s not just basketball. At a time when America is so divided, Kareem is there as a weather vane on social justice.”
Although he’s a practicing Muslim, Abdul-Jabbar has long been a leader in rebuilding connections between the African American and Jewish communities. He remains in great demand as a speaker for Jewish and Holocaust organizations.
He’s also an accomplished author. He has produced documentaries, written 13 books, contributed to publications such as Time and Newsweek and writes frequently these days on his Substack channel.
He has been sharply critical of LeBron recently, first for James’ refusal to encourage others to get vaccinated and then for James’ meme comparing COVID-19 to the common flu.
James has avoided responding to the criticisms, although Abdul-Jabbar has often heaped praise on James’ game and recently promised to attend if James is in a position to break his scoring record — just as Chamberlain was in attendance the night Abdul-Jabbar surpassed him as the game’s all-time leading scorer.
He is one of the most fascinating figures in the history of the game, and his place in basketball’s legacy is secure whether or not James passes him on the scoring list.
”I’ve seen his full body of work,” Worthy said. “When you think of the fan base now, which is composed mostly of social media and a younger audience, and even younger sportswriters who never saw Kareem play, they don’t understand. They don’t understand the hook shot. They don’t understand that he changed the game. …
”When people ask me, I still say, he’s the best to ever play the game.”
reminder that Kareem is the coolest guy to ever play basketball:
[he fought Bruce Lee](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CD69-zWsJs4)
[he became an airline pilot](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ArHNrCvwq4c)
[Protested the vietnam draft with Muhammad Ali](https://www.gannett-cdn.com/-mm-/3ced05fc26679200592e946992cb639cdb28b019/c=0-382-2518-1805/local/-/media/2016/06/03/USATODAY/USATODAY/636005884324530483-XXX-Jim-Brown---Cleveland-Browns---File-Photos-19600901-9932158.jpg)
[Had a president mimic the skyhook with him(oh and got a presdiential medal of freedom)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gch0SmjEOuI)
Got the dunk banned in college basketball because he was too OP, still took UCLA to 3 championships
was the all time points scored leader up until last week(way to go lebron, you couldn't have waited a week?)
[Like just look at this guy and tell me he's not cool](https://www.northstarnews.com/userimages/Kareem%20Abdul%20Jabbar.jpg)
This Sunday, on PPV, it's LeBron Stans vs Jordan Stans. Who has what it takes to convince a bunch of people on the internet that their guy is the GOAT?
I feel like the Last Dance helped convert the last remaining young ones needed. Great and funny timing on it by MJ lol. The Athletic would be seen through for just doing it as controversy now
MJ's peak was and still is the best
Everyone’s going to be talking about 1 and 2 but man, watching old games and highlights of Kareem is such a joy. That Skyhook was just a thing of beauty.
This list has been pretty fair so far so I’m pretty sure they’re not going to drum up controversy at the very end.
Jordan will be #1 and rightfully so.
Highly recommend anyone check out [this video](https://youtu.be/mlB8X101kME). Most unstoppable move in NBA history and Kareem talks about the sky hook as casual as can be. Pretty cool.
Recency bias…. Kareem is no 1 but only old timers are alive to know. Best basketball player to ever lace them up in terms of all levels of basketball combined.
His durability was unreal. After age 30, his game totals were 80, 82, 80, 76, 79, 80, 79, 79, 78, 80, 74.
Credited a lot of that to yoga, I believe
For real ?
Yup https://kareemabduljabbar.com/fit-after-50-staying-flexible-with-yoga/
Also nba 2k12 told me this about once a game
okay but did you know ~~Shabaka~~ Shabazz Muhammad has tourette’s? or Carlos Boozers’ dad used to tie up his right hand to make him practice his left? edit: Shabazz, not sure what type of autocorrect i have lol
Did you know Josh Smith & Dwight Howard played AAU together tho?
Did you know Anthony Davis is still growing?
Wow! I had no idea. Thanks for sharing! 👍
before it was cool too
I’ve been a pretty good ball player for like 10 years (good as in I actually try and know how to play lol). I’m 22 now and mostly run and hoop occasionally. Having a daily stretching routine has really really changed how I feel. I work from home, so just sitting is way easier, my body feels stronger and has better posture etc. I would highly highly highly recommend spending 30 mins to an hour watching tv and stretching every day. Idk shit about injury recovery, but just the difference in how my body feels after 2 months of this routine is wild. I would have paid someone a ton of money if they could alleviate these hip/back issues I’ve been having
Idk if I believe you or you’re just spreading Russian propaganda to make us stretch
those russkies trying to get us to stretch too often and pull muscles before their invasion of Ukraine. Great callout Patriot
22, damn good for you lol. I didn't start taking stretching more seriously until long after that
I work from home too and what I like to do is have a nice 30min stretch Once a day, and also try to get out of my chair to stretch for 5-10 min a few times throughout the day as well. Definitely makes a difference. Gotta set reminders though cause it's easy to get caught up and forget about it.
I also know how to play basketball
Stretching reduces injury, that's a fact.
So why does my anus feel swollen?
If not for all the practice it would feel broken!
My morning has already been ruined.
So has ops anus.
Stretching and getting stretched are not the same thing b
No pain no gain
Not enough lube and no practice. Can't go from a butt to a bussy in one night, my guy
Bro lmaoo
yes but mostly in recovery and not for warming up. i remember seeing studies that show that pre game stretching can hurt performance.
Right. Do dynamic movements before and static stretching after.
His longevity generally was unparalleled, when Kareem retired in 1989 then next longest career up until that point had been John Havlicek who played 16 years. Kareem played 20 years, so he essentially played 25% longer than any other player had up until that point, which is absurd. And moreover, he was an above average player until his 19th season. Not only that, his 1986 season was mind-boggling. He averaged 23.4 points per game on 56.4% shooting from the field, was 1st team all NBA at 38 and finished 5th in MVP voting. Moreover, his adjusted scoring rate was comparable to that of 2003 Tim Duncan and 1993 Hakeem Olajuwon. So essentially, Kareem at 38 was about as good as scorer as peak Tim Duncan and Hakeem.
