How old is kareem abdul jabbar basketball player

• NBA Regular Season MVP 1971, 1972, 1974, 1976, 1977, 1980.
• 1971 NBA Finals MVP, 1985 years.
• 10 NBA 1st Team All-Star Team (1971-1974, 1976, 1977, 1980, 1981, 1984, 1986)
• Participated in 19 NBA All-Star Games (1970-1977, 1979-1989).
• 1971, 1972 NBA regular season top scoring player.
• 1976 NBA regular season rebounding leader.
• NBA block shot leader in 1975, 1976, 1979, 1980.
• Ranked No. 1 in NBA history with 38,387 points.

Above all

If a child is born large and tall, and the growth rate does not slow down in childhood, parents should not miss the opportunity to introduce their heir to sports. In the case of Karim, such an oversight did not happen, and the boy began to play basketball from school age.

Ferdinand Lewis Alcindor, that's how Abdul-Jabbar was called before the adoption of Islam, was at least a head taller than all his peers both in understanding the game and in growth. Thanks to the boy who showed up early, his school team did not know defeat in the city championship for three years in a row.

After leaving school, Alcindor, by then of age, was expected to serve in the US Army, but his tall stature took him away from military adventures in Vietnam, and Lewis continued his education at the university.

NCAA

Interestingly, Karim had to wait a whole season for the opportunity to enter the floor in collegiate games - according to the rules, freshmen were not allowed to play for the national team of their school in their first year of study. True, the long wait did not extinguish the young man's love for basketball, and since autumn-1966 all of America learned about who will set the tone for the NCAA for three years in a row.

By the time of his debut, Abdul-Jabbar was already under twenty years old - the age when you can play on a par with adult masters. Karim immediately became the best basketball player in the League, dominating under the shields and leading his team to triumph. His career in the NCAA was one hundred percent successful - in three seasons he was recognized as the best player three times and became a three-time champion.

Another surprising fact about the dominance of the center is that after the first season, Kareem in the NCAA was forbidden to throw balls into the basket from above. The leaders thought at least in this way to help the poor fellow rivals, but this did not stop Jabbar, who found other ways to increase his personal account. In particular, he tirelessly begins to use a hook - a throw that is almost impossible to cover.

During his university years, Alcindor decides to convert to Islam, and a few years later, as an NBA player, he changes his name and surname to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

Milwaukee

Karim graduated in 1969 and decided in which League to continue his career - in both the NBA and the ABA he was selected with the first number of the draft, and the young center was waiting for proposals from the clubs. As a result, more favorable contract terms were offered to him by the Milwaukee Bucks, and Abdul-Jabbar became an NBA representative.

The transition to adult basketball did not affect Karim at all. At the end of the first season, he was recognized as the best rookie in the NBA and included in the second team of all stars. Abdul-Jabbar's game was appreciated - he was at the same time good both under someone else's basket and under his own, steadily gaining 30 points and collecting about 15 rebounds per game.

The second season in the NBA brought Jabbar the championship ring and the title of the most valuable player of the regular season and playoffs. The League has a dominant center who should take the baton for this nomination from an aging Wilt Chamberlain.

And so it happened - Kareem became the best "fifth number" in the NBA and a regular on the first team of stars. He continued to collect the MVP titles of the regular seasons, establishing himself in the status of the main star of the League. True, at some point, all personal achievements ceased to please Abdul-Jabbar - only at 19'74, Milwaukee was able to reach the playoff finals. And when Oscar Robertson ended his career, Karim was actually left alone among mediocre players.

Lakers

To tell the truth, the Lakers, where Abdul-Jabbar moved, had a hard time with assistants at first. The legendary club had fallen on hard times since the end of the careers of Chamberlain and West, and Kareem was the Californians' only bright spot on the floor.

Despite the fact that Jabbar's first two seasons in Los Angeles were marked by his two personal victories in the fight for the title of the most valuable player in the NBA, he did not experience great happiness. The Lakers, with all the efforts of their leader, could not fight for the championship.

Everything changed when Magic Johnson joined the team. “Los Angeles” overnight became the leader of the West and, along with “Boston”, the main favorite of the NBA. Karim was also inspired, who, despite natural aging, managed to score more than 20 points per game on average until the age of forty.

Of course, over the years he began to spend less time on the site, besides, he had problems with his eyes, but Karim continued to keep the level. At key moments, he practically did not make mistakes, and the hook throw could be safely called by his name.

Thanks to the duo of Magic and Kareem, the Lakers celebrated five successes in the 80s, and Abdul-Jabbar himself became the MVP of the playoffs for the second time in his career, and this fifteen years after the first similar recognition!

Perhaps Karim should have left a couple of years earlier - for the last three years his performance has fallen sharply and in the final season he barely exceeded 10 points. On the other hand, after a personal performance in the playoffs 19At 85, he won two more NBA victories.

Legacy

Abdul-Jabbar managed to play with the stars of different eras: he came to the NBA when the heroes of the 60s were still good - Chamberlain, West, Robertson, and finished when Magic, Byrd and a little later Jordan became the main figures of the League .

It says one thing - Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is the basketball era. No one else had such a long successful career, as evidenced by his first place in NBA regular season scoring of all time.

Video archive dedicated to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar - photo, biography, news, personal life, basketball

If you describe the achievements of the American basketball player Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, then by a certain point you can just get tired of repeating the word “best”. The athlete shone in the 1970s-1980s of the last century and collected a lot of titles and individual awards. Karim has been repeatedly called the best basketball player of all time, and only Michael Jordan and Wilt Chamberlain can compete for this title with him.

Childhood and youth

The basketball player was born in 1947 under the name of Ferdinand Lewis Alcindor Jr. The boy was brought up in a simple Catholic family, where he was the only child. My mother worked in a store, and my father worked in the police. Already in childhood, he was distinguished by outstanding physical parameters: having been born with a height of 57 cm and a weight of 5.73 kg, Ferdinand stretched out to 185 cm by the age of 10, and after 5 years, growth exceeded 2 meters.

The big guy became the star of his high school basketball team, leading him to a 71-game unbeaten streak. While still a student at the Power Memorial Academy in New York, the athlete got used to the taste of victories and championships. The most prestigious US universities were ready to fight for a promising athlete, and he chose the University of California, Los Angeles. The young man was not taken into the army due to his extremely high growth of 218 cm and a weight of 121 kg.

Even before he had time to play for the main team of the university, Alcindor was already recognized as a new superstar, and having joined the championship of the National University Sports Association, Ferdinand led his team to the championship for 3 consecutive seasons. During this period, UCLA basketball players won 88 fights out of 90. Even then, the athlete was awarded every conceivable personal award and was recognized as the best player of the year among students in 1969.

As a young man, in 1968, Alcindor suffered his first corneal injury while playing. Subsequently, he will still receive damage, as a result of which he will be forced to perform in goggles. At the age of 21, the young man converted to Islam and received a new name Karim Abdul-Jabbar (“noble servant of the Almighty”), under which he began to perform from 1971 years old.

Personal life

Alcindor met his future wife, Janice Brown, at a Lakers game during his senior year at the University of California. In 1971, the girl married him and converted to Islam under the name Habib. The couple raised three children - daughters Khabiba and Sultana and son Karim, who followed in his father's footsteps and began to play basketball. A divorce followed in 1978.

After that, another woman appeared in Karim's personal life, Cheryl Pistono, who bore him a son, Amir.

Abdul-Jabbar was experiencing health problems. He was often tormented by migraines, because of which he sometimes could not go to the site. In 2008, the athlete was diagnosed with a disappointing diagnosis - cancer of the blood and bone marrow, but the famous champion coped with the disease. In 2015, the basketball player underwent coronary bypass surgery.

In addition to basketball, in the life of Karim there was a place for filming movies and TV shows. He made his debut as an actor in 1978 with Bruce Lee's The Game of Death, and has since appeared in dozens of films. And the giant also writes books that are devoted not only to biography and sports, Abdul-Jabbar also creates literary texts, for example, detective stories dedicated to Mycroft Holmes, the elder brother of the great detective.

Basketball

Throughout his career, Karim represented only 2 clubs - Milwaukee Bucks (1969-1975) and Los Angeles Lakers (1975-1989), with which he repeatedly achieved the NBA championship and was recognized as the most valuable player. He spent 1560 matches in which he scored 38387 points. The invincible weapon was the skyhook, a unique throw that was nearly impossible to block.

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar now

Having finished his professional sports career at the age of 42, Kareem moved on to coaching and scouting. At 19The 95th player was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame.

Now Abdul-Jabbar remains in the list of the greatest basketball players, but has little to do with sports. He is an occasional columnist for the Times, Esquire and The Huffington Post and is featured on political talk shows.

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