Kareem Abdul-Jabbar 1972 NBA Finals MVP Performance

Lore & Background

Abdul-Jabbar was known as Lew Alcindor when he played at Power Memorial, a private Catholic high school in New York City, where he led their team to 71 consecutive wins. He played college basketball for the UCLA Bruins, winning three consecutive national championships. Abdul-Jabbar was a record three-time most outstanding player of the NCAA tournament. Drafted with the first overall pick by the Milwaukee Bucks in 1969, he spent six seasons with the team. After leading the Bucks to their first NBA championship at age 24 in 1971, he took the Muslim name Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. In 1975, he was traded to the Lakers, with whom he played the final 14 seasons of his career, during which time the team won five NBA championships. Over his 20-year NBA career, his teams reached the playoffs 18 times and reached the NBA Finals ten times.

Reader's Guide

At the time of his retirement at age 42 in 1989, Abdul-Jabbar was the NBA's regular season career leader in points (38,387), games played (1,560), minutes (57,446), field goals made (15,837), field goal attempts (28,307), blocked shots (3,189), defensive rebounds (9,394), and personal fouls (4,657). He ranks second in career points, minutes played and field goal attempts, and is third all-time in both total rebounds (17,440) and blocked shots. ESPN named him the greatest center of all time in 2007, the greatest player in college basketball history in 2008, and the second best player in NBA history (behind Michael Jordan) in 2016.

Abdul-Jabbar has also been an actor, a basketball coach, a best-selling author, and a martial artist, having trained in Jeet Kune Do under Bruce Lee and appeared in his film Game of Death (1972). He also appeared in Airplane! as Roger Murdock. In 2012, Abdul-Jabbar was selected by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to be a U.S. global cultural ambassador. In 2016, President Barack Obama awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom.