TYLER COWEN: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is one of
America’s leading public intellectuals.
I would describe him as an offshoot of the
Harlem Renaissance, and what he and I share
in common is a fascination with the character
of Mycroft Holmes, the subject of Kareem’s
latest book—and that of course, is Sherlock
Holmes’s brother.
We’re going to start with some questions.
I’d like to turn to the topic of segregation.
What I find interesting is that according
to some metrics, in this country, racial segregation
has become worse rather than better.
Just a simple example—in 1988, 43 percent
of black students were in majority-white schools.
Today, that’s gone down to 23 percent. Now
we have an African-American president. In
some ways, the country seems less prejudiced.
How has this happened? What has gone wrong?
KAREEM ABDUL-JABBAR: My opinion on that is
the fact that the Voting Rights Act and the
Civil Rights Act led to other acts that tried
as hard as they could to eliminate segregation
in housing, the practice of redlining and
those types of things, where blacks and other
minorities were denied access to neighborhoods
that had been all white.
Now that we’ve dealt with that situation
changing for a good 30 years or so, the majority
of the housing patterns that have developed
from that is what we used to call de facto
segregation—people moving to where they
want to move, and living with the people that
they want to live with.
Maybe—and this is just a maybe, but I think
it’s pretty accurate—that has caused another
round of de facto segregation, where people
are now living where they want to live, but
the racial makeup of the neighborhood, or
the composition of the neighborhood, is still
quite similar to when segregation was the
law, and people didn’t self-segregate. I
think that’s what it’s all about.
COWEN: I’m an economist, as you may know,
and I’ve wondered if we shouldn’t entertain
the idea of making building easier to do in
cities such as San Francisco, in essence to
deregulate high-density residential construction
and get a lot more mixing in school districts.
Does that make sense to you?
ABDUL-JABBAR: Yes, it could, if you can enforce
it. The trick is always in enforcement. People
pay lip service to an ideal, and then the
reality of it ends up being a little bit short,
and we’re still disappointed.
COWEN: Let me ask you another question about
this new segregation. You may not be able
to tell just by looking at me, but I actually
grew up as a nerdy white guy.
[laughter]
COWEN: I can look at the numbers and see the
same problem that you see, but in terms of
a feel for how the new segregation has developed,
due to your different life experience, what
do you think it is that you grasp that maybe
I can read about, but don’t fully, intuitively
get, and that you could explain to us? Do
you see what I’m asking?
ABDUL-JABBAR: Are you asking about the way—the
patterns?
COWEN: The way it actually works and feels.
Something that’s not in the numbers, but
that you understand better than I do, because
you have a different, and in some ways deeper,
richer, longer life experience.
ABDUL-JABBAR: I would think that the fact
that as a black American, I can [now] go and
buy a home in any neighborhood that I can
afford to move into, and the law is going
to back me, I think that is a big factor in
all of this.
If black people can go where they want to
go, and no one is going to oppose them, I
think that’s a good thing, and that is people
making their own choices without any coercion
from the law, enforcing something that some
people find odious.
COWEN: I think you’re 68 years old, according
to Wikipedia.
ABDUL-JABBAR: Yes.
COWEN: You’ve been in this country for a
while. The general question of prejudice through
a kind of bigotry of soft expectations. How
much better is that today in your opinion?
ABDUL-JABBAR: I don’t think the soft expectations
have benefited minority communities very well.
I think we still suffer from that. A lot of
people seem to be able to accept it and understand
it because they know how terrible our public
school systems are and how they have failed,
in many cases, to educate the students in
their districts.
I think that failure has led to a lot of these
problems and has given rise to a segregation
of schooling where you have private schools
that are for wealthy white people and the
public schools that have very poor teachers
and very bad facilities that are for everyone
else. We suffer because of that.
COWEN: What’s your view of charter schools?
ABDUL-JABBAR: Charter schools are an attempt
to stem the flow of that dynamic. I hope that
they get something done.
The grade school I went to in Manhattan is
now a charter school. It was a Catholic school.
It’s been taken over as a charter school.
That seems to be the trend.
COWEN: As you know, here at Arlington we’re
very close to Howard University. If you look
at trends, there seems to be a long-term decline
in all or mostly or majority black colleges
and universities. Enrollments are significantly
down.
But they’ve played a very important role
in African-American and also Caribbean intellectual
history. Do you think there’s still room
for institutions such as Howard? Do you think
their future is promising? How do you see
those developing? What’s your view there?
ABDUL-JABBAR: I don’t know how they’re
going to survive over the long term because
the whole concept of segregated schooling
doesn’t really work. We have to figure out
a new template to make it work for everyone.
We have to figure out a way in America to
make our educational system work for everybody,
all groups. All socioeconomic levels need
to be able to be included. That’s not happening
right now.
COWEN: I’m pleased to report, by the way,
that a few years ago there was a study. George
Mason came out, I think, as the second most
mixed ethnically, racially, and otherwise
university in the whole country. We’ve tried
here to do that.
ABDUL-JABBAR: That’s great.
COWEN: One reader writes to me, “Ask Kareem
what are some highly leveraged actions we
could take to improve systematic poverty in
this country.”
ABDUL-JABBAR: I don’t know how we’re going
to work on the poverty situation unless, again,
the educational system is up to speed and
can educate people so they can escape poverty.
You can’t escape poverty given that you
can barely read and write. That’s not going
to work.
You can get a job lifting things or you can
get a job—I have a friend, his son is an
underachiever at school. I told him to tell
him if you can memorize eight words he can
be employed for the rest of his life.
The guy said, “What are those eight words?”
I said, “Welcome to McDonald’s. May I
take your order?”
[laughter]
That’s what it’s coming down to.
COWEN: Speaking of policies, the war on drugs.
Is it working? Is it racist? Is it wrecking
our inner cities? What’s your view?
ABDUL-JABBAR: I think the war on drugs was
racist. I don’t think it’s the same now.
People are starting to see that drug addiction
can affect any and everybody.
There was an article in the New York Times
last week about how now that the scourge of
heroin addiction has entered the suburbs and
majority-white communities they’re starting
to understand what it’s all about. The futility
in just using incarceration to try to cure
the problem.
We have to do a better job teaching people
about their self-worth. And we have to do
a better job at giving opportunity to people
who, if they don’t sell drugs, they can’t
participate in any economy. The drug-selling
economy is the only one that they can participate
in. That’s a recipe for failure.
COWEN: Would you decriminalize and, in essence,
stop the war on drugs?
ABDUL-JABBAR: I don’t think you can completely
decriminalize it. But you have to understand
that there is something that we want to rescue
from the situation, and that’s people’s
lives. I think people’s lives should be
given the priority in how to solve this problem—getting
people off of these things and understanding
that it’s very detrimental to their future.
COWEN: Here’s a sentence you wrote in your
book, Kareem. I’ll read it out loud. Tell
me if you would still say the same, because
that book is now a few years old. “The Republican
agenda seems basically indifferent to people’s
hardships, but I agree with its position that
handouts are not the solution to social problems.”
