“The Basketball 100” is the definitive ranking of the 100 greatest NBA players of all time from The Athletic’s team of award-winning writers and analysts, including veteran columnists David Aldridge and John Hollinger. This excerpt is reprinted from the book, which also features a foreword by Hall of Famer Charles Barkley.
“The Basketball 100” is available Nov. 26. Pre-order it here. Read David Aldridge’s introduction and all of the excerpts here.
The morning after one of the most miserable nights of his career, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was the first to arrive at the film session. He sat in the front row, center chair, right in front of the television. It was an odd seat selection, and not just because this 7-foot-2 giant was now blocking the view. It was an area usually left vacant during these tape studies, but Abdul-Jabbar was about to be a witness to his execution.
Los Angeles Lakers coach Pat Riley began scribbling points of emphasis on the board.
Rebound. Stop Bird. Don’t double too early.
Then Riley locked eyes with Kareem.
“I’ll never forget this. He didn’t say it to me, but I know what he was thinking: Don’t hold back on me today,” Riley said.
Abdul-Jabbar was 38 and nearing the end of his marvelous NBA life when the Lakers were embarrassed by the Boston Celtics, 148–114, in Game 1 of the 1985 NBA Finals at Boston Garden. Nobody played well on the Lakers, but Abdul-Jabbar was the worst. He scored 12 points and grabbed only three rebounds on a night Riley believed he didn’t play hard enough.
And Abdul-Jabbar agreed.
Reporters across the country began writing Abdul-Jabbar’s career obituary, about how he was too old and too slow to keep up with Robert Parish and Kevin McHale. Abdul-Jabbar took all of Riley’s criticisms during that film study. Then, with the help of his father, he began preparing to remind the world why he was the greatest player of his generation.
For 38 years, Abdul-Jabbar was the NBA’s all-time leading scorer. His staggering total of 38,387 points looked unbreakable for decades, finally surpassed by LeBron James in 2023. Abdul-Jabbar’s unstoppable, patented skyhook, combined with the blessing of good health for 20 seasons, allowed him to put up figures the game has rarely witnessed.
He has more NBA Most Valuable Player awards (six) than anyone in the history of the game. He is a 19-time All-Star, only to be surpassed by LeBron’s 20. He has six championships (the same number as Michael Jordan) and two NBA Finals MVPs.
“The longer we move into the future of this game, the more and more we leave behind. The greatest players of those generations and those greatest players of all time,” Riley said. “There’s always going to be somebody new.”
The difficulty with any sort of rankings is comparing players from different generations who played under drastically different rules. For example, there was no 3-point line for the first 10 years of Abdul-Jabbar’s career. Not that he was someone who spent a lot of time on the perimeter—he made one 3-pointer in his career—but in a league now dominated by pace and space and shooting 3s, it’s even more remarkable that Abdul-Jabbar is the only player in history to eclipse 38,000 points while scoring ones and twos.
He also spent four years at UCLA, compared to elite talents today, who typically leave college after one season. James entered the NBA directly out of high school in 2003. He scored more than 8,400 points in the NBA from age 19 to 22, the ages when Abdul-Jabbar was at UCLA. Had he been allowed to go straight to the NBA from high school like James, or even if he stayed only one year in college, Abdul-Jabbar might have more than 45,000 career points.
“He was in great shape. He was disciplined. He was consistent. He had four years of college under one of the greatest coaches of all time in John Wooden, where he got the science and the theory and the know-how to play the game,” former Lakers star and teammate James Worthy said. “And he had a weapon. It’s a nuclear weapon.”
No player is more closely aligned to one shot than Abdul-Jabbar is to the skyhook. George Mikan may have been the first big man to weaponize the hook shot—Mikan could make it with either hand—but Abdul-Jabbar made it an art. The jump, the release, the touch, and the grace. Abdul-Jabbar was calculated precision in the low post.
“When you shoot it, you force people to wait for you to go up,” Abdul-Jabbar once told ESPN. “And if they wait until I started to shoot it, then they’d have to judge the distance and time it, and it’s gone before they can catch up to it. That’s, for me, the beauty of it. You’re in control because of when you’re gonna release it and where. The defense has to see that and calculate everything before they get an opportunity to block it.