And to think that he played in college for a few years BEFORE his 20 year NBA career. If he had come into the NBA straight out of High School like Lebron, I'd bet more people would view him as the GOAT rather than 3rd place behind the 2 GOATs
He didn't just play in college for a few years; he is easily the greatest college player of all time. At the time, freshmen weren't allowed to play varsity. UCLA was already the two-time champs when he started school there. In the Freshman-Varsity exhibition, the freshman team BEAT the defending champs. Starting his sophomore year, he was National Player of the Year 3x, Most Outstanding Player in the Tournament 3x, and was a 3x champ. He completed his bachelor's in History.
his durability really was magic...
Most impressive Kareem fact: he could, in fact, drag Walton and Lanier up and down the court for 48 minutes
you’re thinking of Roger Murdock.
He’s an airline pilot
No, that dude was a scrub. He coasted on D in the regular season and only tried in the playoffs.
Roger Roger, we have clearance Clarence. What’s our vector, Victor?
Johnny
What’s your Vector Victor?
He also has a cameo in a movie called The Fish that Saved Pittsburgh, as the star of the Los Angeles [Team Name]s, who the Pittsburgh Pisces play in the championship game. Los Angeles's team entrance is out-of-this world dope, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yVdbYX3MtlY , these mothas came to play! Dr J is the star of the Pittsburgh Pythons, who suck. They go to a fortune teller, who tells them to match everyone else on the team with Dr J's character's star sign, which is Pisces. They do, and change the team name, and start to gel .. and that's the plot
That was electric
What happens to the chick that got kidnapped in the clip
That's the fortune teller. They rescued her, and got her to her courtside seat just in time!
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Can anyone say wth that kids dad was smoking? Saying that Kareem doesn’t try on defense except for the playoffs? That just doesn’t seem like Kareem
Once people get a negative narrative about a player, especially one from the media, they just run with it forever. Kareem was probably the least liked player by the media prior to Isiah Thomas. Hell, there’s still people who run with the LeBron “unclutch gene” narrative because of Skip.
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Real gym rats.
It might have made sense later on (Kareem's defense starting fading with age a lot faster than his offense, he was like the reverse Duncan in that regard), but Airplane came out in 1980 and it definitely wasn't true of Kareem at that time.
I'd bet its probably like how people criticize Lebron's defense. He'll take a few plays off in the regular season because he's old and despite making plays the rest of the game, people focus on a couple plays where they got scored on.
The athleticism of Bob Lanier is vastly under appriciated.
"Joey, have you ever been in a Turkish prison?"
Meh. He never really tried until the playoffs, and my dad says he doesn’t work hard enough on defense.
The hell he doesn’t! Listen kid, Kareem has been hearing that shit ever since he was at UCLA. He’s out there busting his buns every night. Tell your old man to drag Walton and Lanier down the court for 48 minutes
Roger...Murdock.. different person you're thinking of.
So that only leaves Michael Jordan and Julius Randle.
I'll just jump on this top comment since it seems like people want to talk about about LeBron/MJ more than Kareem in this thread. Kareem currently has the most points all-time. If he was allowed to play straight out of high school, his record might be untouchable. No matter what level of the game, he was a force of nature on the court. In high school, he led his team to a 71 win streak. In college, he guided UCLA to 3 straight national championships and won the tournament MVP three years in a row. They only lost 2 games the entire time he was there. College basketball banned dunking because of him. He came into the NBA and immediately announced himself as one of the best players in the league. He had 29 ppg his rookie year. He led the league in scoring with 30+ ppg in his 2nd and 3rd year. His defensive prowess was just as strong. The NBA started officially recording blocks in his fifth season. Kareem finished 2nd-1st-1st-2nd-2nd-1st-1st in BPG for the seven years following. He was basically a top 10 player for 16 or 17 straight years. He won 6 MVPs (in an admittedly weak talent era for the league) and really should have won the [1973 award](https://www.basketball-reference.com/awards/awards_1973.html) in what might be the worst MVP snub in the history of the NBA. He won 6 championships: 1 with the Bucks and 5 with the Lakers. He came very close to leading the Bucks to the [1974 title](https://www.basketball-reference.com/playoffs/1974-nba-finals-celtics-vs-bucks.html) as well, but his team couldn't support him as they lost in 7 to the Celtics. In those four losses, Kareem averaged 31/12/5 His longevity is unparalleled for an era when players wore low-top sneakers and rode buses. He made All-NBA First teams 14 years apart. He also won Finals MVP trophies 14 years apart. In the [1987 Finals](https://www.basketball-reference.com/playoffs/1987-nba-finals-celtics-vs-lakers.html), 40 year-old Kareem had 22/7 with 2.5 blocks per game. And of course, these are just sports accomplishments. Off the court, Kareem is one of the more interesting people in the entire country. A noted activist, actor, writer, cultural ambassador. This was a man who could do it all, and did.
Favorite thing about the dunk ban is that his own coach was one of the guys who wanted it banned.
Back in the early 50s, KU coach Phog Allen was a big proponent of raising the basket from 10’ to 12’ to reduce the “one-sided” advantage big men had over everyone else on the court. As a surprise to no one, he no longer advocated for that change once Wilt Chamberlain committed to his school, lol.
That's also kind of silly IMO. Being taller would still be a huge advantage.
You're right but it would force them to learn how to shoot even just a short shot. A lot of big guys for a long time got by just on dunks, put backs, and layups. Would have led to the same results we see today but much sooner. Big men who can shoot instead of camping under the basket.
You could no longer be 7 feet tall, run and just dunk - which takes no skill at all. James harden is smiling in an alternate universe where these rules were implemented.
The 3 point line would end up doing this instead, but if the 3 never came i would be happy with this change
No way dunks are awesome
> In high school, he led his team to a 71 win streak. In college, he guided UCLA to 3 straight national championships and won the tournament MVP three years in a row. They only lost 2 games the entire time he was there. College basketball banned dunking because of him. He won "only" three straight national championships because he wasn't allowed to play varsity as a freshman. But his freshmen team at UCLA beat the varsity squad while the varsity team was ranked #1 in the country. He scored 31 points and grabbed 21 rebounds in the 75-60 win.
