Lew Alcindor was lying on his side under a brown blanket, staring at the wall of a dingy St. Louis motel room. It was late afternoon in the winter of 1970. The shades were drawn. “I'm all worked up, man, deep down inside,” he told the writer Roger Kahn.

Kahn was writing a profile of Alcindor for the magazine Sport. It was difficult to get a handle on the rookie basketball star of the Milwaukee Bucks. Alcindor could be rude to reporters and fans. On the court, he looked impassive and languid – except for on a few occasions, when he engaged in violent altercations. Yet he was clearly the emerging superstar of the coming decade, a special athlete with gifts of grace never before displayed by a 7′2″ center. Moreover, he was smart and thoughtful, earning respect from those who penetrated his armor of sullenness. “The Alcindor phenomenon is a mix of rough edges,” wrote Kahn, reminding readers that Alcindor was just twenty-two years old, a young man of both good intentions and controversial decisions, broiling under the hot lights of celebrity.

Kahn asked him about race: what was his role in the black freedom struggle? Alcindor blinked, still staring at the wall from the under the covers. He talked about how, when Jackie Robinson's generation proved its greatness on the playing field, those athletes became ambassadors for the civil rights movement. But in this new era of black power, he could no longer just play, spout clichés, and win the goodwill of liberal white America. “I know that,” said Alcindor with a jerky nod. The lean giant pounced out of bed and started pacing the motel room, his hair nearly grazing the cheap plasterboard ceiling. He was trying to define himself, politically and spiritually, at a time when the nation seemed to be cracking apart. Meanwhile he dealt with the wealth, temptations, and cynicism of the sports world. “I'm figuring it out,” he said. “It's fragmented, man.”Footnote ¹

Alcindor, who would soon be known as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, traveled a turbulent personal path toward self-discovery. His journey had profound implications for the larger cultural landscape of race, sport, politics, and religion in the early 1970s. In the 1960s, the civil rights and black power movements molded his transition to adulthood. As a collegian, he played a central role in the “revolt of the black athlete,” though he was intensely private and introspective, and he generally eschewed confrontation. He also quietly converted from Catholicism to Islam, a spiritual course that shaped his outlook during his early years in the NBA. He kept seeking a kind of personal freedom, even as he tended to subsume himself before strong authority figures. As his interview with Kahn revealed, he was not only smart and proud, but also confused and contradictory – understandable tendencies for a young, seven-foot, politically conscious, and exceptionally thoughtful black millionaire in an era of black power and white backlash. His intellectual and spiritual passage cannot be separated from his public image in the early 1970s.

During his tenure with the Milwaukee Bucks from 1969 to 1975, Lew Alcindor/Kareem Abdul-Jabbar embodied different meanings for different Americans, reflecting the larger political and cultural climate in which he operated. Because he seemed alienated, sullen, and solitary, he served as the villain in a media-driven storyline informed by popular prejudices about race, religion, and basketball's great giants. Yet for many African Americans and other progressive fans, he exemplified the ideals that made black power uplifting and affirmative, rather than threatening. He took pride in his culture and heritage, and he refused to appease a racist system or to let it define him. He inherited a mantle from other controversial black athletes, such as Jim Brown or Bill Russell, as a figure both hated and admired for his outspoken courage – though Abdul-Jabbar adopted that role to his own political era, his own contemplative personality, and his own religious convictions.Footnote ²

Finally, Abdul-Jabbar's conversion to Islam not only molded his own presentation as a politically aware basketball superstar, but also shaped the larger popular understanding about Islam in the United States. To many sports traditionalists, Abdul-Jabbar's religion accentuated his otherness, furthering his role as a villain. A bloody rivalry between the Nation of Islam and Abdul-Jabbar's strong-willed mentor, Hamaas Abdul Khaalis, furthered popular associations of Islam with violence. Yet Islam helped bring Abdul-Jabbar personal peace and sharpened his racial pride. He also became the most prominent face of classical Islam in the United States during the early 1970s, presenting the religion as peaceful, patriotic, and universal. So if sports fans came to understand and appreciate Kareem Abdul-Jabbar – rather than succumb to the “villain” narrative – it built bridges across gulfs of race and religion.

Lew Alcindor's emergence as a basketball star was intertwined with his rising political consciousness. His parents instilled in him a deep respect for African American history and culture. While growing up in an intellectually stimulating, middle-class environment, he was inspired by the civil rights revolution of the 1960s. Though he lived in Inwood, on the northern tip of Manhattan, he often visited Harlem and grew infatuated with jazz music, the Harlem Renaissance, and black politics. He shared the pride and resentment of many black youth in his generation – he burned with anger that his high-school coach, Jack Donohue, once accused him of “playing like a nigger.” He also sought avenues for activism. In the summer of 1964, he participated in workshops for the social-justice organization HARYOU. That same summer, he sprinted past nightstick-swinging policemen and pinging bullets during a bloody, destructive riot in Harlem.Footnote ³

“Right then and there, I knew who I was, who I had to be,” Alcindor later reflected. “I was going to be black rage personified, Black Power in the flesh.” Indeed, he embodied the characteristics of the emerging black power generation. He was both inspired by the southern civil rights movement and angered by the violence against black activists. He considered Harlem's violence in 1964 a dramatization of urban frustrations such as police brutality, employment discrimination, inadequate schools, and dilapidated neighborhoods. And he identified with the slogan “black power,” which signaled pride in black culture and history, anger at a structurally racist system, and a demand for black political independence.Footnote ⁴

Yet Alcindor never fit the stereotype of the militant black power activist. Donohue called him a “minority of one” – he was freakishly tall, a black Catholic, a bookish only child, a mark for bullies and street toughs, awkward around girls. He disliked confrontation, and he buried his emotions behind a stoic mask. His personality was both accentuated and complicated by his athletic talent, as he was a basketball prodigy in the nation's media capital. While still in high school, he was featured by Sports Illustrated, Life, Saturday Evening Post, and New York's many daily papers. Hundreds of colleges recruited him. To cope with such pressure, he tended to surrender himself to his mentors: Donohue handled all the communication with coaches, recruiters, and reporters. This strategy freed Alcindor from burdens and temptations, but also stunted his ability to deal with the media and shape public perceptions of him.Footnote ⁵

When he went to UCLA, athletic director J. D. Morgan prohibited the press from interviewing freshman athletes, though no one recalled such a ban prior to Alcindor's arrival. Throughout his college years, Alcindor barely spoke to reporters – he said that coach John Wooden dictated the policy, though Wooden later insisted that it was Alcindor's choice. The machine of sports celebrity, especially amidst the roiling political tensions of the late 1960s, created controversy for athletes who spoke out. He had principles and intelligence, but he was also shy and private. Reporters were accustomed to athletes – in particular star black athletes – being accessible for quotes and profiles. As Alcindor became a collegiate superstar, the media resented his reticence. “Today he is ill at ease, terribly sober, and a bit pompous,” wrote Arnold Hano in Sport. “Nineteen-year-olds who have learned to say, ‘No comment,’ tend to sound absurd, and Lew Alcindor was no exception.”Footnote ⁶

The combination of Alcindor's political awareness and media unease shaped his somewhat confusing participation in the “revolt of the black athlete.” For sure, he embraced the notion that sports reflected society's wider racism, and he allied himself with these black athletes who used their platform for political gain. In June 1967, he joined seven professional black athletes to meet with champion boxer Muhammad Ali, who had just refused military induction during the Vietnam War. Ali convinced them of his sincerity about refusing to participate in an imperialist and racist war, despite heavy criticism from the mainstream press. That meeting included Cleveland Browns running back Jim Brown and Boston Celtics center Bill Russell, two other pioneer black athletes who were outspoken on issues of racial injustice. It spoke to Alcindor's status and ideology that he was the lone collegian invited to this meeting.Footnote ⁷