“I don’t recall it ever being blocked by somebody who was guarding me. Maybe a few people got to it, coming to help where I couldn’t see them. But if I knew where someone was, that person was not going to block that shot, because I always got my body in between them and the ball before I released the ball, and it’s impossible to get to it.”
Abdul-Jabbar fittingly became the game’s all-time leading scorer with a skyhook over Utah’s Mark Eaton on April 5, 1984, breaking the record Wilt Chamberlain held for 18 years. Abdul-Jabbar was that rare combination of health and ability. He is also one of the most extraordinary athletes of any generation.
Abdul-Jabbar, who spent his formative years in New York City, was always curious. He asked questions and paid attention to social issues. When Muhammad Ali was stripped of his boxing titles and threatened with jail for refusing to serve in the Vietnam War, Hall of Fame NFL running back Jim Brown gathered some of the most prominent Black athletes in June 1967 in what has come to be known as the Cleveland Summit. Among those who attended to support Ali were Celtics legend Bill Russell and Abdul-Jabbar, then a college student at UCLA. He followed that by boycotting the 1968 Summer Olympics to protest injustices against Black Americans.
“I’m so proud of Kareem the person,” said Dr. Richard Lapchick, who has been a lifelong friend. “He’s had the courage since the ’60s to stand up when back in those days, there weren’t many people standing up. There was a core of people who were willing to stand up and take chances about their careers. He was willing to do it even back then.”
Before Lapchick was a human rights activist and a leading voice on diversity studies in sports (his annual Racial & Gender Report Card studies on minority hires in sports are frequently cited), he was just another teenage high school basketball prospect at Power Memorial Academy camp. His father, Joe Lapchick, is a double inductee into the Basketball Hall of Fame and widely considered the game’s first true big man. Joe coached at St. John’s after his playing career before moving on to the Knicks. He signed the first Black player in the history of the NBA, Nat “Sweetwater” Clifton.
As a result, Richard Lapchick’s earliest memories growing up in Yonkers, New York, included looking out his bedroom window and seeing his father’s image swinging from a tree with people picketing below. Because of who his father was and that Richard was already six feet tall in the eighth grade, he was invited to the camp at Power, which at the time was the country’s top basketball program. The coach at Power brought six of his players to the camp—five were White and one was Black.
One of the White players kept dropping the N-word on the Black player. Finally, Richard had heard enough and challenged the White player. Richard was quickly knocked out. He lost the fight, but he earned a lifelong friend. The Black camper was Ferdinand Lewis Alcindor Jr., who changed his name in 1971 to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar as part of his Muslim faith. Lapchick was asked to speak when Abdul-Jabbar’s statue was unveiled at the Staples Center. And when Abdul-Jabbar was presented with the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama in 2016, Lapchick was one of his two nonfamily guests.
“He’s shy in public. I think some people mistook that for negative qualities,” Lapchick said. “He really liked my dad. Kareem could relate to my dad in discussions they had when he was a freshman in high school and several years after that. People stared at my dad all the time. [Joe Lapchick was 6-5.] The same thing happened with Kareem.
“The racial dimension too. If you’re a White guy and White people are approaching you, you’re not going to be thinking much about it. But if you’re a Black guy and people are approaching, that could be a whole different context. I think my dad helped him know that Kareem was feeling things that were absolutely normal for being a giant of a human and people always noticing him.”
The Milwaukee Bucks selected Abdul-Jabbar with the first pick in the 1969 NBA Draft, and two years later, he partnered with Oscar Robertson to deliver Milwaukee a title. Before the Bucks won the 2021 NBA championship, it was the only title in team history. Abdul-Jabbar and Robertson also took the Bucks to the 1974 Finals before falling to the Celtics in seven games.
He was an awkward fit in Milwaukee and asked to be traded. After a dismal 1975 season, the Bucks granted his request and sent him to Los Angeles (along with backup Walt Wesley) in exchange for Elmore Smith, Brian Winters, Dave Meyers, and Junior Bridgeman.