ABDUL-JABBAR: I still agree with that, but
they have to be open to the fact that the
solutions that they have put forward haven’t
worked. I am still anxious to hear from some
of the conservatives what the conservative
solution is for chronic underemployment and
the failure of our educational system.
We need a solution to that. Why haven’t
the conservatives come forward with a solution?
They seem to think that they have the answer.
What’s going on with that?
COWEN: Some of that may be indifference, right?
ABDUL-JABBAR: I think it’s indifference
or the fact that the contempt that they have
for the people who are the first victims of
it, which are poor people of color who that’s
the only economy they can get into.
They are almost forced into criminal activity
because of their lack of education and the
vulnerability that they have, being raised
the way that they’ve been raised.
COWEN: As we were chatting back in the green
room I was saying I read you, in essence,
as a kind of modern conservative. Not in the
sense of being a contemporary Republican,
but in terms of patriotism, respect for the
military, belief in some kind of capitalism
and getting ahead, work ethic. And that you’re
actually, today, one of America’s leading
conservative intellectuals, I would say.
Would you accept that or push back?
ABDUL-JABBAR: I value all of those things
that you just mentioned, all of those scenarios
that you just mentioned. I think they’re
very valuable. And they have made America
a great place.
We can’t throw out the baby with the bathwater.
Those ideas and ideals have served this country
very well. I don’t think we need to abandon
them. We just have to find a way to extend
them to all segments of society.
COWEN: Two thinkers I want to bring up who
share some biographical commonalities with
you but came out with very different points.
Amiri Baraka, originally LeRoi Jones, he converted
to Islam, was an intellectual, a great poet,
extremely talented. Like you, very much a
polymath.
But he stayed very radically left. He had
a black nationalist period, he had a communist
period, went through a lot of transformations,
but no one would really describe him as any
kind of conservative.
You, like Baraka, converted to Islam but have
a very different point of view. What accounts
for that difference in the two of you? I believe
you knew him, even.
ABDUL-JABBAR: I did know Amiri. I think the
difference is I believe in what happened in
Europe during what they call the Enlightenment.
That needs to happen to black Americans, absolutely
a type of enlightenment where they get a grasp
of what is afflicting them and what the cures
are.
I think that the American model is the best
in the world but in order to get everybody
involved in it we have to have it open to
everyone. That hasn’t always been the case.
COWEN: Open to far less segregation and very
different attitudes.
ABDUL-JABBAR: Yeah, with less segregation
and just the whole concept of trying to get
the best and the brightest, get them the best
education that we can so that they can do
what they want within their power to continue
to make America the great place that it is.
COWEN: When I prepare for these talks I do
some background reading. Some of the reading
I did for this—I read biographies or works
on Charles Barkley, Magic Johnson, Jackie
Robinson. Robinson, early on, he even endorsed
Richard Nixon, which he later regretted. He
learned Nixon was a liar and a fraud, but
that he even had that inclination.
Arthur Ashe, yourself. I wondered if there
isn’t a pattern where African-American athletes
are, in the way that you are, actually somewhat
conservative. If I compare that to African-American
intellectuals, people like Cornel West, they
seem to be more radical on average.
Whether you would agree with that characterization.
If so, what do you think accounts for it?
ABDUL-JABBAR: I think people like Cornel West,
I wouldn’t necessarily say that they were
radical. But they keep having to deal with
the failure of any sincere efforts by the
people in power in this country to do something
meaningful about these problems that we’ve
been talking about.
The people who can do something about it just
want to serve their communities and let everyone
else suffer. I think people like Cornel, their
frustration and anger at that type of hypocrisy
and betrayal is really what motivates them.
COWEN: In terms of the athletes, again not
being Republicans in the sense of today’s
Republican Party but a kind of conservatism.
Do you think that’s there in a lot of them?
ABDUL-JABBAR: Certainly. I think there’s
a very conservative strain in, let’s say,
the black community. But they absolutely advocate
for change because things have to change in
order to make success more accessible.
COWEN: These talks are wide ranging so some
questions about jazz. What’s your favorite
Thelonious Monk story?
[laughter]
ABDUL-JABBAR: My favorite Thelonious Monk
story occurred when I went to hear Thelonious
several nights at the Village Vanguard. I
mean like 20 or 30 nights.
[laughter]
ABDUL-JABBAR: I can explain that.
COWEN: It doesn’t need explanation. It’s
the opposite which requires explanation.
ABDUL-JABBAR: It was an incredible cultural
experience. But a good friend of mine was
the babysitter for Thelonious’s drummer.
So one night he had a hot date. He said, “Kareem,
you’ve got to stand in for me and babysit
Cory.” Cory Riley, who is—Ben Riley’s
the drummer.
I said, “OK, I’ll do that.” I went and
did it. Ben’s wife came home. She didn’t
know me. She was like—.
[laughter]
But she knew who I was. Because I would do
that for Ben’s family, they said, “Once
Inez gets home, you can come on down to the
Vanguard and catch the act.”
Starting from when I was in high school through
college, I went to the Village Vanguard anytime
Thelonious was there and I was in town, I
tried to go. It was a great part of my life.
The funny story was Thelonious would get up
and dance sometimes in the club. The New York
cabaret laws are really weird. You can’t
dance in the club but you can stand and rock
around with the music or something. I don’t
know.
Thelonious would get up and dance. Then me
and my friend who babysat for Ben, we would
get up and dance with them.
Max Gordon was the owner of the Vanguard.
He said, “Look, you can’t dance with Mr.
Monk. I’m going to have problems with the
cabaret commission.” Because if you are
dancing in this, it’s no longer a jazz club,
it’s a dance hall, and he would have all
kinds of difficult problems and get summoned
by the City of New York.
We’re trying to dance, and Mr. Gordon is
pulling at us all night, “You got to sit
down.” And then Thelonious looked at us
like we can’t muscle in on his act, and
he continued dancing, and then he sat down.
That was a pretty funny night seeing this
little—Mr. Gordon was only about 5’2”
or 5’3” yanking on me and trying to say,
“Sit down and let everybody see the stage.”
COWEN: My other favorite jazz player, Sun
Ra, what did you think of him?
ABDUL-JABBAR: Oh, I thought Sun Ra was pretty
incredible. While I was in college, he would
play at another club in New York called Slugs’
Saloon. He would play on Monday nights. It
was just him on Monday night, and you never
knew what group he would show up with. He’d
bring in different sidemen each time.
He was fascinating because he would play straight-ahead
jazz and then go off into some very esoteric,
ultramodern, bizarre kind of stuff. Think
about the difference between cubism and Renoir,
and that’s kind of the difference in some
of the things that he put out there, but he
was a brilliant pianist and a great performer.
COWEN: Let’s talk about Miles Davis just
a bit. I find people play the album Kind of
Blue too much. It’s a very good album, but
it’s become like the Mona Lisa of jazz.
You’ve heard, seen it so many times, it’s
not that fresh anymore. What in your opinion
is the most underappreciated or underrated
Miles Davis album and why?
ABDUL-JABBAR: For me, the most underappreciated
one is Seven Steps to Heaven. And that shows,
I think, Miles’ best group. There’s a
big argument, what was Miles’ best group,
the one that had Cannonball Adderley, Coltrane,
Bill Evans, and Philly Joe Jones and Red Garland
or Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter, Tony Williams,
and Wayne Shorter?