Later that year, on Thanksgiving Day, Alcindor spoke at a meeting of the Western Regional Black Youth Conference. Harry Edwards, a sociology professor at San Jose State University, was organizing a boycott of the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico City. He worked with a generation of young black athletes with sharp political consciousness, such as Alcindor. The boycott movement injected black power into the sports world: Edwards blasted the myth that sport was a vehicle for racial progress, and he sought a radical demonstration that would tip over the sacred cow of world sport. Later, Edwards would call Alcindor's Thanksgiving Day speech “perhaps the most dynamic and moving statements in behalf of the boycott.”Footnote ⁸

“Everybody knows me. I'm the big basketball star, the weekend hero, everybody's all-American,” Alcindor told the gathering. The UCLA junior was already the star of a college basketball dynasty. But he recognized that on the streets of Harlem he was just another black guy, just as subject to a random bullet from a racist cop. So he supported the Olympic boycott. “Somewhere each of us has got to take a stand against this kind of thing,” he said. “This is how I make my stand – using what I have. And I take my stand here.”Footnote ⁹

But when Alcindor gave a rare press conference the next day, he betrayed some ambivalence. He had voted for the boycott, justifying that “if you live in a racist society, you have to react – and this is my way of reacting.” Yet he also said that he was uncertain about his own plans. The athletes had not declared a boycott, he insisted, but rather just discussed the possibility. Furthermore, he felt the burden of serving as a racial spokesman, given the white reporters' hostility toward the boycott. The same reporters started pressing him about the state of black America, and when he tried to answer their questions they responded with scorn. He got frustrated with the shabby treatment. “Look, man, why do you ask me these questions?” he snapped. “I'm not a sociologist or an anthropologist or a politician. Go ask the right people. I'm not qualified to talk on this.”Footnote ¹⁰

By Christmas, Alcindor was calling the boycott “a dead issue.” Sports Illustrated had reported his support for the protest, and conservative editorials characterized him as a misguided activist. Hate mail called him a traitor or an “uppity nigger.” He wanted no part of that backlash. “Everyone seems to think it was my boycott,” he complained. “I just attended some meeting. I was not the leader and no one has contacted me about any future meetings.” He never again associated with the boycott movement, which lost momentum as most black athletes chose to test themselves at the Games.Footnote ¹¹

Yet Alcindor was the most significant athlete to avoid the 1968 Olympics. Along with UCLA teammates Lucius Allen and Mike Warren, he refused to attend the trials for the United States team. For the record, he stated that if he went to Mexico City, he could not graduate on time. That rationale was true, but it was only part of the story. He was trying to deflect criticism from both ends of the political spectrum. “We don't want to get caught in the middle of anything,” Alcindor confessed to Life. That summer, he worked for Operation Sports Rescue, a youth program in New York City. He led basketball clinics and counseled African American and Puerto Rican children to educate themselves, work hard, and find good jobs.Footnote ¹²

Alcindor's personal, indirect protest made him a complicated icon of black power. He had the celebrity platform and a militant outlook, but he suffered under the spotlight, and he was still developing the skills to effectively convey his ideas. When he appeared on NBC's Today to discuss Operation Sports Rescue, host Joe Garagiola grilled him about the Olympics. Garagiola understood upon Alcindor's clarification that they both wanted the United States to overcome the turmoil of 1968, but the big story that emerged from their interview was a quote at the end, taken out of context, that made Alcindor seem sour and detached. “Yeah, I live here,” he said. “But it's not really my country.”Footnote ¹³

Alcindor's alienation deepened in concert with an intellectual and spiritual journey that started in high school. He had taken Catholicism seriously, but he began to find it hypocritical. How could premarital sex be a sin, when he was swimming in teenage hormones? How could everyone be a child of God, when the Catholic Church sanctioned the slave trade? He started reading the Upanishads, texts about Zen Buddhism, Hermann Hesse's Siddhartha. When he read The Autobiography of Malcolm X, it changed his life. He found guidance in the slain Malcolm, who had resurrected himself through his faith, emerging as a proud black man.Footnote ¹⁴

The first time he met Muhammad Ali, in the fall of 1966, Alcindor delivered the proper Islamic greeting salaam alaikum. The next year, he attended a Nation of Islam rally in Harlem and then dined with Ali and Louis Farrakhan. He admired how the “Black Muslims” got poor African Americans to reform their lives and embrace racial pride, but he resisted their doctrine. According to the Qur'an, there was no God but Allah, and Muhammad was the last of the prophets. The Nation of Islam had its own godlike figure in its mysterious founder, W. D. Fard; its own living prophet in Elijah Muhammad; its own origin story that characterized the white man as the devil. The serious, studious Alcindor wanted to practice orthodox Islam.Footnote ¹⁵

In the summer of 1968, Alcindor entered a Sunni mosque in Harlem. The teacher gave him Qur'an passages to memorize, demonstrated the cleansing ritual known as ablutions, and prayed with him. After a month, he performed his testimony of shahada, officially converting to Islam. His religious teachers named him Abdul Kareem.Footnote ¹⁶

A man named Hamaas Abdul Khaalis soon contacted him. Khaalis, who would soon have enormous influence on Alcindor, had a difficult past. Born Ernest McGhee in Gary, Indiana, he was discharged from the army during World War II for mental instability – he talked to himself, shouted at random, and experienced hallucinations. In 1950 he joined the Nation of Islam, teaching in its University of Islam. But he left in 1958 after disputes and frustrations with his fellow members, including Elijah Muhammad. He later claimed that a Bangladeshi mystic instructed him to infiltrate the group and convert its members to orthodox Sunni Islam, while also claiming to be a “counteragent” who did undercover work to protect Elijah Muhammad from assassins. According to Khaalis, Elijah Muhammad had once considered him his protégé. He further maintained that after Malcolm X broke from the Nation in 1964, he taught the exiled icon about Sunni Islam.Footnote ¹⁷

The FBI monitored Khaalis first for his involvement with the Nation of Islam, then for bizarre letters written to the presidential administrations of John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, and then for his suspicious involvement in a Washington, DC case, when he picked up a $25,000 package, which a bank employee had dropped in a phone booth after receiving a threatening call. By the time he contacted Alcindor in 1968, he was back in New York City, directing an outreach center for the National Urban League. He also built a small religious following in New York based on his personal teachings.Footnote ¹⁸

Khaalis aligned himself with the Hanafis, the most prevalent school of Sunni Islam in the Middle East, and in many respects his teachings reflected the emerging fundamentalism in the Muslim world. Yet Khaalis adapted Sunni doctrine to his own ends, creating a truly unique sect. His followers were African Americans, and Khaalis celebrated black pride, but he emphasized that Islam was a universal religion. He scolded Alcindor for his unpatriotic comment on Today. The “Hanafi Muslims,” as his sect became known, taught that Muslims should embrace the American ideal. The Black Muslims, or any black power posturing, should be shunned.Footnote ¹⁹

Khaalis bubbled with conviction. The only true way was his interpretation of a text, his version of the proper greeting, his particular ritual of cleansing and prayer. He spoke calmly and thoughtfully, but snapped with fury at any challenge to his teachings. Alcindor had absorbed Catholic guilt from priests and nuns, and he had allowed Jack Donohue to run his college recruitment. Now here was another strong authority figure, a sincere man teaching him to practice Islam within an American culture full of sex, alcohol, materialism, corruption, and racism. For the rest of that summer, he awoke at dawn and went to Khaalis's home for instruction. Before leaving for his senior year at UCLA, in line with a hadith that Khaalis insisted was legitimate, he shaved his head, armpits, and pubic hair before again pronouncing his shahada. Khaalis renamed him Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.Footnote ²⁰

