One of the Most Important Basketball Players in NBA History: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

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20 Jan 2024

Legend of the 70s and 80s

Everything you need to know about the legendary athlete Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, who won a total of 6 NBA championships and 2 NBA Finals MVP awards in the 70s and 80s, is in this article.

He was born in New York in 1947... His real name is Ferdinand Lewis Alcindor, Jr. and was known as Lew Alcindor until 1971.
Alcindor played at Power Memorial Academy for four years and broke the New York City High School record with a total of 2,067 points.
His offensive talents developed so much in high school that, fearing he could score at will, the college basketball rules committee outlawed dunking before he enrolled at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) in 1965.

Despite the new rule, he broke the UCLA scoring record by scoring 56 points in his first match.
Playing for famed coach John Wooden, Alcindor led UCLA to three National Collegiate Athletic Association championships (1967-69), and the team lost only two games during his time at UCLA. The no dunking rule was abolished in the years after Alcindor's graduation.
Alcindor joined the National Basketball Association (NBA) Milwaukee Bucks in the 1969-70 season and was elected rookie of the year.
The Bucks won the NBA championship in 1970-71, and Alcindor became the league leader in scoring (2,596 points) and points per game average (31.7), as he did in 1971-72 (2,822 points; 34.8). Alcindor converted to Islam while he was at UCLA and took the Arabic name Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in 1971.

He was traded to the Los Angeles Lakers in 1975 and won the NBA championship in 1980, 1982, 1985, 1987 and 1988. He surpassed Wilt Chamberlain's career scoring record of 31,419 points in 1984.
Although Abdul-Jabbar lacked the physical prowess of NBA centers Chamberlain and Willis Reed, he brought an excellent shooting touch to the position and a wide range of elegant post moves, including the sweeping, nearly undefensible sky hook.

He was also an outstanding passer. Abdul-Jabbar retired at the end of the 1988-89 season, having been named the NBA's Most Valuable Player six times.
By the end of his extraordinarily long career, he had broken the records for most points (38,387; broken by LeBron James), most field goals (15,837) and most minutes played (57,446). When he retired, Abdul-Jabbar had the most blocked shots (3,189; broken by Hakeem Olajuwon and Dikembe Mutombo) and the third-most career rebounds (17,440) in league history.
He was elected to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 1995 and was named one of the 50 best players in NBA history in 1996.

Outside of the basketball court, Abdul-Jabbar was interested in acting and writing. He appeared on television and in several films, including the co-pilot role in the comedy Airplane (1980)

His writings on the African-American experience include Black Profiles in Courage: A Legacy of African-American Achievement (1996; with Alan Steinberg), Brothers in Arms: The Epic Story of the 761st Tank Battalion, WWII's Forgotten Heroes (2004; with Anthony Walton), On the Shoulders of Giants: My Personal Journey Through the Harlem Renaissance (2007; with Raymond Obstfeld), and the children's book What Color Is My World? The lost history of african american inventors (2012; with obstfeld).

He also wrote the book Coach Wooden and Me: Our 50-Year Friendship on and Off the Court (2017) and a mystery series about Sherlock Holmes' older brother Mycroft (with Anna Waterhouse): Mycroft Holmes (2015), Mycroft and Sherlock (2018) and mycroft and sherlock: the empty birdcage (2019). Abdul-Jabbar also served as a basketball coach and consultant, including a stint at the White Mountain Apache Reservation in Arizona.
He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2016.