[TW suggestion: embed Seven Steps to Heaven
link]
People from both of those groups play on that
one album, and all of the cuts are awesome,
so I would say that that’s probably the
best one that does not get very much attention.
COWEN: I like Fillmore East a lot, a kind
of souped up Bitches Brew. Sketches of Spain,
the whole Jack Johnson, that ambient period.
There’s just a lot in the career of Miles
Davis.
ABDUL-JABBAR: Oh, yeah, and for me number
two is Porgy and Bess.
COWEN: Sure, beautiful.
ABDUL-JABBAR: That is incredible, and I think
just the whole collaboration of the Gershwins
and other people of their ilk, with the Harlem
Renaissance. Very interesting. If you read
the stories of the Gershwins and their good
friend Fats Waller, lots of laughs, and Fats
had to go to jail a couple of times for some
of the things the that he did.
For example, he would sell—Fats Waller was
a great pianist and songwriter. If he would
get a good song, he would sell it to one publishing
company, and then later on that afternoon,
he’d sell it to another publishing company,
and then two days after that go find some
other publishing companies to sell it to.
He ended up in the hoosegow for that, but
Fats had a very interesting life.
COWEN: Today, are jazz and rap merging into
something useful, or is jazz just dead? Where
is this all headed?
ABDUL-JABBAR: I know for a fact that jazz
isn’t dead because it has taken on around
the world—so many people around the world
want to play jazz. You see jazz musicians
now coming from all kinds of places that you
would not think of like Azerbaijan and Indonesia
and people that can sit down and play all
of Duke Ellington’s repertoire.
There was an alto saxophonist from Azerbaijan
that had all of Charlie Parker’s licks down—all
of them. That’s all he had done. It’s
incredible.
I think the fact that jazz has affected music
around the world and there are still people
who enjoy classical jazz will make it survive.
The whole idea of prophets being strangers
in their own country, I think, is more or
less what has happened to jazz, but I don’t
think it’s dead. I wouldn’t use that term.
COWEN: You mentioned the Harlem Renaissance
a moment ago. Of course, you’re from Harlem,
and your father’s side originally from Trinidad.
But if we think to the Harlem Renaissance,
a lot of people know Langston Hughes, Zora
Neale Hurston but the lesser-known figures—you’ve
written a great book on the Harlem Renaissance—as
the years pass, of the lesser-known figures,
who sticks with you as most underappreciated
or passing a test of time or one that deserves
and extra plug from Kareem Abdul-Jabbar today?
ABDUL-JABBAR: The one that I enjoy the most
was Chester Himes, who wrote these crazy detective
novels, but so enjoyable, about people that
he felt typified people in Harlem. If any
of you saw the movie Cotton Comes to Harlem,
the original novel was written by Chester
Himes.
He wrote these really crazy detective novels
that make you laugh and make you wonder about
what type of a place Harlem could be, and
I’ve enjoyed those probably the most of
all the things that I’ve read coming from
the Harlem Renaissance.
COWEN: Harlem as a place. It’s very expensive
now. It has a lot more retail. It’s changed
a great deal, even the last 10 years, as I’ve
gone a number of times. What do you think
is the future of Harlem as a location, and
has it remained the cultural beating heart
of New York City? What’s it going to look
like in 20 years’ time?
ABDUL-JABBAR: Harlem is gentrifying now, people
who want to have a spacious apartment are
combing Harlem right now as I speak, so they
can live in Manhattan and still have some
space.
I actually tried to move back to Harlem, and
I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t deal with
the winter. You can tell I’ve become a Californian.
COWEN: We all can sympathize with that today.
ABDUL-JABBAR: I saw all the snow out here,
so I know I did the right thing, but the whole
ambiance of Harlem will change, just as the
population changes. That’s not necessarily
a bad thing. It’s just that we move on.
COWEN: Did Los Angeles, speaking of places,
peak in the 1980s? Then Hollywood was a much
bigger deal. Silicon Valley wasn’t so important.
There was Michael Milken. Actually, this other
thing called Showtime, which we know a little
about.
Today, LA seems like it’s still a wonderful
place to live, but less exciting, less culturally
central. Would you agree with that description,
or am I missing something?
ABDUL-JABBAR: I think you’re missing something.
I think it’s become more culturally relevant
because the movie industry has had more or
less a renaissance, and the whole idea of
having a place where you can make movies completely
is still very appealing.
It’s taken its own identity. It’s not
just the place that you go after you leave
San Francisco. Probably now you go to LA first
and then go to San Francisco on your way home,
so I think that Los Angeles is still a very
vital and vibrant place.
COWEN: Let’s take a few minutes and get
to your book, Mycroft Holmes, which I enjoyed
very much. I would recommend to you all. If
you’ll oblige me, let me just speak for
two or three minutes about how I read the
book, and then you respond to that.
ABDUL-JABBAR: OK.
COWEN: If you look at the cover, here’s
your name, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and there’s
the name of Mycroft Holmes. I think that’s
on purpose. In a sense you are Mycroft Holmes.
He was Sherlock’s older brother who collected
information, knew more than Sherlock, had
more information. He advised the British government.
In a sense, you’re coming out of not quite
a retirement, but you’re Mycroft. You’ve
been collecting information all this while.
This book is like announcing the real Kareem
is now here in the public, and the actual
story of this book is you reimagining a world
in some ways the way you would like it to
be.
Mycroft goes off to solve a crime with this
fellow Cyrus Douglas who is black and from
Trinidad, and they do this as equals. So it’s
a rewrite of colonial history. Your father’s
family came from Trinidad. In the story, they
go to Trinidad. At the end of the story, Cyrus—this
is now in Victorian England—is actually
allowed to enter the royal enclosure.
You look at page 60. There’s an apparently
obscure reference to James Cowles Prichard.
Who’s ever heard of him?
But, of course, in 1813, James Cowles Prichard,
if you think about it just a bit, wrote a
work which in Victorian England was considered
the defining statement of the equality of
the races and the unity of mankind. Not mentioned
in your book, but, of course, Mycroft would
know such a thing.
Finally, on page 10 of your book, we have
Mycroft humming the tune of Figaro from Rossini,
and anyone who knows even the slightest bit
of information from your life knows you’ve
been a fan of The Barber of Seville since
high school.
Therefore, I conclude you’re Mycroft. This
is your fantasy. This is the real Kareem.
Mycroft and Cyrus are both you, and this is
your coming out party saying “I really am
a writer. I’m a novelist. Here’s the real
me.” Yes or no?
ABDUL-JABBAR: Where do I begin? I think that
I tend to be more Cyrus Douglas than Mycroft,
and just my vision of their interaction is
the fact that there was a lot of value in
the colonies that the Victorian British did
not appreciate.
In forming his friendship with Cyrus Douglas,
Mycroft actually gets a glimpse at how the
British colonial system has affected people
for the good and the bad, and he has the courage
to develop a friendship with a black person,
which was frowned upon, really, by the British.
But he can see, obviously, that it has no
value, that gold is where you find it and
golden people is where you find it.
