Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

He was named to three NBA anniversary teams (35th, 50th, and 75th).

Widely regarded as one of the greatest players of all time, he was called the greatest basketball player of all time by Pat Riley, Isiah Thomas, and Julius Erving.

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (born Ferdinand Lewis Alcindor Jr. ; April 16, 1947) is an American former professional basketball player who played 20 seasons in the National Basketball Association (NBA) for the Milwaukee Bucks and the Los Angeles Lakers.

During his career as a center, Abdul-Jabbar was a record six-time NBA Most Valuable Player (MVP).

He was a 19-time NBA All-Star, a 15-time All-NBA Team member, and an 11-time NBA All-Defensive Team selection.

He was a member of six NBA championship teams as a player and two more as an assistant coach, and was twice voted the NBA Finals MVP.

Abdul-Jabbar grew up in the Dyckman Street projects in the Inwood neighborhood of Upper Manhattan, which he moved to at the age of 3 in 1950.

At birth, Abdul-Jabbar weighed 12 lb and was 22+1/2 in long.

Always very tall for his age, he was already 5ft 8in by the age of nine.

Abdul-Jabbar was often depressed as a teenager because of the stares and comments about his height.

By the eighth grade (age 13–14), he had grown to 6ft 8in and could already slam dunk a basketball.

Abdul-Jabbar began his record-breaking basketball accomplishments when he was in high school, where he led coach Jack Donohue's Power Memorial Academy team to three straight New York City Catholic championships, a 71–game winning streak, and a 79–2 overall record.

This earned him "The Tower from Power" nickname.

His 2,067 total points were a New York City high school record.

The Harlem riot of 1964, which was prompted by the fatal shooting of 15-year old black boy James Powell by a New York police officer, triggered Alcindor's interest in racial politics.

"Right then and there, I knew who I was, who I had to be. I was going to be black rage personified, Black Power in the flesh", he said.

Abdul-Jabbar was not able to play professionally in the National Basketball Association (NBA) out of high school.

Drafted with the first overall pick by the one-season-old Milwaukee Bucks franchise in the 1969 NBA draft, he spent six seasons with the team.

After leading the Bucks to their first NBA championship at age 24 in 1971, he took the Muslim name Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

Using his trademark skyhook shot, he established himself as one of the league's top scorers.

Abdul-Jabbar has also been an actor, a basketball coach, a best-selling author, and a martial artist, having trained in Jeet Kune Do under Bruce Lee and appeared in his film Game of Death (1972).

In 1975, he was traded to the Lakers, with whom he played the final 14 seasons of his career, during which time the team won five additional NBA championships.

Abdul-Jabbar's contributions were a key component in the Showtime era of Lakers basketball.

Over his 20-year NBA career, his teams succeeded in making the playoffs 18 times and got past the first round 14 times; his teams reached the NBA Finals on ten occasions.

Abdul-Jabbar broke the NBA's career scoring record in 1984 with 38,387 points, and held it until LeBron James surpassed him in 2023.

Abdul-Jabbar was known as Lew Alcindor when he played at parochial high school Power Memorial in New York City, where he led their team to 71 consecutive wins.

He played college basketball for the UCLA Bruins, winning three consecutive national championships under head coach John Wooden.

Alcindor was a record three-time most outstanding player of the NCAA tournament.

At the time of his retirement at age 42 in 1989, Abdul-Jabbar was the NBA's regular season career leader in points (38,387), games played (1,560), minutes (57,446), field goals made (15,837), field goal attempts (28,307), blocked shots (3,189), defensive rebounds (9,394), and personal fouls (4,657).

He remains the all-time leader in minutes played and field goals made.

He ranks second in career points and field goal attempts, and is third all-time in both total rebounds (17,440) and blocked shots.

ESPN named him the greatest center of all time in 2007, the greatest player in college basketball history in 2008, and the second best player in NBA history (behind Michael Jordan) in 2016.

The team won the national high school boys basketball championship when Abdul-Jabbar was in 10th and 11th grade and was runner-up his senior year.

He had a strained relationship in his final year with Donohue after the coach called him a nigger.

Abdul-Jabbar wrote for the Harlem Youth Action Project newspaper.

In 2012, Abdul-Jabbar was selected by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to be a U.S. global cultural ambassador.

In 2016, President Barack Obama awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Abdul-Jabbar was born in Harlem, New York City, the only child of Cora Lillian, a department store price checker, and Ferdinand Lewis Alcindor Sr., a transit police officer and jazz musician.

Cora was born in North Carolina but came to Harlem as part of the Great Migration.

Ferdinand Sr. was the child of immigrants from Trinidad; his uncle was the Black activist and medical pioneer Dr. John Alcindor.