Abdul-Jabbar was quiet and private. He kept the media at a distance. His father’s love of music made him deeply passionate about jazz, and he was a well-read history scholar. He never listened to loud music before games, but instead would read books quietly at his locker.
“Coach Wooden wouldn’t let us talk to the press at UCLA,” Abdul-Jabbar said during a 2017 appearance at the Milwaukee Theatre as a guest of the UW-Milwaukee Distinguished Lecture Series and the Muslim Student Association. “He regarded them as a nuisance. I brought that with me to the NBA. It was very unfortunate, and I paid the price.”
During his time in Milwaukee, Abdul-Jabbar was often characterized as “aloof” off the court.
“A lot of people thought I left here with a hostile attitude,” he said in 2017. “I didn’t. I wanted to get back to some sunshine.”
Riley stated Abdul-Jabbar wanted “peace, serenity, somewhat tranquility in his own space.”
When he was drafted by the Lakers in 1982, Worthy was about 15 credits shy of graduating from college. He was taking independent courses at USC to complete his degree and, as part of it, was reading a book on the Missouri Compromise.
Abdul-Jabbar spotted the book and began reciting dates and events surrounding the 1820 legislation that admitted Missouri to the Union as a slave state and Maine as a free state while prohibiting slavery from the remaining Louisiana Purchase. Worthy credits Abdul-Jabbar’s free tutoring with getting a B-plus in the class. He also credits Abdul-Jabbar with turning him on to jazz music.
“It’s hard to get Kareem to open up,” Worthy said. “But if you talk about history or jazz, you’ve got him. And you’ve got him for a long time.”
Added Magic Johnson: “He’s the smartest, not just basketball player I ever played with, but also the smartest man. The guy is just so intelligent.”
Abdul-Jabbar has a dry wit and a terrific sense of humor. He has a booming laugh that can shake the moon. He used to wear pants that were too tight and outdated, which made for easy fodder with his teammates. Michael Cooper and Byron Scott got a hold of the pants one day, Worthy said, and cut them up.
Abdul-Jabbar was furious but he waited a few weeks to seek revenge. When Cooper fell asleep on one of the team flights, Abdul-Jabbar took a can of Nair hair remover and smeared it on his head. Cooper had a bald spot on his head for weeks. When the team was on a road trip in a cold-weather city, Worthy can’t recall which one, Abdul-Jabbar cut the toes out of Scott’s socks.
“Most people wouldn’t mess with Kareem,” Worthy said. “You could prank him now and then, but man, he was gonna get redemption.”
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Jerry Buss and Bob McAdoo celebrate the Lakers’ 1985 NBA title in Boston. Abdul-Jabbar was named Finals MVP. (George Tiedemann / Sports Illustrated via Getty Images)
After that gruesome film session following Game 1 of the 1985 NBA Finals, when Riley berated Kareem for multiple hours, the Lakers retreated to the practice court. Riley had a unique relationship with Abdul-Jabbar that dated to high school, since Riley is only two years older. Their high school teams were playing in a Christmas holiday tournament in Schenectady, New York, during Abdul-Jabbar’s freshman season.
Abdul-Jabbar first dunked as an eighth grader and already had everyone’s attention as a freshman. Riley’s team beat Power Memorial in the holiday tournament—with a little help from the officiating crew. Riley’s father was a longtime baseball manager in the area, and one of the referees working the basketball game that night was also an umpire who had a fondness for Riley’s dad. So the ref helped out Linton High and fouled out Kareem in just eight minutes. Without their freshman phenom, Power Memorial lost to Linton.
Riley later played with Abdul-Jabbar on the Lakers before coaching him. They have a unique bond, which is part of the reason Abdul-Jabbar welcomed the flogging. When they reached the practice court, Riley worked him relentlessly to the point that Magic approached Riley and told him he should shut down Abdul-Jabbar. Kareem heard the conversation and grew angry.
“No!” he snarled. “I want to do everything.”
After the “Memorial Day Massacre,” Game 2 was on Thursday. The Lakers had three mornings to read Boston newspapers writing about Abdul-Jabbar’s basketball demise. L.A. had two grueling practices before easing off the morning of Game 2. As the players filed onto the bus for the ride over to the Garden for Game 2, Abdul-Jabbar was the last to get on. He walked hurriedly through the hotel lobby and out the door with his father by his side.
