TIME: Almanac 1990/1990 Time Magazine Compact Almanac, The (1991)(Time).iso/time/022089/02208900.003

Text File | 1990-09-17 | 6KB | 115 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.