Another difference was how much more physical the players were. I was grabbed, held, elbowed, and kneed, mostly without any calls from the refs. It was the Big Man Paradox. Because I was taller than most other players, it was assumed that I could take more abuse as a way to even things out. However, if I tried to defend myself with the same level of physicality, I received a foul.
I quickly learned how to adapt. I worked harder on defense, blocking shots and keeping players from getting easy shots close to the basket. They had to work harder for their shots, which meant they missed more of them. On offense, I just focused on using my speed and agility to outmaneuver them. It worked, because I was averaging twenty-eight points a game. We finished the season with a 56–26 record, good enough to give us second place in the Eastern Division. We then played our way to the Eastern Division Finals, where we lost. At the end of the season, I was awarded NBA Rookie of the Year, NBA All-Rookie Team, and NBA All-Star Game Appearance. Not bad for my first year.
The following year we acquired one of the greatest players I had ever seen, Oscar Robertson. He elevated my game and everyone else’s on the team. We ended that year with a 66–16 record, including a twenty-game winning streak, which was the longest in NBA history at the time. We won the NBA Finals against Baltimore, 4–0. The Bucks had been in existence for only three years, and we were already the NBA champions. During that season, I scored 2,599 points, nearly a thousand more than the next player on our team. I was honored as the NBA Scoring Champion, NBA Most Valuable Player, and the NBA Finals Most Valuable Player.
A couple of months after we became NBA champions, I legally changed my name to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Until then, I hadn’t been ready because I felt I hadn’t yet earned the right. All my life, I had allowed others to name me, and even when they had done so with my permission and encouragement, I still had the feeling I was letting others decide who I was. This time, though, I had fought my way past all those who had doubted me, and while I appreciated all my coaches and teachers, I had fought beyond them, too, to stand on my own and say, “I named myself. This is the man I choose to be, not the man the world expects me to be.”
Lew Alcindor, who had won all those championships and all those awards and honors, was gone forever.
Now there was just Kareem.
And now the world would see just who Kareem is and what he could do.
And I Lived Happily, Sadly, Magnificently, Boringly, Piously, Crazily Ever After
The road from Lew Alcindor to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was dangerously twisting, overgrown with thick, thorny weeds, pocked with craters of muddy water, and filled with snakes. Lots of hidden snakes. It reminds me of the Robert Frost poem I read in college, “The Road Not Taken”: “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— / I took the one less traveled by, / And that has made all the difference.”
After becoming Kareem, I went on to accomplish many things: I had a wonderful basketball career during which I set many records, some of which still stand. I became a husband and a father. I publicly fought against social injustices. I wrote articles and books. I coached high school kids and professionals. I became a US global cultural ambassador. I received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Obama.
I also made many, many mistakes on that road. I tried hard to be a good friend, a good father, a good husband, a good Muslim, and a good American. I wish I had done a better job with each of those. I’m not sad about that, though, because I realized that “becoming Kareem” is not a goal but a long journey that never ends. I am always in the act of becoming Kareem—the Kareem I want to be, who is the kindest, gentlest, smartest, lovingest version of me. Today I am still trying to become Kareem. Tomorrow I will still be trying to become Kareem.
Along the way, I had many coaches, both on the court and off the court. Some, like Coach Donahue and Hamaas, I broke with to go my own way. Some, like Bruce Lee and Muhammad Ali, died while still my valued coaches. And some, like Coach Wooden, I grew closer to over the years until he became a second father to me. I am grateful to each for guiding me along the treacherous path for however long or short a time our relationship lasted. Without them, I wouldn’t have finally been able to walk that path on my own, confident in my own choices. And more important, to help others along their chosen paths.
It’s that last part that most interests me now: helping others along their chosen paths. That’s why I wrote this book. To be that coach who takes by the hand anyone who ever feels picked on or put upon, outraged but out of range, vilified yet voiceless. Perhaps this road is not that much “less traveled by” as we think. It just seems that way because so often we feel like we’re walking it alone.
I didn’t walk it alone, even when I thought I was. No one has to. Coaches and teachers and family and friends are everywhere, reaching out a hand for you to take. I hope this book is one such hand.
Circa 1950–51. My mother, Cora, gazes at me in admiration of my remarkable resemblance to a real cowboy. I’m three or four here and in the early stages of my obsession with Western lore.
Circa 1950. Mom was a fantastic seamstress. Here she is working on a happy customer’s wedding dress at Alexander’s Department Store.
1952. Me and my big ears at Public School 52. I’m only five years old and already the biggest kid in the class.
1955. I made third grade look classy.
1956. Fourth-grade basketball looks a little chaotic here. The other two players seem more like they’re practicing dance steps than playing.
1956. At Holy Providence in Cornwells Heights, Pennsylvania, I was able to see over the heads of the rest of my fourth-grade class.
Circa 1957–58. I’m in fifth or sixth grade, and my father snaps a photo of me modeling my St. Jude gym uniform. Maybe I’m also screwing in a light bulb on the ceiling.
Circa 1958–59. I’m feeling confident in my Inwood Little League uniform. Back then, I dreamed of playing professional baseball, not basketball.
1958. I’m in sixth grade, wielding a Native American tomahawk. My dad, Ferdinand, clearly doesn’t share my enthusiasm.
Mom and me that same evening. As usual, she’s in a better mood than Dad.
1960. In eighth grade, I was six foot eight. It was like an R. L. Stine Goosebumps story, The Incredible (Well-Dressed) Stretching Kid.
