An Ominous Giant's Farewell

By Tom Callahan

If he was forbidding to start with and inaccessible for so long, consider that Kareem Abdul-Jabbar once looked for what he calls "positive role models" and found them in inanimate objects. "The Empire State Building," he says. "The redwoods." They represent an 86-in. man and his 24-year journey from New York City to California, nearly done. History's greatest basketball player is in his last season.

"At first," he says, "basketball was something I did when the lights were on in the playground just because I liked it." He was Lew Alcindor then, a bookish Harlem Catholic constructed of high-tension wires connected at right angles. He developed a hopping hook shot, calling to mind a praying mantis assembling a foldout lawn chair, out of early necessity: all his straightforward attempts were being blocked. He made a style of coming at things from a different angle.

"I saw a movie, Go Man Go, about the Harlem Globetrotters," he recalls. "In one scene, Marques Haynes dribbles by Abe Saperstein in a corridor. After that, I worked at handling the ball. I didn't want to be just a good big man. I wanted to be a good little man too." For Power Memorial, a high school that no longer exists, he was everything and led the team to 71 straight victories.

At UCLA, the rules were changed expressly to thwart him. Dunking, jamming the ball into the basket from above, was temporarily outlawed by the National Collegiate Athletic Association. Still, with a sullen grace and dispassionate touch, he showed UCLA to 88 wins in 90 games and three national titles. He was the NBA's first draft choice of 1969.

"Professional demands are different; they take most of the fun out of it," says Abdul-Jabbar, who embraced Islam during his second season with the Milwaukee Bucks. His new name meant "generous and powerful servant of Allah." He jilted a girlfriend and wed a woman selected by his mentor, Hamaas Abdul Khaalis. (The marriage ended after nine years and three children.) In 1973 seven members of Khaalis' family were murdered by Black Muslims in a Washington house bought by Kareem. Four years later, Khaalis participated in a siege of Government offices. He is now in a federal penitentiary.

Kareem's association with Khaalis was brief, but a vague connection to mystery and darkness lingered. Unlike Wilt Chamberlain, who slouched in layup drills and favored finger rolls over slam dunks, Kareem lacked the good taste to be chagrined by his size, to shrink himself down to tradition, to hide the shame of his incongruous talents. He was as tall as Chamberlain and yet as agile as Bill Russell. "His sky hook," says Russell, who seldom rhapsodizes, "is the most beautiful thing in sports."

Kareem was not the only ominous giant in the game. On dreary airport mornings, when soldiers and civilians customarily brush by one another, the common exchanges foul everyone's mood:

"Are you fellows basketball players?"

"No, we clean giraffes' ears."

But Kareem's scowl became the definitive one. "My inability to enjoy my successes, or at least to show my enjoyment," he says, "made it hard for people to enjoy me." But he went on. He transferred to the Los Angeles Lakers in 1975 and kept going on. And on. "Just thinking of it now is strange," he says.

Here's one way to think of it: 20 years ago, Kareem and 208 other men were playing in the NBA. By the end of the '70s, 18 of them remained. In 1983, two. When Elvin Hayes -- Kareem's particular college rival -- retired from the Houston Rockets in 1984, one. Since then, just Kareem. He has amassed the most games (1,525) and points (38,028) in history, but the telling indicator is that only three scorers in the league today have been even half as prolific. Recalling players past, he says, "They've come and gone by generations. I'm still here."

Riding the great Laker wave of back-to-back NBA titles in 1987 and 1988, his fifth and sixth all told, Kareem returned this season for one last $3 million campaign at 41. But from November to January, he looked so soft and spent, the Los Angeles papers pleaded with him to stop. It seemed he was going around again just for the money (a stream of failed investments has him at public loggerheads with his agent) or maybe for the curtain calls at all the final stops (testimonials have included a motorcycle in Milwaukee and a chunk of Boston's parquet floor).

At his low point, annoyed teammates actually waved him out of the pivot. "I wasn't just window dressing," he says, "but I was headed that way. Your mind is what makes everything else work. Mine was on other years. But I think I've turned it up a notch in the past few games."

He has. The Lakers are not as overpowering as they were, but the Western division is probably still theirs, and the East continues to fear them. Trying to stay in the game, Kareem can't yet block out every thought of passage. His favorite year was 1985, "when we finally beat the Celtics." The special coach was UCLA's John Wooden, who "never let his goals separate him from his ideals." The ultimate teammates were Oscar Robertson and Magic Johnson. "Playing with Oscar in Milwaukee was a privilege. No nonsense, no frills. And being with Magic has been wonderful. His flair and joy."

The singular event, though, may have been the fire in 1983 that burned his home, his rugs, his art, his jazz records and just about every other material thing he owned. "The public sympathized with me, reached out to me," he says, "and even tried to replenish my record collection. I realized how self- absorbed I'd been and started to look at the fans differently. They started to see me too." Because other centers were elected, this week's All-Star game almost went on without him. But when Johnson was injured, Commissioner David Stern ruled that a center could replace a guard, and Kareem was called. This time, the rules were changed to include him.