I think that’s why their friendship is so
strong because Mycroft appreciates the fact
that Cyrus is a good person with a good moral
center, and he accommodates him as a friend
because of that.
Mycroft, being not necessarily well-to-do,
but a British citizen with all of the wonderful
parts of his life are coming up. He’s just
recently graduated from Cambridge, and he
has a beautiful fiancée, and he has a great
job with the British Foreign Office, which
has found him to be a very capable administrator.
It’s all looking up for him, and then things
start to happen.
I can’t tell you about that. You have to
buy the book.
COWEN: It’s a very deep book. There’s
much more in here, I think, than reviewers
are picking up on.
ABDUL-JABBAR: Yeah.
COWEN: That’s one point I’d like to stress.
ABDUL-JABBAR: Cool.
COWEN: Now, we have a segment of these chats.
It’s called Overrated/Underrated. I go through
some names, you tell me if you think that
they’re overrated or underrated and if so
why.
ABDUL-JABBAR: OK.
COWEN: First one: John le Carré, overrated
or underrated?
ABDUL-JABBAR: I think John le Carré, all
the credit he gets he deserves. He’s an
incredible author, and just his understanding
of the Cold War enabled him to write these
wonderful novels.
I’ve read most of these in the ’70s and
’80s, starting with—well, when I was in
high school, we read The Spy Who Came in from
the Cold, and then as an adult, I read everything
that he’s written just about.
Really, he doesn’t get enough credit, I
think. John le Carré actually was an operative
for British intelligence. He worked in Germany,
and he was betrayed by Kim Philby, who was
the mole in—if you read Tinker Tailor Soldier
Spy, you know that there was a mole in the
British foreign service. That actually happened,
and John le Carré, his group was compromised
by that, and they had to disappear out of
Berlin and get back to England. Philby did
a lot of damage to their network of espionage
and intelligence people.
COWEN: Michael Jackson, not the man, but the
music.
ABDUL-JABBAR: Oh, I think Michael Jackson
certainly deserves all the credit he got.
He was an incredible performer. I knew Michael,
not very well, but I knew Michael. On Sundays,
a good friend of mine would take them to do
normal things.
Their dad was this typical stage dad from
hell who just wanted them to work and make
all this money, but my friend just was very
intense that they get to do some normal things.
On Sundays—this was while I was going to
UCLA—he would take them to a gym, and we’d
play basketball, and then he’d treat me
to brunch. So it was a good deal for me, and
I got to know the Jacksons. Great kids. It’s
really tragic about Michael, but he certainly
deserved all the credit he got.
COWEN: We know how close you were with Bruce
Lee, but what about Jackie Chan?
ABDUL-JABBAR: Jackie Chan has done a great
job. I think he’s an incredible actor. I
think he has really continued the tradition
of Bruce Lee in another way in that he has
continued to make the martial arts popular
and have kids realize that they too can be
close to superheroes.
COWEN: Here’s a guy, I think he was from
Harlem way back when. He’s called Earl “The
Goat” Manigault, and he never really made
it to the NBA, but many people claim that
if he had, he would’ve just been a brilliant,
fantastic player. You played pick-up games
with him when you were a teenager, right?
ABDUL-JABBAR: Right.
COWEN: Overrated or underrated? How good could
he have been?
ABDUL-JABBAR: Earl was overrated.
COWEN: Overrated.
[laughter]
ABDUL-JABBAR: I’m not saying that because
of envy. Earl couldn’t shoot the ball from
beyond eight feet. He could leap out of the
gym, but he couldn’t shoot the ball beyond
eight feet, and he wasn’t interested in
passing it. He wouldn’t make it very far
on any team if you don’t want to pass the
ball.
I don’t think Earl would’ve made it very
far because he had to have the ball by himself.
He was a one-on-one player. He didn’t understand
the team game. That’s why I’m critical
of Earl, but nice guy. He messed up his life
with drugs, but tried to make up for it in
the latter part of his life by being involved
with the community projects that told kids
to stay off of drugs.
I have a great deal of respect for the way
he went out. He went out trying to do the
right thing.
COWEN: Your most underrated game. I have a
nomination. Going back to 1989, I still remember
this game. The Lakers were playing against
the Detroit Pistons.
Unfortunately, that was the year of the Pistons.
It was your very last year in the NBA, but
in game three, although you were down 2–0
coming back to the home court, you put up
a spectacular performance with 28 points,
13 rebounds, played your heart out.
In my view, there’s something especially
noble to a performance which in a way was
maybe in a hopeless setting, but I’ve always
admired that game of yours more than a lot
of the victories. What’s your response,
and how well do you remember that game?
[TW suggestion: you could also embed video
of game 3, 1989 finals]
ABDUL-JABBAR: I thank you for remembering
that game. The problem that we had with the
Pistons was when the series started, Magic
Johnson got hurt and Byron Scott got hurt,
and we had to play that series without our
starting backcourt, so we got swept. Nothing
you can do about that, but I didn’t want
people to see me going out on a bum note,
so I gave it my best effort.
COWEN: A few basketball questions. I know
you’ve been asked this before, but I’d
like to press on the details a bit. Your skyhook
was unstoppable, pretty much. You’re the
leading scorer in NBA history. You won a finals
MVP award 14 years apart. That’s maybe your
greatest record, actually. No one could stop
it. My guess is no one today could stop it.
Very few players, if any, have really had
a significant skyhook, and why don’t they
learn it?
ABDUL-JABBAR: The reason that young kids today
don’t learn how to shoot hook shots is because
everybody is so enamored with the three-point
shot. So the kids, they don’t want two points.
They don’t want to work with their back
to the basket. That’s not cool. They want
to go out there in the stratosphere and shoot
three-pointers.
I didn’t think that that worked. For the
longest time, that did not work as solid basketball
strategy. But now when we have a time—when
you have people like Stephen Curry, who can
shoot the ball, he can—I’ve never seen
anybody shoot like that. I’ll give you an
explanation.
They showed Stephan shooting 100 three-point
shots in practice. He made 92 out of 100 from
the three-point arc, including 77 in a row.
This is just practicing. Anybody that can
shoot like that is on a different plane from
all the guys that I played against, and the
people that I saw when I first started watching
the game in 1960. I never seen anybody shoot
the ball like that.
If that is the coming talent level of NBA
players, they’re going to be forgetting
a lot about the guys that played in my era
and the earlier eras of the NBA because the
talent level of the guys playing now has really
risen.
But they’re not teaching the kids how to
score in the paint with their back to the
basket, and, therefore, a lot of them don’t
get to learn the hook shot, and they don’t
get to realize that if you get close to the
basket, a lot more of your shots will go in.
They don’t seem to understand that.
That was the first thing that I learned, and
so I worked on that hook shot and learned
how to get positioned close to the basket
where I can get my hook shot off.
COWEN: Let me push on this a bit. I recall
reading in one of your memoirs that you took
dance lessons early on, and when I watched
you play—I was a kid, you were younger—I
was always most impressed by your footwork.
It seemed to me you had the very best footwork.
I read in one of your books that you practiced
this footwork like crazy, for hours and hours
and hours in seventh and eighth grade.