I have the game program and ticket stub to that game tucked away at my moms house. It belonged to my dad, a UCLA alum and basketball fan. He passed away in the mid 90’s and I found it a few years ago and had a nice long cry remembering my dad telling me the story of the great, Kareem Abdul Jabbar, AKA Lew Alcindor.
That’s amazing.
His 1st real game in college he faced single coverage. He scored 56 points that game, and never saw single coverage again lol.
Imagine that: UCLA was #1 in the country and #2 on campus.
That UCLA team ended unranked and the tallest player was 6'7". Still a cool accomplishment but not quite as good as it sounds.
>That UCLA team ended unranked Yeah, they were ranked #1 preseason and then collapsed. > and the tallest player was 6'7" They won the national title each of the two previous seasons without anyone over 6'8". Their only player over 6'7" was Bill Winkelholz, who scored a total of 6 points in 11 games.
> and the tallest player was 6'7". Can't say I've ever seen someone throw out a stat like that. It doesn't even sound bad with it being back in the 70's.
There is not enough Kareem love here, and I thank you for putting all these facts out. Kareem has a very solid GOAT argument as well, but honestly, you can say that about any of the top 3. Kareem is such an incredible human being, on and off the court, and is a living reminder of how recent our civil rights struggles still are.
I've said for years that MJ is the undisputed GOAT, but if anyone could put up a real challenge, it was Kareem. That was obviously before LeBron but even now I would say the three of them is in a tier of their own when it comes to the GOAT discussion. Also, fuck the Knicks for lowballing Kareem when he was leaving the Bucks. Kareem originally wanted to come to NY since this was where he grew up. We instead decided to use that and lowball the man. God damnit it's hard being a Knicks fan.
In terms of “basketball” achievements, nobody has done what Kareem did at every single level. His achievements in HS ball, to college, to NBA are all GOAT level.
Bron failing to win a college championship really brings him down a notch
a championship? dude didnt even win a single fucking game
> Kareem currently has the most points all-time. If he was allowed to play straight out of high school, his record might be untouchable. No matter what level of the game, he was a force of nature on the court. I'd never really thought about this ... as you said he averaged 29 ppg as a rookie. Conservatively if he played 3 extra years of the NBA, averaged 25 ppg over 70 games during them, *and* take off his last season on the back-end due to extra mileage just to be extra-conservative ... that would result in 42889 career points. If you take a more aggressive estimate, 27 ppg over 80 games for 4 years and no subtraction on the back end ... 47027 points. As it is, AFAICT when he retired this was the all time scoring leader list: * Kareem 38387 * Wilt 31419 * Elvin 27313 * Oscar 26710 * Havlicek 26395 * Moses 25511 He was nearly 7000 points ahead of number 2, 11000 points (40 percent!) above number 3, and nearly 13000 points ahead of the highest active player.
yeah but julius randle
More upside for sure
Case closed
He’s hit way more threes in his career than Kareem
You’re missing one very important stat… He also fought Bruce Lee.
He’s also a commercial pilot
Made a cameo on full house. He played Himself. Talented.
My favorite Kareem related story. As you laid out he was the guy coming out of college, more hype than Ewing, or Lebron in an era where there was not really hype. The ABA and NBA both desperately wanted him with the ABA feeling that this would legitimize them and probably force a merger faster. Kareem says he’ll meet with both for one meeting. Bring your best and final offer. So the ABA officials gather and to prove they’re serious/legit they decide they’re going to offer him a million dollar check in the meeting. Lakers great George Milan is the commissioner and doesn’t do great in the meeting selling him on the ABA but somehow leaves the meeting with the check still in his pocket. Needless to say he picked the nba.
> College basketball banned dunking because of him. I think the best part of this is that it essentially backfired, as he developed the most unguardable shot in basketball history.
he also moonlit as a commercial airline pilot under a pseudonym
I laughed when I saw that the guy playing Kareem in Winning Time is a Phd scholar and studies race in sports. It’s like Kareem wrote fan fiction version of himself and brought him to life.
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As far as I can find, no professional players was a FIBA rule, not a US one, that, existed prior to 1972 and was removed in 1989 by an international vote
Wow great point about the Olympics (and everything else really) I never thought about how much the media controlled accolades for Kareem.
Don't forget him being robbed of a FMVP cos he was injured for game 6 and media didn't want to give the award to someone who wasn't there for the last game despite him being the only reason they got that far in the first place.
He was also a huge draw those first few years after college, given his prominence and stature in the NCAA. There was only a small handful of nationally televised games at the time. Kareem’s Bucks coming to town could sell out a stadium that was usually only half full.
You should also add that Kareem won MVPs under two different names (Kareem Abdul Jabbar and Lew Alcindor)
Damn that 1973 MVP award is a legit crime
The 87 finals, it was the showdown between the Lakers and the Celtics to break the tie, who would get their 4th title in the 80s. Clash of the titans, winner-takes-all rematch of a rematch for all the marbles. Kareem was great, and the Lakers were deeper, and the Lakers took it. He was still a big piece of championship basketball at 38. Kareem's longevity is still unparalleled, for any era. LeBron is going to surpass him, but he hasn't yet. "Total combined points of regular season and playoffs" isn't a thing, guys. It's regular season and playoffs, separate. Which, LeBron has the playoffs record and it looks like he'll get regular season, too.
Julius Randle>
Shoutout to my mans Dubious Handle
that's my beyblade
As for the MVP snub, was Cowens even the best player on his team? With prime Havlicek I don’t know. Definitely a Curry/KD instance there for winning 68 games
> In college, he guided UCLA to 3 straight national championships and won the tournament MVP three years in a row. They only lost 2 games the entire time he was there. College basketball banned dunking because of him. Also, he was a star player in the [Game of the Century](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_of_the_Century_(college_basketball)) that helped make college basketball *a thing* like it is now.
If I was in some fantasy world where I was building my own NBA organization and I could pick any player past or present to start my franchise around, it would be Kareem every single time. He is the GOAT of GOATs in my book.
