Kareem Abdul-Jabbar has potentially the greatest resume in NBA history, but why isn’t he mentioned in Greatest Of All Time conversations more?
If you’ve clicked on this story, then you’ve probably come in here with one of two very strong opinions. The first being that Kareem Abdul-Jabbar isn’t the greatest player in NBA history and the second being that he doesn’t get mentioned in this conversation nearly enough. While I’m going to try and argue point two here, we need to clear one thing up before continuing.
This is not a piece about Abdul-Jabbar being the best basketball player ever. That distinction, both in my opinion and the opinion of many more, belongs to Michael Jordan. Now more than ever. This is not about Abdul-Jabbar suddenly making a run for the title of GOAT. Instead, we’re going to establish why he is routinely left off of top-5, and even top-10, all-time lists. Got it? Ok, let’s begin.
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It is hard to even know where to begin, but the resume of Abdul-Jabbar is probably the greatest of any basketball player when you consider all of the components that go into it. Beginning with the basic numbers, and Abdul-Jabbar has six championships, which is as many as “His Airness” Jordan. It is also true to say he had a lot of help in getting many of them too.
Firstly alongside Oscar Robertson on the Milwaukee Bucks in 1971 when he was known as Lew Alcindor, and then with Magic Johnson on the Showtime Los Angeles Lakers. So it is fair to say he got some of the best help of all time by lacing them up next to some icons. But you know who else did that?
Essentially every other NBA champion ever. You can’t discredit any of these titles because he got help when that is what is required to win big anyway and always will be in the league. Abdul-Jabbar was a 19-time All-Star and a record-holding league MVP six times. This throughout a 20-year career in which he dominated in a variety of different ways.
His “skyhook” shot couldn’t be stopped when it was falling, and he made an All-Defensive team 11 times throughout his career too (five times on the First Team, six times on the Second Team). He was dominant everywhere, but Abdul-Jabbar was more than just the numbers, which is important when solidifying a legacy that, after only a few paragraphs of explanation, is airtight.
Changing his name from Lew Alcindor to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar for a variety of reasons meant that he stood for something away from the court as well, in the same way that icons such as Muhammad Ali and Bill Russell had before him. The same cannot be said of other superstars, who dodged politically loaded questions in order to keep intact their clean public image.
Yet despite this, and also having a history of being short with the media and not the most cheery fellow to be around in general, Abdul-Jabbar was one of the first basketball stars to translate to popular culture. His turn in Airplane is hilarious, and even after he was done popped up in Scrubs in a memorable scene.
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It may seem hard to believe now, but to previous generations, this was about as visible as you could get, and Abdul-Jabbar crossed over to the mainstream on a number of occasions. For those keeping score then, he’s won as many titles as Jordan, has the most regular season MVPs ever (and two finals MVPs to boot), is a 19-time All-Star (the one year he didn’t make it he still averaged 25.8 points and 12.9 rebounds. I mean come on.) and was a two-time scoring champion too.
But what about college? We did say basketball resume after all, and this is a key area where Abdul-Jabbar triumphs. Magic may have won an NCAA championship, jumped straight to the pros, literally jumped for the ball in the NBA Finals and won a title (with Abdul-Jabbar) in his rookie season, in what could be considered the greatest 12-month span of a player ever.
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar won three national championships with UCLA from 1967-1969, a ridiculous feat. Can you imagine the kind of clamor that would exist to try and draft him in the league today? Especially with social media thrown in? Yet back in the 1960s Abdul-Jabbar did just that anyway, the hype around him apparent years before he made it to the league.
More than that though, he lived up to the hype. How many players can you say actually managed to do that? It isn’t many, and the list is made up exclusively of player’s names that you can shave down to one word and people know who you’re talking about. LeBron. Magic. Bird. Duncan.
Do you want more numbers? Because we’ve got more numbers. Four times he led the league in blocks (his first four seasons they weren’t counted), once in rebounding (you would think he’d have more), and had his number 33 retired by the Bucks and Lakers. He was named Rookie of the Year (obviously) and was 10-time All-NBA first team, and five-time second team. Then there’s 38,387.
That’s the number of points he scored in his career. The most ever, and although LeBron James may end up beating it (he’s on 34,087 at the moment) he would need four or five more productive years to get there. This is what we’re building up to, the crown on top of the diamond-encrusted career.
There is 15 years between his first and last title. 15 years. That last championship win, in 1988, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was 40 years of age. A bit-part player then surely? What do you think? He started all 24 playoff games, playing a shade under 30 minutes a night and putting up 14.1 points. Again, he was 40.
So the next time there is a Mount Rushmore or top five players in league history or whatever to pass the time, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar has to be on it. He’s not the GOAT, Jordan transcended the game, but the conversation between Abdul-Jabbar and James as better player is one worth having. What has just been outlined above, well that’s the greatest career there ever was.