Islam lent Alcindor order and purpose, a path through clouds of bitterness and doubt. As a college basketball star, he enjoyed extraordinary success, but he did not enjoy these years – his personal life was stunted, his political stance endured scrutiny, and his athletic talents were resented. He had chosen UCLA because of coach John Wooden, the Bruins' recent string of national titles, the gorgeous campus, the stellar academics, the sunny weather, and California's reputation for colorblind freedom. But he found the culture empty. “What everyone hears about California isn't true,” he said. “I expected it to be a swinging place but it's not. You might say I'm disillusioned. I don't feel lost here as much as I feel alienated.” He considered transferring to another school, but that would generate more publicity and more pressure. So he stayed at UCLA, feeling ambivalent and trapped.Footnote ²¹

Without question, he was the dominant force in National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) basketball. He was quick and nimble, dribbled and passed like a guard, had a great touch around the basket, and blocked shots with ease. Once eligible for the varsity as a sophomore, he led UCLA to an undefeated season and the 1967 NCAA championship. Days after that title, amateur basketball's governing body banned the dunk. Some called it the “Alcindor rule.” Though not a one-dimensional power dunker, Alcindor represented the greatest threat to the game's competitive balance. The rule change also suggested anxiety about race. The dunk was most associated with black players, and Alcindor, among others, accused the rulemakers of racial prejudice.Footnote ²²

Dunk or no dunk, Alcindor led UCLA to another national title as a junior. The team lost just once, to the University of Houston, in what was then the most hyped game in college basketball history, with over fifty thousand fans filling the Astrodome and a record television audience watching Elvin Hayes triumph in his media-fueled rivalry over Alcindor, who stumbled through the whole game with a scratched eyeball and wobbly depth perception. In the NCAA tournament, the Bruins avenged their loss to Houston on their march toward another championship, but as Alcindor lamented, “there was just no sense of discovery, no surprises. They'd already put me at the top; they had said that's where I belonged, and by doing so, they took away the fun of it.”Footnote ²³

By his senior year, he felt burdened by the contradictions between his private and public lives. He was Lew Alcindor to the world, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar to his tiny Muslim circle. He was practicing Islam, isolating himself from campus culture, and honing his critique of a society controlled by powerful whites. He later described himself as “suspicious of strangers,” “jealous of my privacy,” and “insulated and angry.” During road games, rival fans constantly booed him. At a holiday tournament at Madison Square Garden in late December of 1968, spectators from his hometown jeered his every move, including one man who screamed racial slurs. He was the face of college basketball dominance, and his refusal to play in the Olympics made him an easy target.Footnote ²⁴

Alcindor did draw comfort from the team dynamic, as basketball brought together young men of different backgrounds and viewpoints, uniting them with a sense of common purpose. On one late-night bus ride, the players talked about religion, and Alcindor revealed his conversion to Islam. He answered some questions, and his teammates accepted the change. So too did John Wooden, despite the legendary coach's struggles to understand a new generation with liberal ideas on drugs, alcohol, sex, racial protest, and political authority.Footnote ²⁵

Just before UCLA headed to the 1969 Final Four, a profile of Alcindor ran in West, the Sunday supplement to the Los Angeles Times. After a casual chat at Alcindor's bungalow in Encino, a black journalist named Ardie Ivie quoted the UCLA star verbatim, including his use of slang such as “cat,” “chick,” “groovy,” “jive,” “man,” “dig,” and “fiendish.” Alcindor saw himself as serious, smart, and proud, and he did not like how the article made him sound. According to the article, he said, “When I'm not playing, I just try to relax, see some young ladies … mess around, you know?” He also considered himself a race man, and the article quoted him blasting black nationalists: “Cats in groups and things, that's their thing. That what they need … psychologically. You dig? They can do it. Some are for real, but it's a bunch of jive people out there, man.”Footnote ²⁶

Alcindor was so perturbed that on Monday he assembled his teammates to explain himself. He also planned to refute the portrayal by appearing on a Los Angeles television station. Wooden put the kibosh on that plan, since he banned media appearances during the NCAA tournament. Alcindor fumed. “That article was close to libel,” he said. “I have to get myself straight with people. Now the coach has said no. He had to put in his two bits. That puts me on the spot.” Wooden ultimately consented to the television interview.Footnote ²⁷

UCLA's 1969 tournament run remained plagued by tension. Alcindor admitted to a real fear of losing, and the Bruins almost blew the semifinal against Drake in the final minutes. But in the title game against Purdue, Alcindor scored thirty-seven points and nabbed twenty rebounds, and UCLA won its third consecutive championship, capping a tumultuous time in Alcindor's life. In his three years on the varsity, UCLA went 88–2. In the same period, he faced the anxieties of racial protest, religious conversion, and celebrity pressure while wrestling with his private convictions and his public image. In a moment that captured the anger and ambivalence of his college years, Alcindor had wanted to cap off his final game with a dunk, which would have sent a defiant message to the rules committee and the wider culture. But Wooden subbed him out before he got the chance.Footnote ²⁸

Alcindor's entrance into professional basketball complicated both his private life and public image. He tried to express his convictions while maintaining his personal shell, and he struggled to reconcile his yearnings for spiritual purity with personal freedom. To the world, he strived to present an authentic version of his self. Ironically, he emerged, more than ever, as both a villain and a hero, a reflection of a nation's divided politics and culture.Footnote ²⁹

Before signing a professional contract, Alcindor was determined to shape his own destiny. He told the National Basketball Association (NBA) and American Basketball Association (ABA) that he would consider just one offer from each league. Despite the NBA's established stature and the two year-old ABA's instability, he initially favored the upstart league, since he could play for the New York franchise. Then the ABA's New York Nets started with a lowball bid, expecting that he would negotiate. The NBA's Milwaukee Bucks, by contrast, offered a generous five-year, $1.4 million package. The ABA threw out desperate counteroffers, but Alcindor stayed true to his word and signed with Milwaukee.Footnote ³⁰

Alcindor brought instant credibility to the Bucks, a second-year expansion franchise. His introductory press conference attracted a swarm of reporters, and over ten thousand people attended the team's first public intrasquad scrimmage. Over the course of his rookie season, the franchise's gate receipts more than doubled, and its stock price nearly tripled. Alcindor adjusted to the NBA's physical style and long season, leading the league in minutes played, finishing second to Jerry West in scoring, and winning plaudits for his rebounding, passing, and shotblocking. Some writers claimed that he was a combination of Bill Russell and Wilt Chamberlain, the great centers of the 1960s. But he possessed neither Russell's defensive savvy nor Chamberlain's brute power. Alcindor was unique – no seven-footer had ever possessed such gifts of footwork, agility, quickness, and shotmaking.Footnote ³¹

Milwaukee had finished its first year in last place, but the star rookie led them to second place in the Eastern Division. In the playoffs, he put forth a valiant effort against the New York Knicks, who would win the 1970 NBA championship. “This is the transition year,” proclaimed Life, “the dawning of the age of Alcindor.”Footnote ³²

Before the next season, Milwaukee traded for Oscar Robertson. The ten-year veteran was arguably still the best guard in the league, but he had grown disgruntled with the Cincinnati Royals. His well-rounded, no-nonsense style meshed perfectly with Alcindor's talents. “Each regards his game as a business,” wrote Peter Carry, “a complex occupation to be attacked with the precision and coolness with which an accountant surveys a ledger.” Robertson carried grudges against perceived enemies and commanded his teams with razor-sharp authority. Despite their divisions of generation and lifestyle, he and Alcindor were both protective of their privacy, aloof around outsiders, and fiercely proud of their blackness. While sharing a mutual respect, they meshed perfectly on the court, with Robertson orchestrating a fluid offense geared around Alcindor's talents.Footnote ³³

