Becoming Kareem

by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

  Now I was Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. I was happy with my religion, with my teacher, with my community, with my name. But deep down, I knew something was missing. I just couldn’t identify it.

  36.

  Senior Year: One and Done

  When I returned to UCLA for my final year, everything on the outside was the same as ever. Classes. Friends. Practice. Travel. But I was not the same. I felt as if I had outgrown the quaint limits of the campus and already had my eyes on life after college. My political interests in black culture and my studies in Islam isolated me from most of the other students. Even my enthusiasm for basketball had lessened somewhat. We had lost only one game in three years, so there wasn’t a lot to prove anymore.

  I hadn’t spoken about my religious conversion with anyone on the team. I wasn’t being mysterious or secretive; I just didn’t know how to bring it up. “Hey, fellas, let’s go out tonight and crush those jackasses. And by the way, I’m now a Muslim. Go Bruins!”

  Even though no one on the team mentioned it to me or commented on it, they all knew. I was famous and if I went to a mosque or was seen in the company of other Muslims, word got around. Coach Wooden wouldn’t say anything because he would have thought it was none of his business. To him, each person had to go on his or her own spiritual journey. He was probably happy that at least I was on a spiritual journey, because that meant I cared about doing the right thing. I remembered the rules he gave us the first day: “Number one in your life is your family. Number two is the religion of your choice.”

  Then came the night when it finally was brought in the open in front of the whole team, including Coach Wooden. That simple bus ride, like so many we had taken before, became one of the most memorable nights of my life—a night no one who was on that bus ever forgot. Bill Sweek later described it as “an iconic moment in my life and our team’s life, a spiritual experience I have never forgotten.” Kenny Heitz also remembered that night as special: “It’s the most memorable moment of the years I spent at UCLA. It was a bunch of guys really talking, no barriers. It was just deeply special.”

  It was early December 1968. We had just beaten thirteenth-ranked Ohio State in Columbus and were on our way to South Bend to play fifth-ranked Notre Dame. It was late at night, we were tired, and the bus was quiet. We weren’t singing, snapping jockstraps, or drawing mustaches on sleeping teammates. For us, it was strictly a business trip. Some people were nodding off or just staring out the window at the dark fields; others were engaged in quiet discussions. I was sitting near sophomore Steve Patterson, my backup at center.

  There were several different religions represented on our team that year: five or six Christians, several of them evangelicals; two Jews; and me, the only Muslim. Steve Patterson was a born-again Christian who was not reticent to talk about his beliefs. He thought that all people should be Christians if they had any hope of saving their souls and not going to hell. He wasn’t being arrogant but seemed to be speaking from a heartfelt concern about the eternal lives of his teammates. He couldn’t bear to think of them suffering in hell. It was clear that he had no clue about my recent conversion. The more he talked, the louder his voice became. I was only half listening as he loudly proclaimed his beliefs. I’d been hearing this stuff all my life in Catholic school.

  But finally he went a little too far for me when he said, “You know, Christ died for all men. Christ is the only salvation if you don’t want to go to hell.”

  “Wait a second, Steve,” I interrupted. “What about all those people around the world who never heard of Christ? Aren’t they going to be saved?”

  Steve shook his head. “No, I don’t think so.”

  “Thanks a lot, Steve,” John Ecker snorted. He was Jewish.

  “Let me get this straight,” I said to Steve. “Some little toddler in India dies of cholera and she goes straight to hell?”

  He hesitated. “Probably purgatory.”

  “Why purgatory? She’s just a child. She didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “We’re all born in sin, Lew,” he replied.

  “But she’s not guilty of anything.”

  “We’re all guilty. Because of Eve. Read your Bible, man.”

  “I’ve read it, Steve. And it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.”

  “It does if you really read it.”

  “I really read it. Which is how I know that purgatory is never mentioned in the Bible. The word isn’t even used as a noun until the twelfth century.”

