TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/022089/02208900.003

Text File | 1992-09-23 | 6.1 KB | 127 lines

                                                                                SPORT, Page 82

An Ominous Giant's Farewell


The great -- sometimes grating -- Abdul-Jabbar nears the finish

By Tom Callahan


    If he was forbidding to start with and inaccessible for so
long, consider that Kareem Abdul-Jabbar once looked for what he
calls "positive role models" and found them in inanimate
objects. "The Empire State Building," he says. "The redwoods."
They represent an 86-in. man and his 24-year journey from New
York City to California, nearly done. History's greatest
basketball player is in his last season.

    "At first," he says, "basketball was something I did when
the lights were on in the playground just because I liked it."
He was Lew Alcindor then, a bookish Harlem Catholic constructed
of high-tension wires connected at right angles. He developed a
hopping hook shot, calling to mind a praying mantis assembling a
foldout lawn chair, out of early necessity: all his
straightforward attempts were being blocked. He made a style of
coming at things from a different angle.

    "I saw a movie, Go Man Go, about the Harlem Globetrotters,"
he recalls. "In one scene, Marques Haynes dribbles by Abe
Saperstein in a corridor. After that, I worked at handling the
ball. I didn't want to be just a good big man. I wanted to be a
good little man too." For Power Memorial, a high school that no
longer exists, he was everything and led the team to 71 straight
victories.

    At UCLA, the rules were changed expressly to thwart him.
Dunking, jamming the ball into the basket from above, was
temporarily outlawed by the National Collegiate Athletic
Association. Still, with a sullen grace and dispassionate touch,
he showed UCLA to 88 wins in 90 games and three national titles.
He was the NBA's first draft choice of 1969.

    "Professional demands are different; they take most of the
fun out of it," says Abdul-Jabbar, who embraced Islam during
his second season with the Milwaukee Bucks. His new name meant
"generous and powerful servant of Allah." He jilted a
girlfriend and wed a woman selected by his mentor, Hamaas Abdul
Khaalis. (The marriage ended after nine years and three
children.) In 1973 seven members of Khaalis' family were
murdered by Black Muslims in a Washington house bought by
Kareem. Four years later, Khaalis participated in a siege of
Government offices. He is now in a federal penitentiary.

    Kareem's association with Khaalis was brief, but a vague
connection to mystery and darkness lingered. Unlike Wilt
Chamberlain, who slouched in layup drills and favored finger
rolls over slam dunks, Kareem lacked the good taste to be
chagrined by his size, to shrink himself down to tradition, to
hide the shame of his incongruous talents. He was as tall as
Chamberlain and yet as agile as Bill Russell. "His sky hook,"
says Russell, who seldom rhapsodizes, "is the most beautiful
thing in sports."

    Kareem was not the only ominous giant in the game. On dreary
airport mornings, when soldiers and civilians customarily brush
by one another, the common exchanges foul everyone's mood:

    "Are you fellows basketball players?"

    "No, we clean giraffes' ears."

    But Kareem's scowl became the definitive one. "My inability
to enjoy my successes, or at least to show my enjoyment," he
says, "made it hard for people to enjoy me." But he went on. He
transferred to the Los Angeles Lakers in 1975 and kept going on.
And on. "Just thinking of it now is strange," he says.

    Here's one way to think of it: 20 years ago, Kareem and 208
other men were playing in the NBA. By the end of the '70s, 18 of
them remained. In 1983, two. When Elvin Hayes -- Kareem's
particular college rival -- retired from the Houston Rockets in
1984, one. Since then, just Kareem. He has amassed the most
games (1,525) and points (38,028) in history, but the telling
indicator is that only three scorers in the league today have
been even half as prolific. Recalling players past, he says,
"They've come and gone by generations. I'm still here."

    Riding the great Laker wave of back-to-back NBA titles in
1987 and 1988, his fifth and sixth all told, Kareem returned
this season for one last $3 million campaign at 41. But from
November to January, he looked so soft and spent, the Los
Angeles papers pleaded with him to stop. It seemed he was going
around again just for the money (a stream of failed investments
has him at public loggerheads with his agent) or maybe for the
curtain calls at all the final stops (testimonials have
included a motorcycle in Milwaukee and a chunk of Boston's
parquet floor).

    At his low point, annoyed teammates actually waved him out
of the pivot. "I wasn't just window dressing," he says, "but I
was headed that way. Your mind is what makes everything else
work. Mine was on other years. But I think I've turned it up a
notch in the past few games."

    He has. The Lakers are not as overpowering as they were, but
the Western division is probably still theirs, and the East
continues to fear them. Trying to stay in the game, Kareem can't
yet block out every thought of passage. His favorite year was
1985, "when we finally beat the Celtics." The special coach was
UCLA's John Wooden, who "never let his goals separate him from
his ideals." The ultimate teammates were Oscar Robertson and
Magic Johnson. "Playing with Oscar in Milwaukee was a privilege.
No nonsense, no frills. And being with Magic has been wonderful.
His flair and joy."

    The singular event, though, may have been the fire in 1983
that burned his home, his rugs, his art, his jazz records and
just about every other material thing he owned. "The public
sympathized with me, reached out to me," he says, "and even
tried to replenish my record collection. I realized how
self-absorbed I'd been and started to look at the fans
differently. They started to see me too." Because other centers
were elected, this week's All-Star game almost went on without
him. But when Johnson was injured, Commissioner David Stern
ruled that a center could replace a guard, and Kareem was
called. This time, the rules were changed to include him.