During the 1970–71 season, the Bucks won a record twenty consecutive games and finished an NBA-best 68–16. After averaging over thirty-one points and sixteen rebounds a game, Alcindor earned his first Most Valuable Player (MVP) award. “He's in a class by himself,” marveled a rival team's general manager. “He's a franchise.” Milwaukee cruised through the playoffs and swept the Baltimore Bullets in the finals, winning the title with brutal efficiency. The team appeared ready to commence a long reign over the NBA.Footnote ³⁴

The specter of the Bucks' domination heightened the perception of Alcindor as basketball's big, black villain. To many sports fans, he was a black giant who ruled his sport, looked serious and bored, punched white players who inflamed his temper, acted rude to reporters and fans, and cashed fat paychecks. He was an object of public fascination, but not one of affection. He won no endorsement deals or speaking fees. Fans of rival teams booed him, especially those in his hometown of New York. He recalled one incident in Seattle, after an opponent accidentally poked his eye:

In his early years, Alcindor needed to counteract overly physical defenders, but at times his temper flared and he lashed back. Especially during his rookie season, he earned detractors for behavior that was seen as unprofessional, impulsive, and even rebellious. After one confrontation with Bob Rule of the Seattle Supersonics, he fouled out of the game, and on his way to the locker room he shoved a teenage heckler to the floor. In Philadelphia, he punched Darrall Imhoff in the back of the neck, then stood nonchalantly at midcourt while his teammates prevented a brawl; while walking off the court, Alcindor flashed the V-sign for peace and then raised a clenched fist for the black power salute.Footnote ³⁶

Off the court, it seemed like Alcindor was deliberately rude and aloof. If a fan waved and said, “Hi Lew!” he just stared back with a quizzical gaze. He dealt with constant, stupid comments about his height. During his rookie year, a local paper sent a reporter for a chatty puff piece in its magazine insert – Alcindor arrived late, gave curt answers, and walked away without saying goodbye. After he grunted or sat silently through a post-game press conference in Detroit, a columnist called him “one of the smallest men I have ever met.” In fact, Alcindor was expressing his irritation with rote questions, which wasted his time, and he hated appearing in public, because he resented the constant gawking and autograph requests. Rather than engage or confront these sources of frustration, he ignored them.Footnote ³⁷

Alcindor stoked resentment within Milwaukee, as well, by revealing his dissatisfaction with the city, which lacked the vibrant black community of New York or Los Angeles. In one major public-relations gaffe, he told a local paper that Milwaukee was “a good town for factory workers” but not for him. Though he was trying to relate his own values, he sounded like a snob. A subsequent letter to the editor blasted “Big Lew” for his “increasingly arrogant and derogatory manner.”Footnote ³⁸

In Alcindor's mind, he was trying to keep an even keel through a turbulent time, while quietly asserting his individual freedom. But he was also struggling with multiple identities, getting pulled in many directions, adding to his sense of isolation. He answered to Lew Alcindor while also stating that his Islamic name was Abdul Kareem Jabbar. He cut himself off from old, non-Muslim friends. At first, his friend Abdul Latif stayed at his apartment, helping him with shopping and cleaning. They ate kosher food to adhere to Islam's dietary restrictions. Milwaukee's tavern culture held no appeal, as Muslims did not drink alcohol. For entertainment, they often hosted young women at their apartment. But he missed the rhythms of black urban life, and he lacked the support system of a large Muslim community.Footnote ³⁹

“I was constantly switching viewpoints, just trying to make an accommodation, to maintain some type of sanity,” he reflected. When he thought about Islam, he burned with the zeal of the newly converted. But while busy with basketball, he lacked the discipline for his five daily prayers, and he succumbed to the NBA's temptations – drugs, parties, and especially women. He both sought individual expression and yearned for discipline.Footnote ⁴⁰

Urged by Khaalis, he married another adherent of the sect, the former Janice Brown. Khaalis had renamed her Habiba. Alcindor liked Habiba, but he loved another woman: Pam Grier, who would soon achieve fame through “blaxploitation” movies such as Coffy and Foxy Brown. At the time, though, she was a receptionist, deejay, and part-time B-movie actress. They shared a deep and passionate bond, but Grier resisted converting to Islam, which she believed kept women subservient. They fought over religious and cultural issues. According to Grier, he called her in late May of 1971. He said that he was marrying Habiba that afternoon unless she planned on converting to Islam. This awkward, painful exchange ended their romance, and he married Habiba instead.Footnote ⁴¹

The wedding, soon after the 1971 season, was “a personal disaster.” Khaalis banned non-Muslims from the ceremony, so Alcindor's parents had to wait in a hallway. Their son was numb and confused. Strangely, he had committed to play in an All-Star game in Houston that night, which had been arranged by the NBA and ABA players' associations. Hours before the start, he begged out, claiming that his faith prohibited his participation so soon after the wedding. In reality, he wanted to be alone. He slept that night at a friend's house in New Jersey, without his new bride.Footnote ⁴²

Despite his public detractors and personal turmoil, Alcindor justly earned admirers in the sports world and beyond. He not only excelled at basketball, but also expressed racial pride and a personal sense of autonomy. He would not let himself be “owned” by traditional expectations of deferential black athletes, dictated by an older generation of the sports media. In a culture shaped by the civil rights movement and black power, he found ways to project his ideas and experiences, achieving some level of popular understanding. Roger Kahn's article in Sport was a warts-and-all portrait, but it truly probed the sources of Alcindor's frustrations and let the athlete speak for himself. In the end, Kahn realized that he could not compare a young, African American man in 1970 to an older generation of white sports heroes. “Alcindor, to you and me, may be one the great athletes of the era; to himself he is one of the significant black athletes.”Footnote ⁴³

Alcindor also sat for twenty hours of interviews with Jack Olsen, who in 1968 had written a groundbreaking series on the revolt of the black athlete. A three-part “as-told-to” series appeared in Sports Illustrated as he began his rookie year with the Bucks, giving the public its first deep look at him: his background and heritage, his complex relationships with Jack Donohue and John Wooden, his misgivings about UCLA, his stance on the Olympic boycott, and his racial pride. The series also described his conversion to Islam. The first article began, “My name is Ferdinand Lewis Alcindor, and my name is also Abdul Kareem, but I'll explain about that much later.” The final article, which detailed his mentorship by Khaalis, concluded that he was no longer blinded by his own racism. His faith had opened the possibility for true interracial connections. Unlike most things written about him, the Sports Illustrated articles allowed people to see him, to some degree, as he saw himself: textured by black history and culture, sincere in his religious convictions, striving for authenticity in himself and others.Footnote ⁴⁴

The public perception of the man who became known as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was shaped by his sport's economic and cultural status. By the early 1970s, professional basketball occupied a paradoxical place in the American landscape: popular yet derided, cash-laden yet financially troubled, infused by black culture yet plagued by racial anxiety.