  It was the same discussion that was probably happening in a hundred dorm rooms across the country, with students just as earnest and just as sure they were in the right.

  As our voices rose, other teammates turned to listen. Maybe they were hoping for a fistfight to break up the monotony of the bus ride, or maybe they were just interested in the discussion. At the front of the bus, I could see the back of Coach Wooden’s head bent over whatever Western novel he was reading. Either he didn’t hear us or didn’t want to get involved.

  Instead of escalating into a shouting match, Steve and I both switched gears and started listening. We stopped trying to be right and just tried to get to know each other’s beliefs better. Other players, who were spread throughout the bus, began moving closer. Eventually, almost the entire team was gathered in the middle of the bus, leaning over the seats to participate. A few of them began voicing their own opinions. No one was attempting to simply defend his own beliefs; instead, everyone was listening and asking questions. We all opened up that night, as we drove through the dark Indiana countryside, with a trusting intimacy that we had never experienced before. Some talked about how they questioned their own faith, others how they had lost their faith. Some about how leaving home brought them closer to their faith. Never had we been closer to one another as individuals. Never had we been closer as a team. Never would we be this close again.

  Which is why I suddenly felt the compulsion to say, “For those who haven’t heard, I’ve converted to Orthodox Islam.”

  There was the kind of silence you might hear in deep outer space.

  I braced myself for the onslaught. Now that I’d opened Pandora’s box, I should expect the usual venom to follow. But it didn’t. Some already knew. Those who didn’t know were only mildly surprised. They knew I was studying religion, philosophy, and politics. They could see the books I always had with me on the bus trips or in the locker room: Eldridge Cleaver’s Soul on Ice, William Barrett’s Irrational Man: A Study in Existential Philosophy, and of course, The Autobiography of Malcolm X. Instead of judging me, they expressed a lively curiosity about the process that took me to that decision and what it meant to be a Muslim.

  “What’s the difference between Black Muslim and, uh, regular Muslim?”

  “Why did Muslims kill Malcolm X if he was also a Muslim?”

  Coach Wooden made his way back and joined in the conversation, but only to ask the occasional question, not to moderate or direct it. I glanced over at him a few times to see if I could gauge any reaction to my announcement, but all I saw was a wide smile of joy, not at me but at the team. His boys weren’t just basketball players; they were the mature, respectful gentlemen he wanted us to be. For him, that was more important than any championship.

  Coach was also worried about our afterlife. But to him that meant life after basketball. To him, basketball was a teaching tool to prepare us to live rich, fulfilling lives as fathers, husbands, and community members. And for a couple of hours that night in December, he knew he didn’t have to worry about our afterlife.

  37.

  Good-bye, Yellow Brick Road

  My final year of basketball at UCLA was basically a repeat of the previous years. We won our third consecutive NCAA National Basketball Championship. I finished my college career with eighty-eight wins and only two losses. I became the only player in history to be named three-time NCAA Final Four Most Outstanding Player, and I received the first-ever Naismith Trophy presented to the country’s top college player, was named Helms
Foundation Player of the Year, and was chosen First Team All-American.

  While I was pleased with our team’s success, I was going through the same acute senioritis I’d had in my last year of high school. I was bored with what I had been doing and just wanted the next act of my life to begin. I was done with campus life, with college basketball, with still being treated as a kid with a lot of potential, who some people thought would get my butt handed to me when playing professional basketball against all those hardened veterans who knew a lot of tricks to hurt you without the referee noticing.

  Bring it on, I thought.

  My senior year brought several offers to play basketball professionally, but the two I was most interested in were from rival groups. The National Basketball Association (NBA) was more established, but its rivals, the upstart American Basketball Association (ABA), needed to attract big names to draw more fans. I was happy to exploit that rivalry to get the best financial offer possible. In truth, I was rooting more for the ABA, because the New York Nets were interested in me and I preferred to live in my hometown where all my friends were. The option from the NBA was the Milwaukee Bucks, which had earned the right to draft me by winning a coin toss with the Phoenix Suns.