A lot of big guys aren’t going to shoot
three-pointers no matter what—could the
real answer be that your footwork was so good
and you learned it so early, it’s just hard
to do? People are doing slam dunks and other
things, and you had this graceful footwork,
and you combined that in this coordinated
fashion with the reach, the angle, everything,
and it’s just so hard to put that whole
package together?
ABDUL-JABBAR: It’s not hard to put the package
together, but you have to want to put it together.
These guys that are playing today, they don’t
want to. It takes too much time. They get
pushed. They don’t like that. They want
to be out there in the stratosphere shooting
three-pointers, and it’s wonderful.
A lot of the games now deteriorate into a
three-point shooting contest, and it’s really
made a lot of people start to criticize the
game because—just the other night, Kobe
shot like 4 for 18 from three-point range.
COWEN: That was one of his better nights for
this year, right?
[laughter]
ABDUL-JABBAR: Right, and the fans aren’t
going to continue to enjoy that, but when
you got someone like Stephen Curry who can
shoot close to 50 percent from three-point
range, that ends up being an advantage for
his team.
COWEN: Do you blame the economic incentives
behind the culture of celebrity or is it more
of a moral failing or is it mix of the two?
ABDUL-JABBAR: I think it has to do with just
lotto fever. People want as much as they can
get for as little effort. A three-point shot
is worth 50 percent more than a shot from
inside the three-point arc. There can be a
strategy that says if you got people that
can make those shots, it’s going to work
to your advantage.
COWEN: You gave some instruction to Joakim
Noah over the last year. He’s injured right
now, I believe. Did you try to suggest he
learn a skyhook?
ABDUL-JABBAR: I tried to show Joakim the skyhook,
he wasn’t interested. I did show him some
things that he could do defensively and how
to help his team, and the next season after
I’d worked with him he won Defensive Player
of the Year.
I know I had some impact, and he thanked me,
and I thank him for giving me the opportunity.
It’s worked out pretty well.
It was going well with Andrew Bynum, but Andrew
finally got to sign his contract for $50 million,
and then at that point Andrew thought that
I didn’t know anything and that he didn’t
have to listen to me, and we don’t know
where Andrew is right now.
COWEN: Economic incentive.
ABDUL-JABBAR: He’s only 27 years old this
year, and he’s not playing in the NBA. He
hasn’t played in a couple of years, and
he’s not going to make it because he wasn’t
able to follow through on really learning
all the fundamentals.
I would make him do the fundamentals every
day before practice, and he just thought it
was boring, but now that he’s not getting
paid like he was, I think he might have a
different opinion about that, but it’s too
late now.
COWEN: You’ve said in your other interviews
that actually you applied the methods of Sherlock
and Mycroft Holmes to basketball—studying
your opponents, seeing things which they didn’t,
understanding their weak points, understanding
how you could take advantage of them.
This Sherlock Holmes metaphor, you’ve carried
that with you really since high school or
maybe longer. Is that correct?
ABDUL-JABBAR: I read all of the Sherlock Holmes
stories when I was a rookie.
COWEN: Rookie in the NBA?
ABDUL-JABBAR: Rookie in the NBA. So, jeez,
I realized that my power of observation could
maybe enable me to get some knowledge that
other people might miss out on, and I paid
attention.
The classic tale I tell about my powers of
observation had to do—we had to play Detroit.
They had Bob Lanier, a very fine center. And
the ball boys, I overheard them talking about—they
didn’t like going in the locker room after
halftime because Bob and the coach were nicotine
fiends, and they’d go in the shower and
smoke cigarettes at halftime.
I heard that, and I said, jeez, if he’s
doing that—I realized that if I could get
Bob to run a lot in the second half, he’d
be in pain. And so I did.
[laughter]
But just getting those little tidbits of information,
they can open up doors for you that you might
not appreciate.
COWEN: Let me try a few questions about religion,
and Islam in particular. If I think of Islam,
this is what I see. I see a world where probably
more people are deeply attached to Islam than
to any other religion, so it has a great attraction.
It seems to me economically it’s helped
a great number of them.
In this country, if you look at statistics,
Arab-Americans earn more than the national
average. Admittedly, they’re not all Muslims,
but still. Theologically, a lot of it makes
a great deal of sense to me—more than Christianity.
There’s intensity of yearning in the aesthetic
and the notion of the great distance between
God and man makes sense to me.
It’s in some ways pretty individualistic.
It’s highly cosmopolitan, and it doesn’t,
in most cases, rely too much on a centralized
clergy. That said, it’s striking how few
Americans have converted to Islam, and you
have.
Given these favorable features of Islam, what
do you think first is the cultural disconnect
between the United States and Islam—and
this is even pre-9/11, right, that won’t
really explain it—and how have you personally
managed to bridge that?
I know that’s sort of a mouthful, but do
you see what I’m getting at?
ABDUL-JABBAR: I do see what you’re getting
at. What I see is the fact that in Western
Europe they had the Enlightenment where people
realized that the Inquisition was not the
way to go. Burning people at the stake and
torturing them and taking their property because
they did not share the same religious beliefs
as you did was unjust and not what Jesus of
Nazareth taught his followers.
The Muslim world has not had any opportunity
to have an enlightenment. They went from the
time of the Prophet, which was seen as the
ideal time, to despots. Kings and military
rulers are the norm in the countries that
are majority Muslim.
Fair governance, not being able to arrest
somebody without charges, that’s a given
in the Western world. In the Islamic world,
that wasn’t the case. If Nasser didn’t
like you, you were going to jail despite the
fact that you hadn’t broken any laws or
committed any crimes. And that goes again
and again for most of the states that are
majority Muslim.
They really haven’t had the opportunity
to have an enlightenment. At a certain point,
the people in Europe decided they weren’t
going to burn people who they considered to
be heretics. They would have a just way to
deal with it.
In America, we figured it out by separating
church and state—the ideal situation—to
have people, to let them have their own moral
center and let them believe whatever they
wanted to believe about their moral and spiritual
center. We have a set of laws that everybody
has to respect and obey that enable everyone
to have equal opportunity. That should be
it.
COWEN: So your vision of Islam has separation
of church and state as an ideal?
ABDUL-JABBAR: It would.
COWEN: If we ask the kind of political economy
question—this is my worry, and I hope I’m
not—now, there’s so many incorrect or
just lies said in the media. If I look at
even the Muslim democracies around the world—take
Malaysia, Bangladesh, Indonesia, which are
not hotbeds of terror—they’re what you’d
call normal countries. But there seems to
be some problem they’ve had separating state
and religion. Do you think there’s a tension
between the doctrines of Islam themselves
and the desire to separate state and religion?
ABDUL-JABBAR: Oh, no. I think that has to
do with the distribution of wealth.
COWEN: Yes.
ABDUL-JABBAR: All those countries that you
mentioned have a lot of mineral wealth, oil
mainly, but some other mineral wealth, and
the people who are in charge of the state
want to keep a hold of the wealth. They don’t
necessarily care about the morality or the
laws. They just want to keep control of the
wealth. The man who ruled Indonesia for so
long, Suharto, he had billions in the bank.