A 1970 poll revealed that pro basketball ranked behind only pro and college football in popularity. The NBA's new television contract with ABC generated millions in revenue, and the sport attracted significant media coverage, given its dynamic athletes in the intimate, exposed space of a basketball court. Player salaries were higher than in any other sport. Between 1967 and 1970, the NBA added seven new franchises, all of which paid hefty expansion fees.Footnote ⁴⁵

The ABA, which began in 1967, helped drive these skyrocketing salaries and expansion fees. Trying to force a merger, it lured a few NBA stars such as Rick Barry, and it sought to outbid the NBA for the top collegians. Missing on Lew Alcindor was a big blow, as the ABA suffered from erratic attendance and itinerant franchises. Its presence nevertheless compelled NBA owners to accept a merger in the spring of 1970. Then the NBA Players' Association filed an antitrust suit to block the merger. Through Alcindor's early years in pro basketball, the sports pages were full of reports on legal maneuverings, labor clashes, rumors of players jumping leagues, accusations by one league, counteraccusations by the other, and repeated delays of a merger.Footnote ⁴⁶

Without a merger, the leagues kept bidding for players and driving up salaries. Abdul-Jabbar capitalized on this trend. In 1972 he signed a four-year, $1.6 million deal that was possibly the richest contract in American sports history. By 1973, sixty-seven players made more than $100,000 a year, and fifty of them were black. Most stars were black: three of the five all-NBA first-teamers, and four of the five second-teamers. Basketball was “the city game,” especially suited to urban spaces. In the post-World War II era, as black migration to cities intensified and more whites fled to suburbs, African Americans came to dominate the sport. Pro basketball was thus associated with a black aesthetic of speed and style, flight and flamboyance – the whirling Earl Monroe, the soaring Julius Erving, the cool Walt Frazier, the graceful Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.Footnote ⁴⁷

Unlike some of his charismatic counterparts, however, Abdul-Jabbar sidestepped the role of the celebrity superstar. His professional peers revered him for his consistent excellence, but the average fan saw only his mask of impassivity. “He played hard but his style was cool,” wrote David Halberstam:

Moreover, in October 1972, Denver police arrested Abdul-Jabbar, teammate Lucius Allen, and two friends after a late-night traffic stop in which the officers found marijuana, a hashish pipe, amphetamines, and LSD. Although the police dropped the charges on Abdul-Jabbar, it took six months to clear Allen, and they earned tut-tuts from the sporting press.Footnote ⁴⁸

Many fans nevertheless appreciated the evolution of professional basketball, as well as iconoclastic stars such as Alcindor. Their attitudes encompassed some identification with the emerging “athletic revolution.” Starting with superstars such as Muhammad Ali and Bill Russell, and continuing with the Olympic boycott movement of the late 1960s, black athletes blasted the myth that sport fostered personal character, social discipline, national pride, and racial progress. By the early 1970s, a cadre of journalists and scholars were indicting modern sports culture as reactionary and racist. This worldview was forging new roles for particular stars across the sporting spectrum. Television heightened their visibility, and the era's social upheavals eroded the old consensus. New stars such as Abdul-Jabbar were taking principled stands and showcasing an independent spirit.Footnote ⁴⁹

But basketball's black identity, especially as embodied by figures such as Alcindor, made it a target for a conservative backlash. Richard Nixon's reelection in 1972 signaled the dominance of a “silent majority” disaffected by the perceived excesses of the 1960s: out-of-touch liberal elites, radical feminists, antiwar hippies, and black power revolutionaries. Nixon exploited this emerging cultural strain. Rooted in the Sun Belt and white-flight suburbs, it captured a narrative of patriotic, hardworking white male breadwinners. If they remained basketball fans, they identified with the authoritarian white coaches who often clashed with young black players, or they uncritically accepted how reporters and television commentators sometimes caricatured black players as primitive, instinctual, angry, or odd. To such fans, Abdul-Jabbar made gobs of cash, yet seemed unappreciative. Maybe, they thought, he even acted like he was better than white people.Footnote ⁵⁰

While researching his book Sports in America, the writer James Michener talked to white fans from Philadelphia. They told him that basketball had brought fame and riches to black players, but “now they bite the hand that feeds them.” One man who identified himself as liberal nevertheless resented that blacks totally dominated basketball – “from here on it's their game, not mine,” he said. Another man still watched football, but not basketball, “because you sit right on the playing floor and the men are almost undressed and their blackness hits you right in the face.” It was too much. “Jabbar can make all the cracks he wants, but not on my money,” said one fan. “I've seen my last basketball game.”Footnote ⁵¹

The greatest player in basketball won both more resentment and respect when he first insisted on being called “Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.” He explained that his name roughly translated to “noble or generous,” “servant of Allah,” and “powerful.” While correcting reporters who called him Lew or Mr. Alcindor, he accepted that the transition would take time. At first, he claimed Abdul as his middle name, but some months later he clarified that the hyphenated “Abdul-Jabbar” was his last name.Footnote ⁵²

The announcement of the name change was tied to his racial pride. Abdul-Jabbar did it at a press conference one week after his wedding. He, Oscar Robertson, and coach Larry Costello were embarking on a twenty-five-day, State Department-sponsored tour to Algeria, Kenya, Mali, Somalia, Tanzania, and Nigeria, where they would coach exhibitions and stage clinics. He described the African trip as a “return to the fountainhead.” He was making a connection to his ancestral roots, informed by his passions for history and social justice. “I'm still searching,” he said. “People in this country spend a lot of time watching athletes, and I've been trying to show people what it's like a to be a success – to always be a human being and have the right values. In a lot of ways going to Africa is like going home.”Footnote ⁵³

Moreover, if he was serving as a symbol of the United States, he wished to do so on his own terms. Though he had revealed a version of his Islamic name in Sports Illustrated two years earlier, he stated, “I've been kind of quiet about it up to now. Now that I'm representing my country, I want to do it.” On the trip itself, he maintained that independent frame of mind. Rather than act like a diplomat, he criticized American policy in Vietnam and the apartheid regime in South Africa. After the tour, he and Habiba planned a hajj to Mecca.Footnote ⁵⁴

Upon his return home, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar became orthodox Islam's most significant face in the United States. Approximately sixty thousand Muslims had immigrated to the United States in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. At first, they tended to emphasize their ethnic or national origins rather than their religious identity, but after World War II they embraced the new ideal of a “universal religion” based on American democratic values. After a 1965 law liberalized immigration restrictions, more Middle Eastern Muslim immigrants gradually arrived on American shores. But the prevailing image of Islam in the United States was provided by radical black Americans who forged a prophetic tradition that appropriated certain Islamic beliefs and practices. The Moorish Science Temple and then the Nation of Islam brought variants of Islam to African American adherents. Each, in its way, assailed Christianity and American democracy. By the 1960s, when most Americans considered Islam, they associated it with the provocative and militant “black Muslims.”Footnote ⁵⁵

Abdul-Jabbar was a singular black public figure – he had expressed the frustrations associated with black nationalists, but he adhered to an orthodox version of Islam. Malcolm X had moved in this direction after his exile from the Nation of Islam, but he was assassinated in 1965. In popular culture, and particularly in the sports world, the mainstream perception of black Muslims was dominated by the brash, poetry-spouting Muhammad Ali, who remained loyal to the Nation of Islam. If asked about the Nation, Abdul-Jabbar tried to explain that it contradicted the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad, and he emphasized that Islam was a universal religion. But unlike the polarizing Malcolm X, he felt uncomfortable in the limelight. His name spoke for itself, a personal declaration of his religious identity.Footnote ⁵⁶

The change was met with both prejudice and acceptance. The journalist Merv Harris reported “guffaws and catcalls” the first time a public address announcer introduced Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. But Harris also noticed that even in the heat of game action, his teammates called him Kareem. Soon all coaches and reporters referred to him as Kareem, even during private conversations. His name may have distanced him from many sports fans, but they also accepted the change – quite unlike in 1964, when Cassius Clay became Muhammad Ali. For one, Abdul-Jabbar was quiet and restrained. For another, he was not in the Nation of Islam. Finally, the civil rights movement and black power had created more general tolerance for Abdul-Jabbar.Footnote ⁵⁷

Abdul-Jabbar's personal life, however, remained plagued by turmoil. During the 1971–72 season, he and Habiba settled into a relatively quiet existence, renting a town house twenty miles north of Milwaukee. He struggled with marriage – an only child accustomed to his particular ways, he chafed at the compromises of partnership, and he realized just how much he cherished solitude. Whenever possible, he visited the Hanafi Muslims in Washington, DC. In 1970, after his first NBA season, he had paid $78,000 for a three-story town house in the comfortable, racially integrated Shepherd Park neighborhood. Hamaas Abdul Khaalis established a small community there based on his teachings, creating both a home and cultural center. His African American converts to Islam held steady jobs as, for example, cabdrivers, hospital workers, and jewelry makers, and they lived peacefully among their neighbors.Footnote ⁵⁸

