Word: kareem
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...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...
...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...
...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...