Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
It's great to see Kareem continuing to do good work! He's always been so intellectual and deep! He’s a man with so many different facets than just basketball. I've always admired that about him! Here's an excerpt from my book "Standing Above the Crowd" as I detail the experiences of playing against the great Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.Enjoy!I often tell the story of how as a rookie during my very first professional game playing for the Seattle SuperSonics in the Kingdome in Seattle, I was lined up against Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Kareem was already a ten- to twelve-year established veteran and well on his way to becoming one of the greatest players ever to play the game. I remember checking into the game for just a few minutes and given the instructions to go guard Kareem. As we were lining up on the foul line I remember thinking to myself, “Wow, here is the great Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and I'm going to have to figure out a way to not get embarrassed out here.” I also remember thinking to myself, “Kareem already has over 20,000 points in his career and I've got zero.” It was truly one of my first tests as far as trying to establish myself as an NBA player. I was nervous as all-get-out, but after jostling with Kareem and “bodying” with him for a few minutes, I started to calm down and felt a little more comfortable.In my estimation, Kareem was the most unstoppable player to ever play the game. With that fantastic skyhook of his, he could shoot and score at will and with great accuracy. There was nothing you could do to slow down Kareem other than hope and pray that his teammates didn't feed him the ball all night long and/or he was having an extremely rare night off…but that hardly ever happened.So that's one variation of the question I'm asked as far as “who's the toughest or greatest player you’ve ever played against?”… I always answer that Kareem was the most unstoppable, hands- down!
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