Yet over time Abdul-Jabbar realized that Khaalis led through a cult of personality. When he and Habiba had their first child in 1972, Khaalis insisted on naming her. After Abdul-Jabbar studied Arabic at Harvard University that summer, he knew that neither the Qur'an nor any hadiths mandated Khaalis's very specific teachings for greetings and rituals. When he asked about the discrepancies, Khaalis raged, even implying that Abdul-Jabbar should leave his sect. It shocked him. “Hamaas had named me, defined me, and I had accepted his definition,” he agonized. “If I denied him, was I unraveling myself?” He knew that his faith in Khaalis was waning, but he could not leave, and he avoided an open conflict. In November 1972, trying to alleviate his guilt and anxiety, he signed over the Washington, DC home.Footnote ⁵⁹

Just a few months later, a terrible tragedy struck his fellow Hanafi Muslims. It was sparked by Hamaas Abdul Khaalis sending letters to Nation of Islam mosques around the country, accusing the sect of perverting Islam and spreading racist hate. He attacked Elijah Muhammad as a “lying deceiver” and his followers as “eaters of their dead brothers' flesh.” In response, on 18 January 1973, gunmen ransacked the Hanafi house and executed seven people, including five children. They forced Bibi Khaalis, the second of Hamaas's wives, to watch while they drowned her three babies. “Why did your father write those letters?” one of the men asked Amina Khaalis, Hamaas's daughter. “Didn't you know he shouldn't have written them? … Didn't you know this was going to happen?” They dragged away her one-year-old girl and drowned her in a basement bathtub.Footnote ⁶⁰

Abdul-Jabbar had been in Milwaukee, practicing with the Bucks. The next day, he visited the Hanafi house, which was transforming into an armed camp with bricked-over basement windows, chopped-down trees, and patrolling sentries. Shocked and confused, Abdul-Jabbar attributed the killings to “lunatics.” He also feared for his family's safety. When he returned to the court, plainclothes detectives protected him. At times they moved him from one hotel room to another, or ferried him in a squad car rather than put him on the team bus. The tragedy rocked him.Footnote ⁶¹

Police traced the killings to the Black Mafia, a Philadelphia-based organized-crime unit with ties to the Nation of Islam. After one of the accused men testified that the violence was a response to Khaalis's letters, five men were convicted in a 1974 trial. The dramatic affair was marked by Khaalis's raging outbursts. “You killed my babies! You killed my babies and shot my women!” he cried while pointing at the defendants.Footnote ⁶²

In the more immediate aftermath, a political minefield lay at Abdul-Jabbar's feet. Because he had bought the home for the Hanafi Muslims, his name appeared in news reports on the murders and their aftermath, suggesting his association with religious and racial violence. Moreover, he was understandably furious with the Nation of Islam. He referred to Elijah Muhammad by his given name of Elijah Poole, a provocative rhetorical rejection of the Nation's legitimacy. But he countered any association of Islam with violence. In the New York Times, he explained the distinctions between his faith and the Nation of Islam's doctrine. While wearing a small, furry skullcap and thumbing through pamphlets about Islam, he came across as introspective and soft-spoken. He also told Sports Illustrated that Muslims bore a duty to improve their communities, help their neighbors, and forgive their enemies. “I want people to understand this is not a religious war. It's not a war because we're not fighting.” He emphasized that Islam operated within the democratic framework – the Hanafis flew the American flag outside their home, and the Constitution guaranteed freedom of religion. Reversing his language from five years earlier, he said, “This is my country.”Footnote ⁶³

That summer, Abdul-Jabbar left, by himself, for a trip through the Middle East and Southeast Asia, where he reveled in Islamic cultures and learned more about the faith. Back at home, Khaalis was growing unhinged and the Hanafi community was falling apart. So was Abdul-Jabbar's marriage – he and Habiba divorced that December. He kept searching for his way, both enjoying his new domestic solitude and sampling the nightlife on road trips. He sought a balance between modern trappings and religious devotion.Footnote ⁶⁴

Abdul-Jabbar was the pioneer for a cohort of black basketball stars that converted to Islam by the mid-1970s, including Walt Hazzard, Charlie Scott, and Jamaal Wilkes. All endured a backlash upon their conversion. Yet Abdul-Jabbar, in particular, won esteem, continuing along a path that he had been slowly paving since the late 1960s. The aftermath of the tragedy in Washington, DC revealed that progress. The murders reinforced a popular perception of the Nation of Islam as vengeful and violent, but they also allowed for the emergence of a counternarrative about orthodox Islam, thanks especially to Abdul-Jabbar. “The fact that he believes so strongly in his religion that he faces personal harm because of it exemplifies the kind of man he is,” admired one letter to Sports Illustrated. Another correspondent admitted that he had once “despised” these Muslim athletes, considering them “fanatical militants.” But now he understood that Abdul-Jabbar and his coreligionists “are doing more to shape a world of peace and love in one day than most of us have the courage to do in a lifetime.”Footnote ⁶⁵

Despite these bridges across gulfs of race and religion, in the big narratives of professional basketball during the first half of the 1970s Kareem Abdul-Jabbar served primarily in the role of “bad guy.” The hero in this story was Wilt Chamberlain. That development was rich with irony: if basketball had one galvanizing, controversial figure in the 1960s, it was Chamberlain. An awe-inspiring combination of size, strength, and speed, the 7′1″ center broke the NBA's all-time scoring mark in 1966, during just his sixth season. In 1962 he scored one hundred points in a single game, and during that season he averaged over fifty points and twenty-five rebounds. He carried himself with theatrical confidence and filled newspaper columns with his many off-court exploits. To many white traditionalists, he was a threat – a threat to basketball's established patterns, and a threat to the limits set upon black public figures.Footnote ⁶⁶

During the 1960s, Chamberlain acquired a reputation as a “loser” and a “villain.” His stature diminished next to that of Bill Russell, who, despite his smaller frame, led the Boston Celtics to seven playoff triumphs over Chamberlain's Philadelphia Warriors, San Francisco Warriors, Philadelphia 76ers, and Los Angeles Lakers. Chamberlain drove off multiple coaches. Critics called him selfish. He laid bare his ego and insecurities. According to many sports fans, he was maddening and arrogant.

For young black men, by contrast, Wilt Chamberlain was the essence of cool. He drove a lavender Bentley, wore natty suits, owned a racehorse, and bought a legendary Harlem nightclub, Small's Paradise, where he held court, lording over an entourage of friends and gaggles of gorgeous women.Footnote ⁶⁷

The young Lew Alcindor admired him. “I used to shoot like him, comb my hair like him, the whole bit,” he recalled. He first met Chamberlain at the Rucker Tournament, the famous venue for summer street ball in Harlem. Soon, Chamberlain served as a mentor of sorts. Alcindor borrowed jazz records from Chamberlain's huge collection, and he developed a huge crush on one of Chamberlain's girlfriends. Chamberlain enjoyed having Alcindor under his wing, even welcoming the teenager into Small's Paradise. But Chamberlain dominated the people around him with the great force of his personality. Under the surface, Alcindor built up some resentment. One late night at Chamberlain's Central Park West apartment, Alcindor kept losing at a card game that included NBA players Tom Hoover and Cal Ramsey. Each round's loser was supposed to chug a pitcher of water, but by the fourth round, he could chug no more. At Chamberlain's command, they poured the pitcher on him.Footnote ⁶⁸

By his college years, Alcindor shared a place in American culture with Chamberlain, thanks to their size, force, and race. In 1956, when Chamberlain was at the University of Kansas, a Saturday Evening Post headline asked, “Can Basketball Survive Chamberlain?”. Eleven years later, the same magazine asked, “Can Basketball Survive Lew Alcindor?”. But Alcindor stopped looking to Chamberlain as a model. Their political and personal styles had diverged. Alcindor skipped the Olympics, while Chamberlain endorsed Richard Nixon for President. Alcindor converted to Islam, while Chamberlain adhered to a code of personal satisfaction. Alcindor lived quietly and privately, while Chamberlain was anything but quiet and private.Footnote ⁶⁹

In the 1970s, the public perception of Chamberlain changed. In comparison to fire-breathing black militants, Chamberlain was no threat. Also, as notorious stars such as Joe Namath demonstrated, celebrity culture was shaping the sports world. Chamberlain kept himself in the spotlight with such exploits as negotiating a boxing match against Muhammad Ali, building a lavish home in Bel Air, making television cameos, and writing an outrageously boastful memoir. He even started a fashion craze by donning colorful sweatbands on his head and wrists. Based near Hollywood, the Lakers' center was not necessarily beloved, but he was exceptionally well known.Footnote ⁷⁰

Bill Russell, Chamberlain's former nemesis, noted that public expectations for black athletes were changing, shaping understandings of both giants:

As Abdul-Jabbar appeared in public as a sullen loner who converted to a foreign religion, Chamberlain looked jolly and friendly by contrast.Footnote ⁷¹

The press breathlessly reported on their clashes. Chamberlain missed most of the 1969–70 season with a knee injury, but the hype returned by the 1971 playoffs, when the Bucks beat the Lakers on the way to the NBA title. Headlines touted “The Battle of the Skyscrapers.” Columnist Jim Murray noted that Abdul-Jabbar had replaced Chamberlain as the game's most imposing force. Fans had breathed easy at first, even after Russell's retirement, because “there was always Chamberlain. HE would teach the young upstart.” Alas, Chamberlain was no defensive master, and Abdul-Jabbar was too young, too tall, too good.Footnote ⁷²

By the 1971–72 season, Chamberlain was overhauling his style to concentrate on defense and rebounding – essentially adopting the Bill Russell role from his older rivalry. His adjustment sparked the Lakers, who went on a thirty-three-game winning streak that was broken by the Bucks. When the teams met in the Western Conference finals, Chamberlain hounded and shoved and battled Abdul-Jabbar, registering more rebounds and blocks, even as the young Milwaukee star kept scoring in dynamic fashion. After the Lakers won the series, Abdul-Jabbar rushed out of the locker room, muttering “no comment.”Footnote ⁷³

In the 1960s, Chamberlain famously had grumbled that “no one roots for Goliath.” But Dave Anderson of the New York Times noted that now, against Abdul-Jabbar, Chamberlain had become “David with a slingshot.” Chamberlain agreed. He was receiving piles of fan mail and new levels of vocal support. “I think that's because Kareem has become a Goliath,” he said. “The average guy usually roots for someone he can relate to, and as remote as it sounds, they can relate to me easier than they relate to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. One reason is that his name hasn't helped him any. And he hasn't built up any particular charisma.”Footnote ⁷⁴

In another typically wry column, Jim Murray riffed on basketball's narrative of rivalries among tall, black threats. When Chamberlain came to the NBA, “Emperor Bill Russell saved the sport with his defense,” rendering Chamberlain “a paper giant.” But “this new giant, Kareem Alcindor-Chamberlain, is more terrible than the last. He comes to consume Basketball and there is none to stop him.” The people went to Wilt, “who dawdles in a Gomorrah called Hollywood,” but who resolved to “save you from this scourge.” So when Chamberlain led the Lakers past the Bucks, the people cried, “Behold! We have a new emperor! Hail Caesar! He has turned away the giant Jabbar at the gates!”Footnote ⁷⁵

The narrative of Abdul-Jabbar as basketball's aloof black dominator continued two years later, during the 1974 NBA finals against the Boston Celtics. That season, he had propelled the Bucks to another first-place finish, won his third MVP award in four seasons, and displayed peak form throughout the playoffs. In the finals, he faced off against the white-skinned, red-haired Dave Cowens; burly and undersized, Boston's center compensated with speed and hustle, running the fast break and playing frenetic defense. Cowens, winner of the 1973 MVP, had replaced the retired Chamberlain as Abdul-Jabbar's greatest rival.Footnote ⁷⁶

It was a classic series, matching the run-and-gun Celtics against the pound-it-in Bucks. Abdul-Jabbar was brilliant, saving Milwaukee's season by hitting a fifteen-foot hook shot with three seconds left in double-overtime of Game Six. Boston triumphed in Game Seven, however. During the series, Newsweek described Abdul-Jabbar as playing “with a stately grace and elegance, his face a tranquil mask above the shoving crowd,” surveying the court “with almost regal disdain.” Cowens, by contrast, played “like a man possessed – grimacing, hollering, soaring and crashing for the full 48 minutes.” The descriptions, while accurate, cast Cowens as the racial antidote to Abdul-Jabbar, the gritty white workingman against the cool black athlete.Footnote ⁷⁷

Abdul-Jabbar's final season in Milwaukee, an anticlimactic injury-plagued campaign that ended with the Bucks out of playoff contention, also featured a new contrast with another white nemesis – but with an interesting twist. Bill Walton had succeeded Abdul-Jabbar as the center at UCLA and continued the Bruins' remarkable string of championships. Neither as tall nor as smooth as Abdul-Jabbar, Walton was nevertheless a gifted athlete, determined competitor, and magnificent passer. In this sense he fit the stereotype of the “Great White Hope” in a black-dominated sport. Yet Walton also embraced countercultural style, protested the Vietnam War, practiced vegetarianism, and engaged in a controversial contractual dispute with the Portland Trail Blazers over his injured ankle. Dave Anderson wrote that “in keeping with the Big Man syndrome, Bill Walton is the NBA's new villain.” He reflected that “nobody rooted for Wilt until Kareem arrived. Taller and quicker and younger, Kareem created tolerance if not sympathy for Wilt; and now Bill Walton, kookier and hairier and younger, has created tolerance if not sympathy for Kareem.”Footnote ⁷⁸

Unsurprisingly, Abdul-Jabbar cared little for these swaying notions of heroes and villains. Basketball was an art form, like his beloved jazz, but it was also a job, and he concentrated on doing his best. Walton was great – so was he. After their first exhibition match-up, Walton and some teammates visited Abdul-Jabbar's hotel room, and they heard a television sportscaster describe how Abdul-Jabbar dominated Walton. It got awkwardly silent. Abdul-Jabbar lay on the bed, his eyes fixed on the ceiling. “Big deal,” he muttered.Footnote ⁷⁹

The contrast with Walton spoke not only to the NBA's recurring plot about its star centers, but also to an emerging, if halting, popular appreciation of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Five years after writing his rookie-year profile in Sport, Roger Kahn found Abdul-Jabbar more confident, grounded, proud of himself and his place. He could let down his guard. When a reporter asked a dumb question, he still answered with a shrug or a glare, but he spoke thoughtfully about a variety of subjects. “He is more than a basketball player,” admired Jim Cohen, a columnist for the Milwaukee Journal. “He is an intelligent, still maturing man, who realizes some of the individual and collective frailties of human beings, including himself.” In Sport, Peter Gent echoed that assessment, finding Abdul-Jabbar to be a cerebral man seeking personal growth, trying to live as a true Muslim amidst the bread and circus of modern professional sport. “He has a strange shy confidence,” marveled Gent. “The surety of a man who knows his god.”Footnote ⁸⁰

When Abdul-Jabbar left the Milwaukee Bucks, the cultural biases about him remained, though over his long career they tended to fade from memory.