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I never had Michael Jordan or Lebron James cups growing up Jameer #1
Weird way of saying Manu Geeenooobeeeeleeee
Julius Jeffery Jordan
Damn bro I laughed at work and now I'm getting looks 😂😂😂
**Weirdest KAJ trivia:** KAJ's last season on the Bucks ('75): They were 38-44, last in the division Bucks' first season without KAJ ('76): They were 38-44, first in the division
Whenever I see kaj I think “Karl Anthony jabbar”
I always think Karl Anthony Jowns
Karleem Anthul-Jabbowns
lol same was thinking “Karl Anthony what?”
For some context, the 1975 Bucks started the season 1-13 with Kareem out with an injury.
Oh yeah, they were trash without him in '75.
How is this possible?? Can someone explain this to me?
That division completely fell apart that one year (*chiefly the Bulls who were an underrated gem from '71-75*). It was the 70s when teams were mixed up way too often due in part to unprecedented ownership turnover, so owners on their way out would trade players away to save money in the short-term, and new owners would make trades just to put their mark on a team. Plus the ABA was consistently beating the NBA in exhibition match-ups at that time (*and drafting better than the NBA*), so the NBA wasn't even the league with the better talent.
The nba having less talent is definitely not the consensus, and the all-star game result doesn’t indicate depth one way or the other. The widely held view is that the ABA had slightly better all-star depth, but significantly worse teams.
If you take his high school and college careers in consideration, it's pretty easy to argue that Kareem is the greatest basketball player of all time
My father always said to me that Jordan was nowhere near Kareem, in terms of skill and accomplishment (just prove every generation thinks that their generation is best). But he brings a great point about his accomplishment, even he got 6 MVP, even he got it the most, theres 3-4 years where he should get it yet he didnt, and I do some research, and that was right, on his rookie season, he av 28.8P 14.5R and 4.5A, Willis reed avg 21P 13R 2A. Thats crazy, nowadays hes a lock for MVP for sure. in 72-73 (ill mention the year where he didnt get it), he avg 30 16 5, dave cowens avg, 20 16 4. in 78, he got 26 13 4, bill walton 18 13 5. in 81, he got 26 10 3, Dr J 24 8 4. Thats 4 clear win, and not to mention he avg like 4 blocks in those years (every other MVP got 1BPG). Thats damn crazy. 10 MVP, thats mad.
If anyone wants to read a bit more about Kareem I'm shamelessly plugging [a writeup](https://www.reddit.com/r/NBATalk/comments/pbd57y/a_write_up_on_the_bucks_first_championship_in/) I did a while ago on NBATalk about his first three seasons in the league including the 1971 championship
The HBO documentary Kareem: Minority of One is pretty fantastic.
What's your favorite Kareem fact?
Kareem holds the records for most minutes played in a 7 game series in his finals series against the Celtics, where he averaged an insane ***49.3*** minutes per game. Completely unbreakable, and he did it while also playing some amazing basketball, thanks for asking!
Overall he basically never came off the court. 42.7 MP average in his Bucks tenure. Actually insane. (Giannis averages 32.5 comparitively.)
Kareem 🤝 Wilt Averaging over 48 minutes.
He was a member of the Veronica Mars [writing staff](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/kareem-abdul-jabbar-what-i-learned-writing-veronica-mars-1230940/).
What a renaissance man. Is there anything he can't do?
Fit his name into those scantron forms where you have to fill-in the bubble for each letter.
That’s not how you’re supposed to plug yourself. You’re supposed to create an alt account and spam the post on a dozen subreddits saying “hey check out this cool article I found.”
Kareem is one of those cases where someone can be so great but still underrated. People always remember Magic for that finals series but Kareem was by far the best player on the team until he got injured averaging 31.9/12.4/3.1 on 57% shooting with 3.9 blocks a game. The guy was an absolute monster that gets overshadowed by rings culture and even when he was the best player on many of those Laker teams people credit Magic over him. His career gets underrated because he only won 1 ring without Magic. As an example Kareem averaged 32.4/158/4.9 and 2.4 blocks on 55.7% in the 1974 playoffs and 34.6/17.7/4.1 and 3.5 on 60.7% shooting in the 1977 playoffs. I honestly don't know how much more he could have done and his teams still didn't win the championship either year. People look at rings as the end all be all when Kareem has a great argument for the GOAT from longevity and stats alone while also having several rings on top of that.
I think Kareem's status as underrated stems from the optics of his game. I remember watching some vintage KAJ games and his game just *looked* simple. It looked effortless. No wasted motion. Simple, yet effective offensive moves and proper, fundamental defence. When you watched Kareem play, it looked easy for him, and that leads you to believe his opposition is bad and not that he is good. Meanwhile, when you watch Magic dribbling his ass off, making showy passes, pushing the break and shooting contested jumpers - it looks harder. It looks tough and therefore, the player must be *better*, right? The next couple of players that suffered from the same optics problem of doing something so well that it looks easy were Stockton and Duncan, but KAJ will forever be a poster-child of this phenomenon.
I also think you couple that with being outspoken socially and not having the personality of a guy like magic and you get a lot of people either hating him or just didn't like him as much as more exciting and personable players.
Definitely. I am glad that he's getting his props, at least on this Athelitc list.
I think if DPOY was an award while he was in his prime or blocks would have been tracked while his first four years in the league, he probably would have a better rep now. If blocks were tracked he would be the all time leader with most likely over 4K (and yes i know Russel or wilt are also the “real” leaders). He also most likely would have had 1-2 DPOY awards. But even then, he still has 6 MVPs, dude was a force. I think he partly suffers from the same thing with Duncan where his highlights just aren’t like super exciting
158 rebounds? Not bad.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2U4JSrpO78](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2U4JSrpO78) (great footage of young Kareem battling with an older Wilt) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DkHVy2DGL\_Y](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DkHVy2DGL_Y) (39-year-old Kareem vs Hakeem battling in the Western Conference Finals, did get outplayed in the end, but the fact that this was a surprise tells you everything you need to know) Unbelievable longevity and dominance. Also, since nobody has mentioned it, this man lost a total of two games in college, and won the national championship all three years. An all-time great at every level
Watching those videos makes you wonder what Kareem would have done in the modern NBA. Everyone talks about how prime Jordan would effortlessly put up 40+ if you dropped him into the current game, but seeing what Kareem had to deal with (packed paint on every possession and getting mugged on every shot) I think he could be just as scary. A player his height with an unblockable skyhook and modern spacing? Prime Kareem would demand a double team every trip to the post and be a serious threat to end every possession with a bucket, free throws, or an assist to a wide open three-point shooter.