1964. Mom and me when I was seventeen and looking like a jazz musician.
Dad and me that same day in 1964. Dad looks like he’s trying to stand as tall as humanly possible.
1964. My teammates and I at Power Memorial celebrate a hard-fought victory over rivals at DeMatha High School. I was seventeen and in eleventh grade, looking forward to playing even better in my senior year.
1964. Carl Green, Sandy Caseles, me, and Wilt Chamberlain at The Copacabana, the hottest nightclub in New York City. Wilt, the most famous basketball player of the time, insisted on showing me and my date, Sandy, the lifestyle of the rich and famous.
1965. Coach Jack Donahue and me at a school assembly. My removed demeanor shows our chilly relationship after he’d used the N-word with me.
© Al Fenn/The LIFE Images Collection/Getty Images
1965. My senior year of high school, sitting in Russian History class. The expression on my face tells the story: I had already agreed to go to UCLA, and I was just marking time until I was on a plane to California.
© Bettmann/Getty Images
1965. I’m just about to jam a dunk through the hoop. It’s kind of a showy shot, but very satisfying when the hoop rattles, almost like a cheer.
© Bob Gomel/The LIFE Images Collection/Getty Images
1966. My freshman season, playing against Allan Hancock College in the brand-new Pauley Pavilion.
© Neil Leifer/Sports Illustrated/Getty Images
1966. Me and my first Mercedes. The car was gorgeous, and I look a little scared to drive it, no doubt worried about scratching it.
1966. In the UCLA versus Oregon game, all three of us—Mike Nicksic from the University of Oregon, Mik
e Warren from UCLA, and I—are jumping pretty high. But my long arms gave me a definite advantage in snagging the ball.
© David Hume Kennerly/Getty Images
Circa 1967–68. Muhammad Ali and me fooling around at a party in Los Angeles my freshman year at UCLA. I couldn’t control my smiling because the Champ was hanging out with me. Fortunately, there are no audio recordings of what we sounded like.
Howard Bingum
June 1967. Bill Russell, Muhammad Ali, and I pose at the Cleveland Summit. I was only twenty, the youngest member of the group, and I felt both honor and a great sense of responsibility. Despite the serious occasion, Ali was still mugging for the camera, jokingly extolling his virtues. The original caption for this photo is especially interesting, because despite his having changed his name to Muhammad Ali three years earlier, the reporter insisted on referring to him as Cassius Clay: “Dwarfed by Bill Russell (left), six-foot, 11-inch player coach of the Boston Celtics, and 7-foot, 3-inch college star Lew Alcindor, Cassius Clay strains his neck as he talks with the two basketball giants. A group of the nation’s top athletes met to hear Clay’s views for rejecting Army induction. Ring Magazine, a boxing publication, announced June 5th that it would continue to recognize Clay as the heavyweight champion despite the actions of the World Boxing Association and the New York Athletic Commission in stripping Clay of the title.”
© Bettmann/Getty Images
1967. Muhammad Ali and his entourage congratulate me after a UCLA victory over Loyola University.
© Robert Abbott Sengstacke/Getty Images
1967. Coach John Wooden and I celebrate UCLA winning the NCAA National Championship over Dayton. This was my first win but Coach’s third. I guess he should have been wearing the net.
© Neil Leifer/Sports Illustrated/Getty Images
1967. My sophomore year and I was on the cover of Sports Illustrated again. I’m staring at the ball as if it were a crystal ball telling me my future. Maybe it was.
© Neil Leifer/Sports Illustrated/Getty Images
1968. Once again showing the world the latest fashion accessory, the game net, after winning the NCAA National Championship by defeating North Carolina.
© Neil Leifer/Sports Illustrated/Getty Images
March 22, 1968. The press dubbed this matchup between UCLA and Houston the Game of the Century. I’m launching into my famous skyhook while UCLA forward Mike Lynn (35), guard Lucius Allen (42), and Houston forward Elvin Hayes (44), forward/center Ken Spain (14), and guard Don Chaney (24) look on. We defeated Houston 101–69, sending us to the finals against North Carolina. I was named MVP for the tournament.
© Rich Clarkson/NCAA Photos via Getty Images
1969. Here I am at twenty-two, with a cover story in Sports Illustrated and starting my career as a professional basketball player with the Milwaukee Bucks. I wore the dashiki to show my pride in my African heritage, something black people were only beginning to do at that time.
© Neil Leifer/Sports Illustrated/Getty Images
1972. Bruce Lee spars with me on the set of Game of Death. Bruce died during filming, after my footage was already shot. He was my martial arts teacher and a good friend whose lessons still stay with me today.
1973. I was playing for the Milwaukee Bucks, and becoming more comfortable with my conversion to Islam.
© Walter Iooss Jr./Sports Illustrated/Getty Images
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About the Author
KAREEM ABDUL-JABBAR is the NBA’s all-time leading scorer and a Basketball Hall of Fame inductee. Since retiring, he has been an actor and a basketball coach and has written many New York Times bestsellers. Abdul-Jabbar is also a columnist for many news outlets, such as the Washington Post, the New York Times, Time magazine, and the Hollywood Reporter, writing on a wide range of subjects including race, politics, age, and pop culture. In 2012 Abdul-Jabbar was selected as a US global cultural ambassador, and in 2016 he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian award, which recognizes exceptional meritorious service. He lives in Southern California.
Becoming Kareem Page 18