This corruption is endemic in the Islamic
world, and the people in charge in the Islamic
world say, “Well, we try to rule justly,”
but it’s not. The family of the ruling party
or the ruling clique, whatever it is, they
get the priority on goods, services, and resources.
Everybody else can go to hell.
That is really what the problem is in the
Islamic world. There isn’t a real democratic
distribution of wealth, and there isn’t
a real equality of opportunity. The way they
think—.
COWEN: They have a kind of segregation problem,
right?
ABDUL-JABBAR: Right. The Koran is the first
of the books to guarantee women the right
to divorce, the right to own property and
to be in business, and, as you can see in
the Arab world, that’s the first thing that
they got rid of.
The way that Islam is interpreted in all of
those countries really goes contrary to a
lot of what the Prophet said was the way to
practice Islam, and it is for that reason
that it comes across so bizarrely, where people
say, “Oh, we have this beautiful religion
of Islam, but, yeah, we have a lot of political
prisoners. Don’t worry about them.”
They go hand-in-hand, and the fact that you
can be unjust on that level but say that Islam
is beautiful and wonderful is total hypocrisy.
That’s a very unfortunate thing, but that’s
what has happened.
COWEN: You’ve written that when you were
young, you used to visit the Cloisters in
New York.
ABDUL-JABBAR: Yes.
COWEN: Medieval art, a lot of it was religious.
In some way, you must find Islam, Islamic
art—you’ve collected Persian carpets—more
beautiful. I know this is hard to express,
but is there a way you could try to articulate
for us, probably most people in this audience
not being Muslims, but your take on what is
more beautiful that you would like to carry
to all of the listeners?
How would you put that? What has it meant
to you?
ABDUL-JABBAR: Oh, OK. I think in Islam, because
you can’t depict people or animals, they
put all their artistic expression into architecture
and abstract art. So in the Islamic world,
buildings and books, et cetera, they are developed—the
carpets are developed—it’s an interesting
thing the Prophet said that depictions of
humans in carpets are OK because we walk on
them, and we’re not showing that are worshiping
the pictures in the carpets because we walk
on them with our feet.
There is leeway there and ways of interpreting
what the Prophet had to say in ways that are
logical and make sense for a modern society,
but because of the corruption that I talked
about earlier, the people who rule in the
Islamic world, they don’t care about that.
They just want to hold onto political and
military power and all the money.
That type of corruption has led to the really
bizarre and undemocratic states that we see
that populate the Muslim world.
COWEN: Are you a long-term optimist about
this situation?
ABDUL-JABBAR: As a young man, I was very optimistic
about it. I’m not that optimistic about
it now. It seems to be entrenched. Look at
what’s happening in Syria. The Assad family,
they’re not going to give up power. The
only way that they will be removed from power
is through military means. That’s not the
way things are supposed to be going.
COWEN: Put aside the Middle East. Obviously
huge problems. Indonesia, Bangladesh, Pakistan,
India, Nigeria, for that matter, have a pretty
big share of the world’s Muslims. They have
their share of problems but they don’t have
those problems, right?
ABDUL-JABBAR: Right.
COWEN: Are you an optimist about those countries
and the role of Islam in helping those countries
develop constructively?
ABDUL-JABBAR: I’m more optimistic about
those countries because they have a history
of dealing with a lot of diverse beliefs.
In Nigeria you have people who worship idols
and stuff. You have Muslims. They get along
together. They don’t say, “Well, jeez.
You don’t think like I think. I think I’ve
got to kill you.”
Until all this Boko Haram. These are, again,
terrorists.
I think that it will continue to be like that.
The one country that I saw after what they
call the Arab Spring—Tunisia. Tunisia has
managed to make a move to democracy that’s
for real.
Wow, that’s the only country that made it
that far, but you notice they don’t have
a lot of oil. They’re not trying to plot
on each other. Next door in Libya it’s insane,
just greed and avarice have really affected
their mindset to the point where they can’t
do anything rational.
COWEN: If there is an Islamic enlightenment
in our future, do you think it will come from
the US and the UK or from where?
ABDUL-JABBAR: I think it will come from the
West. It won’t come from the places that
I mentioned that are run by despots.
COWEN: What do you think, most generally,
is the role of American or British Muslims
in the Islamic world with respect to that?
How do you view your own work and commentary
getting into that?
ABDUL-JABBAR: I think it’s our job to show
what Islam actually is. I’m happy about
certain things that happened. I’m just talking
about Southern California now. A number of
the Islamic organizations have gotten together.
They’ve gone on drives for charity. They’ve
opened up homeless shelters and done things
to show that they care about America, they
can appreciate the way America functions,
and it’s OK with them. As a Muslim, we have
to show that we can get along with everybody.
That’s not happening, unfortunately, in
the other parts of the world. Here in America
and Great Britain, as you mentioned, they
can see how democracy works, and see that
it can work.
I was cultural ambassador for Secretary of
State Clinton, and they sent me to Brazil.
The people in Brazil were amazed that Barack
Obama could be elected president. They said
a black American could never be elected president,
and we elected Barack Obama president. That
gave them a different idea about what democracy
actually could do and achieve in their country,
in Brazil.
Brazil is trying to make an effort to be more
inclusive. The wealth is unevenly distributed
between whites and black Brazilians. They
want to change that. They want to educate
the minorities and the black people in Brazil
and bring them into the economy, because that
will open up society to everybody.
These problems aren’t necessarily exclusively
coming from Islamic countries. All over the
world, corruption and dishonesty by the ruling
parties have made things more difficult.
COWEN: Let me try a question integrating religion
and politics. As a Muslim, you must, in some
ways, be a social conservative. I’m not
saying the same way Jerry Falwell is, but
in some ways, a social conservative.
You’ve in some regards spoken out on behalf
of Bernie Sanders, I think mostly on economic
issues. But the Democratic Party, it’s mostly
social liberals.
Do you ever just wake up and feel that somehow
there is no place you belong intellectually,
and is this despairing, liberating, or what?
Do you ever have these thoughts?
ABDUL-JABBAR: No. I don’t have them, because
within my own heart, I’m at peace with myself
and how I’ve lived my life. I’ve tried
to live it morally, but as far as Islamic
communities are concerned, we’ve got work
to do. It’s pretty simple, but all communities,
really, have work to do.
It’s not just Muslims. All of us—Muslim,
Christian, Jew, or agnostic—we have work
to do, because our Constitution and our traditions
require that.
COWEN: Other than the movies you’re in,
which I love, by the way, what’s your favorite
movie, and why?
ABDUL-JABBAR: Oh, jeez. Why would you ask
me that?
[laughter]
ABDUL-JABBAR: I’m a big movie fan, so just
the classic movies, The Maltese Falcon, I
totally enjoy that. I can continue, Shane,
The Shootist, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.
COWEN: This is all consistent with Chester
Himes, too, right?
ABDUL-JABBAR: Yes. I liked reading Cotton
Comes to Harlem, I didn’t like the movie.
That’s tough. You’d have to give me different
genres and stuff and let me go through it.
I enjoy movies very much and hopefully will
get Mycroft done as a movie.