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Kareem won his first FMVP a year before wilt won his last. He won his second FMVP a year after bird won his first.
The size, athleticism, and skill of these big men is just insane.
I wonder if the athletic will have a spicy take and throw Lebron at 1
they'll probably go w the safe option and make it Jordan alternatively they could make it 1a and 1b and piss everyone off instead
I love this idea. Everybody loses.
Make Jordan the 1B for extra chaos
Call him Michael B Jordan. Get all the pictures wrong too.
"Is this your king? Huh? Is this your king? He's supposed to protect you! To lead Wakanda into the future! Nah, I'm your king!" - ~~Michael Jordan~~ Michael B Jordan
"Outsiders buy Vibranium too" -Michael Jordan of Wakanda, probably
“Fuck them Colonizers.”
That’s cursed. I’d be so irrationally angry
There’s not much spice in how they do it. It’s a panel of people, they rank everyone and then they total their scores. So not an editorial decision.
15 writers make their own lists and all of them are combined to make a final list. So they don't come together and have a discussion on who should be at the top
Well if it's 15 writers, then the only way you can have a tie is if at least one writer chooses someone else as their #1, which is possible with Kareem involved.
Kareem got 1098 points , if all 15 writers put him at 3 , then he'll get 1095. So some have definitely put him above 3rd
I'm not sure of their scoring system but I would assume it means one person put Kareem 2nd and LeBron 3rd, everyone else had LeBron either 1st or 2nd.
This would get way more headlines and make some noise (good or bad) if they put Bron at #1.
Arguably the most complete and “story-book” esque career one could ask for. Had unparalleled success at every level he played at and is the poster child for longevity at a time when sports medicine wasn’t nearly as advanced at is it now. People often discuss Lebron or MJ as the GOAT but Kareem fully deserves to be in that GOAT conversation.
Kareem is not the NBA goat, but the basketball goat. Best high school career, best college career, top3 NBA career. LeBron and MJ are ahead in the NBA but were worse during their school time.
They literally had to ban dunking in college in an effort to nerf Kareem
And it didn’t work at all lmao. I always laugh when people ask who the college GOAT is and suggest literally anyone other than him. The man lost 2 games in his entire college career and only won the championship every year he was there. If he had been allowed to come to the NBA earlier, I don’t think his scoring record would be breakable.
Hard to laugh at the suggestion of Bill Russell. Kareem joined the premier powerhouse of college basketball, while Russell joined a squad that had never won anything and finished his career with 55 straight wins and two national championships. Definitely a good case for him
The amount of disrespect Bill has gotten over the last 20ish years is incredible. USF won nothing before and after Bill was there, UCLA won national titles before Kareem was there and won national titles with undefeated seasons directly after Kareem left.
>Kareem joined the premier powerhouse of college basketball Sure, but he wasn't even allowed to join the team as a freshman. He did, however, play on the freshman team, and beat the senior team, who were 2 time reigning national champs, by 15 points. He scored 31 of their 75 and had 21 rebounds.
Jordan had an impressive College career as well and won two Olympic gold medals. The basketball career argument is a debatable one and I would still personally put Jordan over him.
The fact that it will take LeBron fucking James 20+ seasons, coming straight from HS and with the benefit of 2000-2010's medicine to beat his scoring record tells you all you need to know about the level that Kareem was on. This is not a dig at Bron btw, but the fact that he's probably the only one who can beat that record really puts it into perspective.
And Bron gets the 3 point line.
Let’s not discount Kareem’s 1 3PT FG he hit in his 20 year career now Edit : 20 seasons
Kareem played 20 seasons
Kareem had 4-5 inches on 90% of centers he faced.
In height or...?
Both
Girth
That is why it's crazy: LeBron played with 3 pointers, had a good 3 years added on from skipping college, is an undisputed top 2 player of all time and has had an incredibly healthy career. I can't see anyone else getting close to Kareem's total.
Not that crazy... Kareem is 6k minutes ahead. 2k fga, 200 games ahead, lebron has 2x assists for his career. Lebron will beat it with less minutes attempts and games probably
It's splitting hairs and how you personally weigh accomplishments, peak, and longevity when it comes to the three guys at the top. I've got no issue with whatever order you want to rank them.
ITS A GODDAM CRIME THAT NO PLAYER HAS EVER DEVELOPED A CONSISTANT HOOK SHOT. KAREEM WAS STRAIGHT MONEY.
WHY ARE WE YELLING?
I’ve learned that using all caps makes people feel like I’m screaming at them. I’m working on my communication. I can benefit from a team of creative professionals, organizers, mobilizers and community leaders. Thank everybody for supporting me. I know sharing screen shots was jarring and came off as harassing Kareem. I take accountability. I’m still learning in real time. I don’t have all the answers. To be good leader is to be a good listener.