He requested a trade in the fall of 1974. It remained a secret through most of the season, allowing the Bucks to negotiate with potential trade partners. Finally, in March 1975, the story broke. Abdul-Jabbar wanted to go to New York, Washington, or Los Angeles. Having learned from his earlier missteps, he took pains to praise the people of Milwaukee, whom he had grown to appreciate. But he wanted to live somewhere that he found culturally fulfilling. That June, the Los Angeles Lakers traded four quality players to obtain his services.Footnote ⁸¹

In Los Angeles, Abdul-Jabbar retained his stature as basketball's dominant force. He won his fourth and fifth MVP awards in 1976 and 1977, establishing himself as the NBA's player of the decade. He still sank his signature skyhook from the low post, but he more often moved to the high post, where he facilitated the offense with his passing. He liked living in Los Angeles, too. Though still a private person, he started partaking in some aspects of the celebrity lifestyle: chatting on television with Dinah Shore and Merv Griffin, discussing his collections of jazz records and oriental rugs with reporters, guest-starring on Mannix and Man from Atlantis.Footnote ⁸²

Yet into the late 1970s, Abdul-Jabbar still aroused discomfort among many fans and sportswriters. Laker fans neither showered him with affection nor hissed their displeasure – rather, they appreciated him from an uneasy distance. Now, too, some sportswriters grumbled about his shortcomings. He had failed to deliver an NBA title since 1971, and his statistical output had dipped. He could still seem disengaged, dispassionate. After Seattle beat Los Angeles in the first round of the 1978 playoffs, rumors swirled that he would be traded. Had he lost enjoyment for the game? He mulled the question, sipped his orange juice, pondered some more. “I don't think so,” he finally answered.Footnote ⁸³

In a reprise of his issues from his rookie year, Abdul-Jabbar had another string of violent on-court outbursts. He was frustrated with the league's increasingly physical play, blaming the referees and less skilled opponents, and scuffled in separate instances with Tom Burleson, Coby Dietrick, and Tom Owens. Then, in the opening game of the 1977–78 season, Milwaukee Bucks rookie Kent Benson doubled him over with an elbow to the solar plexus. In response, Abdul-Jabbar threw a blindside punch. Benson dropped to the ground for five minutes; he had a black eye and a concussion. Abdul-Jabbar broke the same right hand that he had damaged in 1974 while punching a basket stanchion.Footnote ⁸⁴

Abdul-Jabbar was again cast as the big black villain. The NBA fined him five thousand dollars. He refused to apologize, even as he admitted to a blind rage in the heat of the moment. “The really big thing is I could have killed him,” he said. Benson, like almost all of the players with whom he fought, was white. Later that season, he tangled with another rough, burly white player, Kevin Kunnert of the Houston Rockets. That small flare-up escalated into a larger, more violent brouhaha that ended with the Lakers' Kermit Washington crushing the face of Rudy Tomjanovich with a gruesome punch, further stirring the perception of a sports league peppered by violent blacks.Footnote ⁸⁵

The darkest cloud hanging over Abdul-Jabbar, though, was his association with Hamaas Abdul Khaalis. In 1973, Khaalis had found his babies dead, his followers executed, his wives wounded. He grew unhinged. He fumed that one of the accused was granted a mistrial, and that the others still lived in prison. When the court fined him for contempt after his outbursts at the trial, he was insulted. There were neither public outpourings of support nor gestures from political officials, as there surely would have been for a mass murder of white Christians.Footnote ⁸⁶

By 1977, moreover, Elijah Muhammad had died and his son Wallace Muhammad had moved the Nation of Islam closer to the practices and doctrine of orthodox Islam. Khaalis's frustrations mounted, as he envisioned himself as the voice of true Islam in the United States. The flaming match on his emotional tinderbox was the March 1977 premiere of Mohammed: Messenger of God, a three-hour film that he considered blasphemous. So he borrowed the dramatic, violent, news-generating tactics of terrorist groups in the 1970s, such as Black September and the Symbionese Liberation Army.Footnote ⁸⁷

On 10 March, Khaalis led eleven armed Hanafi Muslims into Washington, DC's city hall, a B'nai Brith headquarters, and an Islamic center and mosque. They held 149 people hostage. Khaalis demanded the delivery of the five convicted murderers from the 1973 case. He also wanted Mohammed: Messenger of God to stay off movie screens. During the invasion and siege, at least thirteen people were wounded, including City Councilman Marion Barry. A radio reporter named Maurice Williams died after getting shot in the chest. Late the next day, Khaalis finally surrendered. That summer, he was sentenced to fifty-six years in jail.Footnote ⁸⁸

The hostage crisis cast Khaalis and his cohort as terrorists, auguring an emerging stereotype of Muslims. It also revealed Abdul-Jabbar's continuing connection to Khaalis, with its attendant confusions about loyalty and identity. He endured crippling migraine headaches, just as he had after the 1973 murders. The militant Jewish Defense League threatened to kidnap him. “Hamaas had been my mentor, and I still felt responsible to him,” he reflected. “I could not support what he had done, but I could not entirely abandon him.” He paid Khaalis's legal fees and echoed the objections to Mohammed: Messenger of God, even though many other American Muslims found it acceptable. While calling for capital punishment for the Black Mafia killers, he pleaded that Khaalis deserved mercy. “There's so much confusion about what we believe,” he sighed. “I guess a person like Abdul Khaalis just won't be understood.”Footnote ⁸⁹

Abdul-Jabbar might have said the same thing about himself. “I'm not your typical American hero,” he admitted. He was a tall, black, introspective, and private young man trying to figure his way through fame, riches, and racism. He found answers in Islam. He knew that it confused many people. “A lot of them see it as a threat,” he said, “although I must say that, as time goes on, that's changed.” Ironically, his mentorship by Hamaas Abdul Khaalis and his conversion to Islam had deepened the chasm between him and the American mainstream, but it also lent him the outlook and language to transcend that divide.Footnote ⁹⁰

The 1980s opened a new chapter in Abdul-Jabbar's life and career. He dated a white woman named Cheryl Pistono, who pulled him out of his shell. Earvin “Magic” Johnson joined the Lakers, not only attracting the spotlight with his magnetic exuberance, but also partnering with Abdul-Jabbar to win five NBA championships. Abdul-Jabbar was no longer the brooding, super-dominant threat – he was the balding, goggle-wearing elder statesman with the iconic skyhook. He appeared in movies, filmed commercials, and wrote a popular memoir. And as he grew comfortable with a more public presence, he shaped and reflected the place of orthodox Islam in American culture. Just before he retired in 1989, he bemoaned the general tendency to see the Middle East as plagued by fanatical Muslims. Islam had been a positive force in his own life. Now, finally, his image had changed. “I think the public accepts me,” he said. “I don't think they look at me as the bad guy anymore.”Footnote ⁹¹

Abdul-Jabbar has since enjoyed a second life as an author and public intellectual. He has penned a variety of books on African American history, as well as fiction for both juveniles and adults, and commented on current events for a wide range of popular magazines, while appearing on television talk shows. In 2015 HBO produced a celebrated documentary called Kareem: A Minority of One, which chronicled his life and career. Despite his essentially shy nature, he has sought to communicate his own story – admitting, along the way, that he has regrets about his past relationship with the press and the public, as well as bumps on his spiritual journey. Just as important, in our post-September 11 era, he has not only urged Americans to recognize distinctions between terrorists and the majority of the Muslim world, but also advocated tolerance across lines of race, gender, sexuality, and ethnicity. As he has grown comfortable with his place in American culture, he has attracted favorable attention from the wider public (as well as the occasional gripe from Donald Trump or conservative bloggers). Abdul-Jabbar deserves that admiration and respect. Yet we should pay careful attention to the era in which he emerged as a major figure: it reveals important lessons about the gulfs of race and religion that divide Americans, and through the journey of one man, it suggests the possibilities for transcending those barriers.Footnote ⁹²