  My future was being decided by a coin toss!

  Rather than having a long-drawn-out, back-and-forth negotiation, my adviser and I decided we would ask each team to submit one offer. We would then choose the best. Both teams agreed. First, I met with Wes Pavalon, in charge of the ownership group of the Bucks. I tried to keep my face immobile as he detailed his generous offer, which would make me a millionaire. I was only twenty-two years old and being offered more money than I had ever imagined when growing up in the projects of New York City. Maybe it was petty of me, but I couldn’t help but think of all those kids who had deliberately iced me out in school, my ex–best friend Johnny yelling in my face, the old lady at the Bat Rack calling me nigger. This was serious in-your-face money.

  It’s a weird feeling to be offered that much money. My first thoughts were that I could finally buy a car that I didn’t have to worry about breaking down. That I could travel anywhere in the world I wanted, and not have to play a basketball game when I got there. I could help out my parents so they’d never have to worry again about money.

  The next morning, I met with Arthur Brown, the owner of the Nets, and Commissioner George Mikan of the ABA. I was pretty excited because I figured their offer would be even better than the one from the Bucks. I’d be even richer and I’d get to live in New York. But it turned out that their offer was much less.

  My adviser, Sam Gilbert, leaned forward and said, “Is that everything? The whole package?”

  “Yes,” said Mikan. He looked surprised at the question, as if he thought we would be jumping around his office in joy at his offer. “That’s everything.”

  Sam sighed. “You understand that there is only one bid? We’re not negotiating after this?”

  “Understood,” Mikan said. “We think we’ve made a generous offer that should make Lew very happy.” He looked at me to see if I was “very happy.”

  I again tried to keep my face impassive, but I was definitely not happy.

  When we got outside, I let Sam know just how surprised and unhappy I was. “What just happened in there, Sam?”

  Sam shook his head. “I don’t know. I expected better from them.”

  “Yeah, no kidding. A lot better.”

  Sam shrugged. “So what do you want to do?”

  “I want to stay in New York,” I said.

  “I know, Lew. It’s your decision, of course, but do you want to give up a substantially larger offer in order to stay here?”

  I thought about it. I would be living on my own for the first time. No parents, no roommates. I could afford a nice apartment, but it would be a lot more fun to be near my friends, the jazz clubs, the big-city lifestyle. But I was also a little angry at the Nets for not valuing me more. If this was how they treated me when they were trying to woo me, how would they treat me once I signed a five-year contract? Five years is a long time to feel resentment.

  “Milwaukee is on Lake Michigan,” Sam said. “Sounds pretty.”

  “The name comes from the Indians,” I said. “Means ‘gathering place by the water.’”

  He looked at me with surprise.

  “I did my research,” I said. “About seven hundred thousand people, a fifth of them black. They’re famous for making beer. They have four of the world’s largest breweries.”

  “See? You’re practically a native already.”

  That afternoon we called Wes Pavalon and told him I would be joining the Milwaukee Bucks.

  He seemed delighted but surprised, as if he was worried we were pranking him. “This is your final answer?”

  “Yes, it’s final,” Sam assured him.

  “This isn’t a negotiating ploy to goose the Nets into offering more?”

  “Nope,” Sam said. “We’re ready to sign and learn how to spell Milwaukee.”

  Pavalon laughed. “Okay, I’m counting on your word because once I leak this to the press, there will be a lot of reaction.”

  “Draw up the papers,” Sam said. “And bring your checkbook.” He hung up the phone and looked at me. “You are now a Wisconsinite. What do they call them?”

  “Cheeseheads,” I said. “It’s known as ‘America’s Dairy-land.’”

  He grabbed his belly and grinned. “This is mostly thanks to cheese and beer, so I’ll be right at home when I visit you.”

