Kareem Abdul-Jabaar

When we think of Basketball players today, we imagine extremely athletic and well built players whose physique is out of the chart. This, however, wasn’t true before the time of our 5th Basketball legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. The man who set records on records in the world of basketball. Whose legacy is known as being the best in the court. Whose physique and skills all NBA players look up to and try to get to.

Abdul started his basketball career playing for an academy called the Power Memorial Academy. There he played for 4 years and set a record in New York’s varsity basketball of scoring 2,067 points! Getting out of high school, his skills were unmatched in comparison to the players he was playing with in his university. Before the University of California admitted him to their college, they made dunking illegal on the court to avoid other players getting smacked by Abdul. Even with this rule, Abdul was making records every match, with only in his first game scoring 56 points! With the skills of Abdul and the expertise of the coach of UCLA’s team was John Wooden, UCLA was leading the National College Athletic Association for 3 consecutive years, from 1967-1969, with only 2 losses. While his time at university, Abdul converted to Islam changing his original name Ferdinand Lewis Alcindor, Jr. to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

A funny story that Abdul teases is how the no dunking rule at UCLA was revoked after he left the university, showing how the rule was very specifically made for him. When Abdul joined the NBA in 1969, he won the rookie of the year. The year after that he won the NBA championship. Every year, Abdul was scoring 2,500+ points, which got him to surpass Wilt Chamberlain’s record of 31,419 points in 14 years of his career. Abdul was an all rounded player with great physical strength, dribbling, and shooting. 

Abdul retired at the end of 1988-1989 season with a huge list of achievements under his belt. He was voted the Most Valuable Player for a record of 6 times. He had the record of the most points, most field goals made, most minutes played, most blocked shots in the league history, and the third most amount of rebounds. 

Even with so many achievements, Abdul isn’t known like other NBA superstars. That is because for more than half of his career, Abdul didn’t give the media any attention. He would focus on the game and the game only. Later on he proved himself to the world, he started to open up more and that’s when he started to get in the media headlines. This, however, was well past his prime, and Abdul probably knew this. In his prime he just wanted to play the sport and be the best of the best, not for recognition, but because he loved the sport.