Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
Another excerpt from the Times's extensive look at basketball legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. We see his unhappy relationship with organized basketball and with his American identity.
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After being recruited by nearly all the major college basketball programs in the country, Abdul-Jabbar landed at U.C.L.A., where he studied history and English, dropped acid and became entranced by ‘‘The Autobiography of Malcolm X.’’ After his first season on the court, the N.C.A.A. rules committee outlawed dunking when Abdul-Jabbar netted an average of 29.5 points a game and a 67 percent field-goal percentage. Other players dunked, but none as frequently and as ferociously as he did. The rule change, as a result, was informally known as ‘‘the Alcindor rule.’’ ‘‘Clearly, they did it to undermine my dominance in the game,’’ Abdul-Jabbar writes in ‘‘Giant Steps.’’ ‘‘Equally clearly, if I’d been white they never would have done it. The dunk is one of basketball’s great crowd pleasers, and there was no good reason to give it up except that this and other niggers were running away with the sport.’’ Abdul-Jabbar’s U.C.L.A. team won the national championship again when he was a junior.
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Abdul-Jabbar refused to play in the 1968 Olympics because he did not want to represent a country that did not treat him as an equal. The press pilloried him for it. In a much-publicized spot on the ‘‘Today’’ show, Joe Garagiola, a baseball player turned TV personality, asked Abdul-Jabbar why he wouldn’t play for his country.
‘‘Yeah, I live here,’’ Abdul-Jabbar said. ‘‘But it’s not really my country.’’
‘‘Well, then there’s only one solution,’’ Garagiola said. ‘‘Maybe you should move.’’
His relationship with the press only worsened.
-- Jay Caspian Kang at The New York Times
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After being recruited by nearly all the major college basketball programs in the country, Abdul-Jabbar landed at U.C.L.A., where he studied history and English, dropped acid and became entranced by ‘‘The Autobiography of Malcolm X.’’ After his first season on the court, the N.C.A.A. rules committee outlawed dunking when Abdul-Jabbar netted an average of 29.5 points a game and a 67 percent field-goal percentage. Other players dunked, but none as frequently and as ferociously as he did. The rule change, as a result, was informally known as ‘‘the Alcindor rule.’’ ‘‘Clearly, they did it to undermine my dominance in the game,’’ Abdul-Jabbar writes in ‘‘Giant Steps.’’ ‘‘Equally clearly, if I’d been white they never would have done it. The dunk is one of basketball’s great crowd pleasers, and there was no good reason to give it up except that this and other niggers were running away with the sport.’’ Abdul-Jabbar’s U.C.L.A. team won the national championship again when he was a junior.
[...]
Abdul-Jabbar refused to play in the 1968 Olympics because he did not want to represent a country that did not treat him as an equal. The press pilloried him for it. In a much-publicized spot on the ‘‘Today’’ show, Joe Garagiola, a baseball player turned TV personality, asked Abdul-Jabbar why he wouldn’t play for his country.
‘‘Yeah, I live here,’’ Abdul-Jabbar said. ‘‘But it’s not really my country.’’
‘‘Well, then there’s only one solution,’’ Garagiola said. ‘‘Maybe you should move.’’
His relationship with the press only worsened.
-- Jay Caspian Kang at The New York Times
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