COWEN: When you’re there in Game of Death,
and you’re sitting in that chair—different
than this chair, I might add, and Bruce Lee
is approaching, and you’re just sitting
there. Of course you remember the scene, what
are you thinking?
[suggestion from TW: alternatively, consider
embedding video of game of death fight scene.
But it’s somewhat violent (Kareem ends up
dying) and the quality of the video isn’t
great)]
ABDUL-JABBAR: We’ve got to get the timing
right, because we don’t want to shoot this
again.
[laughter]
COWEN: How long did it take to do that scene?
It’s about, what, 17 minutes?
ABDUL-JABBAR: Yeah.
COWEN: Sheer perfection.
ABDUL-JABBAR: It took us about a day.
COWEN: It took you a day?
ABDUL-JABBAR: They work very quickly in Hong
Kong. We shot it in Hong Kong, and they work
very quickly in Hong Kong, because they don’t
do audio. It was so noisy in Hong Kong during
the time that the British ran the place, that
there was always traffic noise and people
in the street 24/7.
They would do the audio portion of any movies
that they made in studio with the actors talking
into microphones so that they could get all
the words to appear on the screen. Then they’d
do the sound effects separately also.
COWEN: What did Bruce learn having to fight
against you?
ABDUL-JABBAR: Bruce learned that it’s hard
fighting somebody with long arms.
[laughter]
COWEN: Bruce was what, 5’7”, 5’8”?
ABDUL-JABBAR: He was 5’8”, yeah, about
155 pounds.
COWEN: What did you learn having to fight
against Bruce?
ABDUL-JABBAR: That there are some very tough
guys at 155 pounds.
[laughter]
ABDUL-JABBAR: What you learn is you can’t
have a preconceived idea of what is ideal
for you as a martial artist. You have to go
and experience some of the different martial
arts and take from them what you can that
works for you personally. I think that is
the way people train now.
The Ultimate Fighting really is how Bruce
trained, very eclectically, taking techniques
and ideas from any of the different martial
arts and using them. Bruce Lee thought that
Sugar Ray Robinson was the best boxer that
he ever saw. I would have to agree with that.
COWEN: Bruce taught you. You taught Bruce
some things. John Wooden taught you. You’ve
taught Joakim Noah. You’ve written a whole
book about your experience teaching Native
Americans basketball, but not just basketball,
really teaching them life and many other things.
ABDUL-JABBAR: I try.
COWEN: Education has been a major theme in
your career. You finished UCLA. Throughout
your life have done very well. What is it
you think you’ve learned about education—we’re
here at a university—that you get and we
don’t, that you would like to tell us?
ABDUL-JABBAR: I don’t know. I don’t know
if I’ve gotten everything. I certainly would
not have the nerve to think that everybody
here doesn’t get something that I got.
I just try to tell people that knowledge is
power. You’ve got to accumulate as much
power as you can. That requires that you go
to the library and that you read and experience
life in ways that enable you to use that power.
COWEN: If you look back on your life, all
the different things you’ve done, and you
had to sum up, what’s the underlying unity
in all the different phases of your career—hanging
out with jazz musicians as a kid, listening
to racine, playing with John Wooden, winning
so many NBA titles, MVP awards, writing, I
think, 11 books.
Having been in a number of very successful
movies, having made a few movies yourself
as executive producer and being in them, other
things I haven’t mentioned, your Time column,
being on Twitter, working with Hilary Clinton.
There’s actually still much more, but if
you had to try to sum all that up in terms
of the unity, how that all ties into the Kareem
Abdul-Jabbar philosophy, how would you put
it?
ABDUL-JABBAR: [laughs] I would have to say
that, stealing this from somebody that I can’t
remember the quote I’m stealing—life is
short, but it’s very wide. Try to get into
the width of it and experience as many things
as you can, and maybe you’ll learn a few
things.
COWEN: Kareem, thank you very much. We appreciate
it.
ABDUL-JABBAR: Thank you.
[applause]
COWEN: We now do have time for questions.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Hi, Kareem. Thanks for coming,
that was fascinating.
I was wondering, do you think NCAA athletes
should be paid for the value they create for
the universities? Do you see that ever happening?
ABDUL-JABBAR: I definitely think NCAA athletes
should be paid. I think it will happen. I
just remember someone explaining to me how
much money UCLA made by the fact that I was
there and we won three consecutive NCAA championships.
He asked me, “How much of that money did
you get?”
I said, “None.”
He said, “You’ve got to think about that.”
That hasn’t changed. I think it should change
because they’re just exploiting the athletes.
There’s a way that they can be equitable
about paying the athletes. Taking what they
take by providing a platform, but I think
the athletes should be paid.
They should be guaranteed, at least if they
go to a college on scholarship they should
be guaranteed the fact that they can continue
at that school until they graduate.
I think that is the minimum that they should
get. I think they should be given a stipend.
It’s not like we’re going to make them
rich, but give them the money to live on so
that they can have a life.
I was going to UCLA. I couldn’t work in
the off-season or anything like that in ways
that the NCAA prescribed. Someone on an academic
scholarship or the guys in the band, they
could go and work. It wasn’t equitable.
I think they should think about a way to not
exploit the athletes and give them the opportunity
to be comfortable while they go to college.
COWEN: I will alternate mics. Yes, here.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Thank you for your contributions.
My question is, has anybody approached you
about doing your life story in a movie since
we were talking about movies earlier?
ABDUL-JABBAR: Just in November on HBO a documentary
on my life story was done. It’s called Kareem:
Minority of One. You can go on HBO online
and you can see it. It’s been done already.
[laughter]
COWEN: Yes, over here.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Thanks a lot, Mr. Abdul-Jabbar.
Thank you especially for portions of your
collection that made its way to Schomburg
more than a dozen or so years ago. I thoroughly,
thoroughly appreciated it.
Assuming it’s been asked already, pardon
me, I came through hell and high snow to get
here. How does it feel to be on the verge
of being noted more for being a historian
and archivist of Af-Am material than a legendary
NBA player? Thanks.
ABDUL-JABBAR: I’m very pleased that I have
been able to be successful in a way that enables
me to be considered in the way that you just
mentioned. That people would see me as a historian
and commentator on life here in America.
That’s why I went to UCLA, really, to get
my education, to have that foundation in my
life. It’s the reason that I went to college.
I guess that’s the reason why I’m here
tonight.
Thank you for your question.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Thank you.
COWEN: Next.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Can you tell us about your
relationship with Coach John Wooden and how
it changed in later years, if it did?
ABDUL-JABBAR: I can’t give Coach Wooden
enough credit for the example that he set
in terms of integrity and living a moral life.
He was totally committed to his Christian
faith and in teaching young men about basketball
that would enable them to learn about how
to be good citizens.
He wanted us to be good citizens. He wanted
us to be good parents. He wanted us to be
good husbands and get our degrees. That was
his primary focus.
If you go to all of the NCAA Division I coaches
today, many of them would give up an arm,
a leg, or a favorite child to win the NCAA
tournament. I’m convinced of that, definitely.
But Coach Wooden wasn’t into that. His primary
focus was that we’d learn a few things and
then if we did well in the NCAA tournament
that was OK.