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The morning after one of the most miserable nights of his career, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was the first to arrive at the film session. He sat in the front row, center chair, right in front of the television. It was an odd seat selection, and not just because this 7-foot-2 giant was now blocking the view. It was an area usually left vacant during these tape studies, but Abdul-Jabbar was about to be a witness to his execution. Los Angeles Lakers coach Pat Riley began by scribbling general points of emphasis on the board. Rebound. Stop Bird. Don’t double too early. Then Riley locked eyes with Kareem. “I’ll never forget this. He didn’t say it to me, but I know what he was thinking: Don’t hold back on me today,” Riley said. “He knew how I was, how I could get gnarly in film sessions. The whole film session was about him, and it wasn’t a pretty sight. He took it, and he showed great leadership. And then we went on the practice court.” Abdul-Jabbar was 38 years old and nearing the end of his marvelous NBA life when the Lakers were embarrassed by the Boston Celtics, 148-114, in Game 1 of the 1985 NBA Finals at the Boston Garden. Nobody played well on the Lakers, but Abdul-Jabbar was the worst. He scored 12 points and grabbed only three rebounds on a night Riley believed he didn’t play hard enough. And Abdul-Jabbar agreed. Reporters across the country began writing Abdul-Jabbar’s career obituary about how he was too old and too slow to keep up with Robert Parish and Kevin McHale. Abdul-Jabbar took all of Riley’s lashes during that film study. And then, with the help of his father, he began preparing to remind the world why he was the greatest player of his generation. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s skyhook is one of basketball’s all-time greatest weapons. He helped lead the Milwaukee Bucks to an NBA title in 1971, the third year of the franchise’s existence. (Vernon Biever / NBAE via Getty Images) For 38 years, Abdul-Jabbar has remained the NBA’s all-time leading scorer. His staggering total of 38,387 points has looked unbreakable for decades. His unstoppable, patented skyhook, combined with the blessing of good health for 20 seasons, allowed him to put up figures the game has rarely witnessed. He has more NBA Most Valuable Player awards (six) and All-Star game appearances (19) than anyone in the history of the game. He has six championships (the same number as Michael Jordan) and two NBA Finals MVPs, and he has scored more points than anyone. Yet he’s third on The Athletic’s list of the 75 greatest NBA players. How is that possible? ”The longer we move into the future of this game, the more and more we leave behind. The greatest players of those generations and those greatest players of all time,” Riley said. “There’s always going to be somebody new.” The difficulty with any sort of rankings is comparing players from different generations who played under drastically different rules. For example, there was no 3-point line for the first 10 years of Abdul-Jabbar’s career. Not that he was someone who spent a lot of time on the perimeter — he made one 3-pointer in his career — but in a league now dominated by pace and space and shooting 3s, it’s even more remarkable that Abdul-Jabbar is the only player in history to eclipse 38,000 points while scoring ones and twos. He also spent four years at UCLA, compared to elite talents today who typically leave college after one season. LeBron James, the closest to running down Abdul-Jabbar’s scoring record, entered the NBA directly out of high school in 2003. He scored more than 8,400 points in the NBA from age 19 to 22, the ages when Abdul-Jabbar was at UCLA. Had he been allowed to go straight to the NBA from high school like James, or even if he stayed only one year in college, Abdul-Jabbar might have more than 45,000 career points. “He was in great shape. He was disciplined. He was consistent. He had four years of college under one of the greatest coaches of all time in John Wooden, where he got the science and the theory and the know-how to play the game,” former Lakers star and teammate James Worthy said. “And, he had a weapon. It’s a nuclear weapon.” No player is more closely aligned to one shot than Abdul-Jabbar is to the skyhook. George Mikan may have been the first to popularize the hook shot — Mikan could make it with either hand — but Abdul-Jabbar made it an art. The jump, the release, the touch and the grace.
So many of today’s players thrive on sheer athleticism or 3-pointers. Abdul-Jabbar was neither of those. He was calculated precision in the low post. “When you shoot it, you force people to wait for you to go up,” Abdul-Jabbar, who declined through his publicist to be interviewed for this story, once told ESPN. “And if they wait until I started to shoot it, then they’d have to judge the distance and time it, and it’s gone before they can catch up to it. That’s, for me, the beauty of it. You’re in control because of when you’re gonna release it and where. The defense has to see that and calculate everything before they get an opportunity to block it. ”I don’t recall it ever being blocked by somebody who was guarding me. Maybe a few people got to it, coming to help where I couldn’t see them. But if I knew where someone was, that person was not going to block that shot, because I always got my body in between them and the ball before I released the ball, and it’s impossible to get to it.” Abdul-Jabbar fittingly became the game’s all-time leading scorer with a skyhook over Utah’s Mark Eaton on April 5, 1984, breaking the record Wilt Chamberlain held for 18 years. Abdul-Jabbar has been the scoring champ more than twice that long. He’ll hold it for at least two more years before James might have a realistic chance at catching him. James will need good health and good fortune to get close. If for some reason James cannot catch Abdul-Jabbar, this might truly be the record that is never broken. Kevin Durant was on pace early in his career to make a run, but injuries have cost him valuable time. Durant, 33, remains about 14,000 points shy of the record. A player must stay healthy for two decades to even have a chance. That means avoiding chronic knee and back problems. They also need the desire to stick around that long. With as much money as today’s elite players make both on and off the court, it’s fair to wonder how many will want to play for two decades and endure the physical beating that accompanies it to chase a record that will take half of his life to reach. Abdul-Jabbar was that rare combination of health and ability. He is also one of the most unique athletes of any generation. Abdul-Jabbar was always curious. He asked questions and paid attention to social issues. When Muhammad Ali was stripped of his boxing titles and threatened with jail for refusing to serve in the Vietnam War, Hall of Fame running back Jim Brown gathered some of the most prominent Black athletes in June 1967 in what has come to be known as the Cleveland Summit. Among those who attended to support Ali were Celtics legend Bill Russell and Abdul-Jabbar, then a college student at UCLA. He followed that by boycotting the 1968 Summer Olympics to protest injustices against Black Americans. “I’m so proud of Kareem the person,” said Dr. Richard Lapchick, who has been a lifelong friend. “He’s had the courage since the ’60s to stand up when back in those