In the entire history of the NBA, no one has scored more points or won more Most Valuable Player awards than Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.
The 7-foot-2 center who won three straight NCAA championships with UCLA before becoming the top overall draft pick in 1969, went on to capture his first pro title in his second season with the Milwaukee Bucks. After being traded to Los Angeles in 1975, he led the Lakers to five more NBA crowns.
Those six titles matched his six MVP honors, and when Abdul-Jabbar put in his last sky hook—that unblockable sweeping soft shot that became his trademark—he had concluded his Hall of Fame career with 38,387 points, more than 1,000 beyond anyone else.
“There’s a ball. There’s a hoop. You put the ball through the hoop,” Abdul-Jabbar once joked.1
Abdul-Jabbar developed from a rail-thin high school star named Lew Alcindor to a strong, graceful, and dominant performer. He changed his name for religious reasons while he was with the Bucks, but he never changed his game.
Abdul-Jabbar would set up just outside the lane, many times with two players guarding him once he got the ball. Because he was an excellent passer, he often would find teammates for open shots. More often, though, he would shoot. And hit.
Beginning with his Rookie of the Year campaign for Milwaukee, when Abdul-Jabbar scored 28.8 points a game, he averaged at least 21 a game in each of the first seventeen seasons of his twenty-year career, leading the league in scoring twice. He made the All-Star Game in all but one of his seasons and twice was MVP of the finals. The numbers were just as special in the playoffs—a 24.3 average.
“Why judge anymore?” asked Pat Riley, who coached Abdul-Jabbar during the Lakers’ “Showtime” days. “When a man has broken records, won championships, endured tremendous criticism and responsibility, why judge? Let’s toast him as the greatest player ever.”2
He was certainly the greatest scorer ever. And it was not only with backboard-shaking dunks or that famed sky hook; Abdul-Jabbar was a good foul shooter, rare among big men. Less rare among tall, athletic centers was Abdul-Jabbar’s shot-blocking skills. He retired in 1989 at age forty-two with the most in league history: 3,189.