Bus rides were sacred, particularly during the playoffs and especially during the NBA Finals. The Lakers had a rule that only players were allowed on the bus. But Kareem approached Riley and asked if his father, Al, could ride with him to the arena. Riley felt the eyes of the entire team staring at him, wondering what the answer would be.
“He needed the solace of his father,” Riley said. So he acquiesced and let Al on the bus.
“The bus was completely quiet,” Johnson said. “That’s one thing good about the Lakers, we knew when we were ready. Nobody had to say anything.”
Added Worthy: “As we get older, sometimes there are still things that we still need from our parents. His dad was his comfort. I remember that bus ride. You could always tell when the big fella was ready. So when [Al] was on that bus, man, I knew it was gonna be a good night.”
At 38, Abdul-Jabbar destroyed the Celtics in Game 2. He ended the night with 30 points, 17 rebounds, and eight assists. When reporters found Abdul-Jabbar after, he had a simple message.
“Contrary to public opinion, the demise of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was highly exaggerated,” he said.
Abdul-Jabbar led the Lakers in points and rebounds and was named the NBA Finals MVP. For the first time in their long, tortured NBA Finals history with Boston, Los Angeles beat the Celtics, in six games, and Abdul-Jabbar won his third championship as a member of the Lakers. He won two more before retiring in 1989 but recently told Cooper on a podcast that the 1985 series was his most memorable. Of the countless Abdul-Jabbar stories Riley has, he also chose the ’85 NBA Finals as his favorite.
“There are so many stories,” Riley said. “But that’s the one that sticks out. I love that one.”
His shy nature and quiet disposition prevented Abdul-Jabbar from fully appreciating how much he was beloved until a fire took everything from him. His 7,000-square-foot Bel-Air mansion burned to the ground in 1983, and although his then-girlfriend and son escaped unharmed, his prized jazz collection was among his treasured possessions destroyed.
Abdul-Jabbar’s father was a New York transit police officer and part-time jazz musician who played in clubs around the city. The two shared a passion for music that led to Kareem creating what was believed to be one of the richest jazz collections in the country. When he lost it all to the fire, fans and admirers began helping him rebuild it by sending them their own records. When he announced in December 2008 that he was battling leukemia, again the public outpouring of support overwhelmed him.
“Kareem, in the later years, began to see how beloved he was,” Lapchick said. “I think particularly now, people appreciate him for his intelligence. I’d argue that Kareem has a wider audience now than he did before. It’s not just basketball. At a time when America is so divided, Kareem is there as a weathervane on social justice.”
Although he’s a practicing Muslim, Abdul-Jabbar has long been a leader in rebuilding connections between the African-American and Jewish communities. He remains in great demand as a speaker for Jewish and Holocaust organizations. He’s also an accomplished author. He has produced documentaries, written numerous books, contributed to publications such as Time and Newsweek, and writes frequently these days on his Substack channel. He is one of the most fascinating figures in the history of the game, and his place in basketball’s legacy is secure.
“I’ve seen his full body of work,” Worthy said. “When you think of the fan base now, which is composed mostly of social media and a younger audience, and even younger sportswriters who never saw Kareem play, they don’t understand. They don’t understand the hook shot. They don’t understand that he changed the game. . . .
“When people ask me, I still say, ‘He’s the best to ever play the game.’”
Career NBA stats: G: 1,560, Pts.: 24.6, Reb.: 11.2, Ast.: 3.6, Win Shares: 273.4, PER: 24.6
Achievements: NBA MVP (’71, ’72, ’74, ’76, ’77, ’80), 15-time All-NBA, 19-time All-Star, NBA champ (’71, ’80, ’82, ’85, ’87, ’88), Finals MVP (’71, ’85), Rookie of the Year (’70), Hall of Fame (’95)
Excerpted from “The Basketball 100” published by William Morrow. Copyright © 2024 by The Athletic Media Company. Reprinted courtesy of HarperCollins Publishers
(Illustration: Kelsea Petersen / The Athletic; Photo: Dick Raphael / Getty Images)