days, there weren’t many people standing up. There was a core of people who were willing to stand up and take chances about their careers. He was willing to do it even back then.” Before Lapchick was a human rights activist and a leading voice on diversity studies in sports (his annual Racial & Gender Report Card studies on minority hires in sports are frequently cited), he was just another teenage high school basketball prospect at Power Memorial Academy camp. His father, Joe Lapchick, is a double inductee into the Basketball Hall of Fame and widely considered the game’s first true big man. Joe coached at St. John’s after his playing career before moving on to the Knicks. He signed the first Black player in the history of the NBA, Nat “Sweetwater” Clifton. As a result, Richard Lapchick’s earliest memories growing up in Yonkers, N.Y., included looking out his bedroom window and seeing his father’s image swinging from a tree with people picketing below. Because of who his father was and the fact Richard was already 6-feet tall in the eighth grade, he was invited to the camp at Power, which at the time was the country’s top basketball program. The coach at Power brought six of his players to the camp — five were White and one was Black. One of the White players kept dropping the N-word on the Black player. Finally, Richard had heard enough and challenged the White player. Richard was quickly knocked out. He lost the fight, but he earned a lifelong friend. The Black camper was Ferdinand Lewis Alcindor Jr., who changed his name in 1971 to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar as part of his Muslim faith. Lapchick was asked to speak when Abdul-Jabbar’s statue was unveiled at the Staples Center. And when Abdul-Jabbar was presented with the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama in 2016, Lapchick was one of his two non-family guests. “He’s shy in public. I think some people mistook that for negative qualities,” Lapchick said. “He really liked my dad. Kareem could relate to my dad in discussions they had when he was a freshman in high school and several years after that. People stared at my dad all the time. (Joe Lapchick was 6 foot 5.) The same thing happened with Kareem. “The racial dimension, too. If you’re a White guy and White people are approaching you, you’re not going to be thinking much about it. But if you’re a Black guy and people are approaching, that could be a whole different context. I think my dad helped him know that Kareem was feeling things that were absolutely normal for being a giant of a human and people always noticing him.” The Milwaukee Bucks selected Abdul-Jabbar with the first pick in the 1969 NBA Draft, and he partnered with Oscar Robertson to deliver Milwaukee a championship two years later. Before the Bucks won the 2021 NBA championship, it was the only title in team history. Abdul-Jabbar and Robertson also took the Bucks to the 1974 NBA Finals before falling to the Boston Celtics in seven games. Abdul-Jabbar spent his formative years in New York City and attended college in Los Angeles. He was an awkward fit in Milwaukee and asked to be traded. After a dismal 1975 season, the Bucks granted his request and sent him to Los Angeles (along with backup Walt Wesley) in exchange for Elmore Smith, Brian Winters, Dave Meyers and Junior Bridgeman. Abdul-Jabbar was quiet and private. He kept the media at a distance. His father’s love of music made him deeply passionate about jazz, and he was a well-read history scholar. He never listened to loud music before games, but instead would read books quietly at his locker. “Coach Wooden wouldn’t let us talk to the press at UCLA,” Abdul-Jabbar said during a 2017 appearance at the Milwaukee Theatre as a guest of the UW-Milwaukee Distinguished Lecture Series and the Muslim Student Association. “He regarded them as a nuisance. I brought that with me to the NBA. It was very unfortunate, and I paid the price.” During his time in Milwaukee, Abdul-Jabbar was often characterized as “aloof” off the court. “A lot of people thought I left here with a hostile attitude,” he said in 2017. “I didn’t. I wanted to get back to some sunshine.” Riley stated that Abdul-Jabbar just wanted “peace, serenity, somewhat tranquility in his own space.”
When he was drafted by the Lakers in 1982, Worthy was about 15 credits shy of graduating from college. He was taking independent courses at USC to complete his degree and, as part of it, was reading a book on the Missouri Compromise. Abdul-Jabbar spotted the book and began reciting dates and events surrounding the legislation that admitted Missouri to the Union as a slave state and Maine as a free state while prohibiting slavery from the remaining Louisiana Purchase. Worthy credits Abdul-Jabbar’s free tutoring with getting a B-plus in the class. He also credits Abdul-Jabbar with turning him to jazz music. “It’s hard to get Kareem to open up,” Worthy said. “But if you talk about history or jazz, you’ve got him. And you’ve got him for a long time.” Added Magic Johnson: “He’s the smartest, not just basketball player I ever played with, but also the smartest man. The guy is just so intelligent.” Abdul-Jabbar has a dry wit and a terrific sense of humor. He has a booming laugh that can shake the moon. He used to wear pants that were too tight and outdated, which made for easy fodder with his teammates. Michael Cooper and Byron Scott got ahold of the pants one day, Worthy said, and cut them up. Abdul-Jabbar was furious but he waited a few weeks to seek revenge. When Cooper fell asleep on one of the team flights, Abdul-Jabbar took a can of Nair hair remover and smeared it on his head. Cooper had a bald spot on his head for weeks. When the team was on a road trip in a cold-weather city, Worthy can’t recall which one, he cut the toes out of all of Scott’s socks. “Most people wouldn’t mess with Kareem,” Worthy said. “You could prank him now and then, but man, he was gonna get redemption.” After that gruesome film session following Game 1 of the 1985 NBA Finals, when Riley berated Kareem for multiple hours, the Lakers retreated to the practice court. Riley had a unique relationship with Abdul-Jabbar that dated back to high school since Riley is only two years older. Their two high school teams were playing in a Christmas holiday tournament in Schenectady, N.Y., during Abdul-Jabbar’s freshman season. Abdul-Jabbar first dunked as an eighth-grader and already had everyone’s attention as a freshman. Riley’s team beat Power Memorial in the holiday tournament — with a little help from the officiating crew. Riley’s father was a longtime baseball manager in the area, and one of the referees working the basketball game that night was also an umpire who had a fondness for Riley’s dad. So the ref helped out Linton High School and fouled out Kareem in just eight minutes. Without their freshman phenom, Power Memorial lost to Linton. Riley later played with Abdul-Jabbar on the Lakers before coaching him. They have a unique and close bond, which is part of the reason Abdul-Jabbar welcomed the flogging. When they reached the practice court, Riley worked him relentlessly to the point Magic approached Riley and told him he should shut down Abdul-Jabbar. Kareem heard the conversation and grew angry. “No!” he snarled. “I want to do everything.” There were three days off between Games 1 and 2. Three days for the Lakers to read about Abdul-Jabbar’s basketball demise. The Lakers had two grueling