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COPYRIGHT 2000 Gale Group, COPYRIGHT 2005 Thomson Gale, a part of The Thomson Corporation
Abdul-Jabbar, Kareem (1947—)
With an intensity that disguised his shyness and a dancing jump shot nicknamed the "sky hook," Kareem Abdul-Jabbar dominatedThe Celtics' Greg Kite guards the Lakers' Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.the National Basketball Association during the 1970s and 1980s. The seven-foot-two-inch center won three national collegiate championships at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) and six professional championships with the Milwaukee Bucks and Los Angeles Lakers. He is the NBA's all-time leading scorer and was named the league's most valuable player a record six times. Beyond his athletic accomplishments, Jabbar also introduced a new level of racial awareness to basketball by boycotting the 1968 Olympic team, converting to Islam, and changing his name.
Abdul-Jabbar was born Ferdinand Lewis Alcindor in Harlem, New York, on April 16, 1947. His parents were both over six feet tall and Abdul-Jabbar reached six feet before the sixth grade. He attended a Catholic school in Inwood, a mixed middle-class section of Manhattan, and did not become aware of race until the third grade. Holding a black-and-white class photograph in his hand, he thought, "Damn I'm dark and everybody else is light." Able to dunk the basketball by the eighth grade, Abdul-Jabbar was highly recruited and attended Power Memorial Academy in New York. During...
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