  That evening, the news of my joining the Bucks was all over the television. I was in my room trying to stay away from reporters when I heard frantic knocking on my hotel door. It was Sam. He rushed in, his face red with anger.

  “You are not going to believe what just happened!” he said.

  “What?” I said.

  He took a deep breath, calming himself. “I just got stopped in the hotel lobby by two ABA owners. They want to increase their offer.”

  I didn’t say anything. I didn’t know what to say.

  “I explained that they had agreed to a one-time bid, but they said Mikan didn’t have the authority to make a final offer. They want us to hold off signing with the Bucks.”

  “What’s their offer?”

  He told me. It was three times higher than the Bucks’.

  I sat down on the bed, a little dazed. It was more than I had even hoped for at our meeting.

  A long silence hung in the room like a cold mist.

  “What do you want to do, Lew?” Sam asked.

  Lew knew what he wanted to do: Take the money and run. But it wasn’t Lew who answered, it was Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Kareem had learned in the mosque to be truthful and honest in all dealings. True, I had learned the same teachings in the Roman Catholic Church, but I had chosen Islam as my spiritual path and couldn’t abandon it the first time I was faced with temptation.

  “I gave my word, Sam,” I said. “I’m a Cheesehead.”

  He looked me in the eyes, and I could see the pride in his expression. “Yeah, you are,” he said, a slight catch in his voice.

  38.

  Becoming Kareem—For Real

  What’s it like to play professional basketball?

  Two words: Very. Hard.

  I thought the transition from college player to pro would be a lot easier than it was. But I didn’t take into consideration the fact that I would be living alone. In a city far away from all my friends and family. In a place that got colder than anything I’d ever experienced. A place with no active Muslim community. Yes, I was a famous athlete making lots of money, but when I wasn’t on the basketball court with my teammates, I mostly felt lonely. I had the massive phone bills to prove it.

  I struggled to maintain my focus on Islam, which prohibited gambling, alcohol, and casual dating. I wanted to be as pious as possible, but loneliness ate away at my resolve. I still avoided gambling and alcohol, but I allowed myself to date women I wasn’t serious about, just to
ease the isolation. I still hadn’t made my conversion or my new name public, but I didn’t keep it a secret from my teammates. One player, Don Smith, just couldn’t understand why I had done it.

  “What is Islam exactly?” he asked.

  I’d been through this enough to have my fortune cookie–sized answer ready: “Basically, we believe there is only one god, Allah, and that his last messenger was Muhammad.”

  That wasn’t enough for Don. “Yeah, but what’s the message that Muhammad brought?”

  He seemed sincere, not challenging, so I continued. “There are five basic rules, called the Five Pillars: faith, prayer, charity, fasting, and a pilgrimage to Mecca.”

  “Sounds simple enough.”

  “Well,” I said, “it’s not that simple. Like they say, God is in the details.”

  We didn’t discuss those details. He seemed more interested in why I asked guests to remove their shoes when entering my house. “It’s Wisconsin, man!” he complained. “We could freeze to death.” A few years later, after he was traded to Houston, Don converted to Islam and became Zaid Abdul-Aziz.

  The fans and players in Milwaukee couldn’t have been nicer. When I arrived that first day of rookie camp, I walked onto the court and received a three-minute standing ovation. They were all pinning their hopes on me to help pull the team up from its previous season, when it lost more than two-thirds of its games. I felt the pressure immediately, as if a heavy saddle had been thrown onto my back. But at the same time, I was exhilarated by the challenge and by the goodwill of my teammates and the Milwaukee community. I wanted to do well for them.

  A big difference between college and pro basketball is the grueling schedule. In college, we played twice a week, and we played for college pride as much as we played for ourselves. In the pros, we played as often as four times a week, with little time or energy left over to work up civic pride. Fortunately, Coach Wooden’s endless running drills had physically prepared me for the pace. I was still running full speed down the court when the rest of the rookies were panting in a slow jog.