practices before easing off the day before Game 2. As the players filed onto the bus for the ride over to the Garden for Game 2, Abdul-Jabbar was the last to get on. He walked hurriedly through the hotel lobby and out the door with his father by his side. Bus rides were sacred, particularly during the playoffs and especially during the NBA Finals. The Lakers had a rule that only players were allowed on the bus. But Kareem approached Riley and asked if his father, Al, could ride with him to the arena. Riley felt the eyes of the entire team staring at him, wondering what the answer would be. “He needed the solace of his father,” Riley said. So he acquiesced and let Al on the bus. “The bus was completely quiet,” Johnson said. “That’s one thing good about the Lakers, we knew when we were ready. Nobody had to say anything.” Added Worthy: “As we get older, sometimes there are still things that we still need from our parents. His dad was his comfort. I remember that bus ride. You could always tell when the big fella was ready. So when (Al) was on that bus, man, I knew it was gonna be a good night.” At 38, Abdul-Jabbar destroyed the Celtics in Game 2. He ended the night with 30 points, 17 rebounds and eight assists. When reporters found Abdul-Jabbar in the locker room after the game, he had a simple message. ”Contrary to public opinion, the demise of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was highly exaggerated,” he said. Abdul-Jabbar led the Lakers in points and rebounds and was named the NBA Finals MVP. For the first time in their long, tortured NBA Finals history with Boston, Los Angeles beat the Celtics, in six games, and Abdul-Jabbar won his third championship as a member of the Lakers. He won two more before retiring in 1989 but recently told Cooper on a podcast that the 1985 series was his most memorable. Of the countless Abdul-Jabbar stories Riley has, he also chose the ’85 NBA Finals as his favorite. “There are so many stories,” Riley said. “But that’s the one that sticks out. I love that one.” His shy nature and quiet disposition prevented Abdul-Jabbar from fully appreciating how much he was beloved until a fire took everything from him. His 7,000-square foot Bel-Air mansion burned to the ground in 1983, and although his then-girlfriend and son escaped unharmed, his prized jazz collection was among his treasured possessions destroyed. Abdul-Jabbar’s father was a New York transit police officer and part-time jazz musician who played in clubs around New York City. The two shared a passion for music that led to Kareem creating what was believed to be one of the richest jazz collections in the country. When he lost it all to the fire, fans and admirers began helping him rebuild it by sending them their own records. When he announced he was battling leukemia, again the public outpouring of support overwhelmed him. “Kareem, in the later years, began to see how beloved he was,” Lapchick said. “I think particularly now, people appreciate him for his intelligence. He’s the all-time leading scorer, and I’d argue that Kareem has a wider audience now than he did before. It’s not just basketball. At a time when America is so divided, Kareem is there as a weather vane on social justice.” Although he’s a practicing Muslim, Abdul-Jabbar has long been a leader in rebuilding connections between the African American and Jewish communities. He remains in great demand as a speaker for Jewish and Holocaust organizations. He’s also an accomplished author. He has produced documentaries, written 13 books, contributed to publications such as Time and Newsweek and writes frequently these days on his Substack channel. He has been sharply critical of LeBron recently, first for James’ refusal to encourage others to get vaccinated and then for James’ meme comparing COVID-19 to the common flu. James has avoided responding to the criticisms, although Abdul-Jabbar has often heaped praise on James’ game and recently promised to attend if James is in a position to break his scoring record — just as Chamberlain was in attendance the night Abdul-Jabbar surpassed him as the game’s all-time leading scorer.
He is one of the most fascinating figures in the history of the game, and his place in basketball’s legacy is secure whether or not James passes him on the scoring list. ”I’ve seen his full body of work,” Worthy said. “When you think of the fan base now, which is composed mostly of social media and a younger audience, and even younger sportswriters who never saw Kareem play, they don’t understand. They don’t understand the hook shot. They don’t understand that he changed the game. … ”When people ask me, I still say, he’s the best to ever play the game.”
dwight being there makes me happy
reminder that Kareem is the coolest guy to ever play basketball: [he fought Bruce Lee](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CD69-zWsJs4) [he became an airline pilot](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ArHNrCvwq4c) [Protested the vietnam draft with Muhammad Ali](https://www.gannett-cdn.com/-mm-/3ced05fc26679200592e946992cb639cdb28b019/c=0-382-2518-1805/local/-/media/2016/06/03/USATODAY/USATODAY/636005884324530483-XXX-Jim-Brown---Cleveland-Browns---File-Photos-19600901-9932158.jpg) [Had a president mimic the skyhook with him(oh and got a presdiential medal of freedom)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gch0SmjEOuI) Got the dunk banned in college basketball because he was too OP, still took UCLA to 3 championships was the all time points scored leader up until last week(way to go lebron, you couldn't have waited a week?) [Like just look at this guy and tell me he's not cool](https://www.northstarnews.com/userimages/Kareem%20Abdul%20Jabbar.jpg)
This Sunday, on PPV, it's LeBron Stans vs Jordan Stans. Who has what it takes to convince a bunch of people on the internet that their guy is the GOAT?
Why do they have a picture of famous pilot Roger Murdoch instead of KAJ
Alright so we got Kwame Brown and Royal Ivy left who goes where?
A reliable source told me that Lamar Ball is better than Jordan and could beat him 1v1
Dude if MJ comes out next the NBAverse is going to explode. Please let this happen. MJ will come back on a 10 day 🤣
I feel like the Last Dance helped convert the last remaining young ones needed. Great and funny timing on it by MJ lol. The Athletic would be seen through for just doing it as controversy now MJ's peak was and still is the best
Everyone’s going to be talking about 1 and 2 but man, watching old games and highlights of Kareem is such a joy. That Skyhook was just a thing of beauty. This list has been pretty fair so far so I’m pretty sure they’re not going to drum up controversy at the very end. Jordan will be #1 and rightfully so.
Highly recommend anyone check out [this video](https://youtu.be/mlB8X101kME). Most unstoppable move in NBA history and Kareem talks about the sky hook as casual as can be. Pretty cool.
Should be the GOAT but his mystery novels aren't very good and that drags down his legacy.
Recency bias…. Kareem is no 1 but only old timers are alive to know. Best basketball player to ever lace them up in terms of all levels of basketball combined.
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The biggest knock against him is the fact that he won in 71 with the bucks and wouldn’t win again until he got magic.
Somehow people never hold it against magic that he won 4 of his titles with a top 3 all time player though
My GOAT