He had his priorities right. He taught us
in that way. Those of us who understand that
have benefited greatly.
I think his graduation rate was in the 60th
percentile. 60 percent of the guys that played
for Coach Wooden got their degrees and graduated
from UCLA. That’s pretty amazing. The average
for most Division I colleges is in the single
digits.
COWEN: Yes.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: You’ve been a hero to lots
of kids growing up. I’m curious about who
your heroes have been throughout your life.
A second question if you don’t mind. I do
recall, I think, that Dr. J actually did block
the skyhook once. Is that correct?
[laughter]
ABDUL-JABBAR: No, Dr. J didn’t do that.
[laughter]
ABDUL-JABBAR: He did his own thing where he
didn’t come back down and touch the ground
for what seemed to be an inordinate length
of time. No, Dr. J didn’t shoot the skyhook.
What was the first part of your question?
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Who have your heroes been?
ABDUL-JABBAR: I’m sorry?
COWEN: Who have your heroes been?
ABDUL-JABBAR: My heroes. Jackie Robinson,
Joe Louis, Wild Bill Hickok, and W. E. B.
Du Bois, Malcolm X, Dr. King.
COWEN: Next question.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Thank you very much for being
here. Thank you for bringing up Game of Death,
one of my favorite movies of all time.
My question is if you could tell me a little
bit about your friendship with Bruce Lee.
And a second question, Bruce was only able
to beat you because of a weakness you had
in the movie. In a fair fight, do you think
you could take him?
[laughter]
ABDUL-JABBAR: In a fair fight I wouldn’t
have any issues with Bruce. I don’t think
we would ever get to a fair fight.
I gave him a lot of problems when we worked
out because my arms are so long. I was agile
enough to move and avoid him a little bit.
We never had any arguments that would engender
a fair fight. Thank goodness for that.
I got to meet Bruce because I started studying
martial arts while I was in college. I wanted
to continue after I left New York and went
back to school at UCLA. Somebody introduced
me to Bruce. We developed a friendship. That’s
how our friendship evolved.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Thank you very much.
ABDUL-JABBAR: You’re welcome.
COWEN: Next question.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Kareem, congratulations.
We the people have just elected you president
of the United States of America.
It is now your first 100 days in office and
you are given the following list of potential
priorities, including providing universal
health care, addressing global terrorism,
fixing our public education system, fixing
our crumbling infrastructure, simplifying
the tax code, and addressing global climate
change. Which of those would you prioritize
and why?
[laughter]
ABDUL-JABBAR: Well, let’s see, you just
mentioned six issues that have stumped the
US Congress and President Obama. I don’t
see how I could figure out a way through all
of that. All those issues are crucial to what
the future of the human race is going to be
about.
Earlier today somebody complained about the
snowfall, and I said, “That’s what we
get for letting all these people in India
burn coal.” That’s a fact. How do we influence
the state of India? It’s very difficult,
probably impossible.
We just have to try to figure out some ways
to deal with those issues and hope that we
get a chance to get some leverage on them
because they will absolutely affect the quality
of life on Earth for all human beings going
into the future.
COWEN: Next question.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Thank you for being here
today. In your book On the Shoulders of Giants,
you say that if you were not a professional
basketball player you wanted to be a history
teacher.
I am a high school history teacher, and if
I were to walk in my classroom and say, “Hey,
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar told me personally to
tell you that history is important because—,”
what kind of advice would you have? What would
you say to them?
ABDUL-JABBAR: I would say to them that, unless
they understand history—and I’m stealing
again—they will be condemned to repeating
it, which hasn’t gone that well for most
human beings. They should understand that
and try not to repeat the mistakes of people
that have gone before us. That’s what that’s
all about.
COWEN: Next question.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Twenty years ago ESPN anchors
did a spoof of people singing for charity
in a song called “Don’t Walk”—this
is on YouTube today in case anybody hasn’t
seen it—in which they claimed that players
in the NBA were traveling and officials weren’t
calling it.
It was a plea for NBA players to voluntarily
not travel. There was a line in this 60-second
song that said, “It started with Kareem
Abdul-Jabbar.”
[laughter]
AUDIENCE MEMBER: I just wondered how you would
plead to that charge.
[laughter]
ABDUL-JABBAR: I plead not guilty to that.
Very few times I got called for walking because
I didn’t get to handle the ball much. They
gave me the ball, and it was time to score.
[laughter]
[applause]
ABDUL-JABBAR: As far as my assignment, my
assignment was to score. I am the all-time
leading scorer of the NBA.
[laughter]
ABDUL-JABBAR: I think I got my job done anyway.
[laughter]
COWEN: They didn’t count blocked shots until
1987, but I wonder how many you would have.
ABDUL-JABBAR: No, it was 1973. Yeah, ’73.
My first four years in the NBA they didn’t
count blocked shots as a statistic, but they
missed all of Bill Russell’s.
They missed four years of mine. They missed
all of Bill Russell’s, and he dominated
the league. They won 11 NBA championships
in 13 years with Bill Russell as center. We
don’t know how many shots he blocked, but
he dominated the game.
There’s a thing on YouTube. It’s called
Block Art, Bill Russell. If you go to YouTube,
Block Art, Bill Russell, you’ll see.
He just terrorized the league. No one could
shoot near the basket. He would block their
shots near the basket and get all the defensive
rebounds—he was a very superior rebounder—and
pass it out for the Celtic fast break, which
was the way they primarily attacked the rest
of the league.
Of his 13 years in the NBA, they only didn’t
win the World Championship only twice—11
World Championships and two losses. I think
Bill Russell certainly is not acknowledged
for what he did because of the way they kept
statistics.
So I don’t complain about those four years.
Still, when I retired, I was the all-time
leader in blocked shots. I think Dikembe and
Olajuwon have passed me in statistics. If
they added my first four years, probably they
wouldn’t have done that. I don’t care
about that. I had a wonderful career, and
I don’t sit up at night and say, “God
damn it, they didn’t—.”
[laughter]
ABDUL-JABBAR: I’m not worried about it.
COWEN: Next question.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: I have two quick questions.
One is, who has had a better career, Kobe
Bryant or Tim Duncan? The other question is,
do you think Dirk Nowitzki’s one-foot fadeaway
is the most unblockable shot since the skyhook?
ABDUL-JABBAR: I think Kobe—what was that
you asked me about Kobe?
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Who’s had a better career,
Tim Duncan or Kobe Bryant?
ABDUL-JABBAR: Jeez, I would say that Tim Duncan
has had a better career just because they’ve
been able to win more consistently, and they
didn’t have to rely on Tim all the time.
Kobe has worn his body out. He’s only like
36 years old, and he’s worn his body out.
It’s falling apart because of the stress
that he had to do just taking on the load
that he did, but he wanted to do it that way.
That was that. The second part?
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Has there been an unstoppable
move in the NBA since the skyhook? And I bring
up Dirk’s fadeaway.
ABDUL-JABBAR: You asked about Dirk Nowitzki.
Dirk Nowitzki’s shot is very hard to block,
but I don’t think that he was able to have
a dominant career because he couldn’t do
other things. If he could have shot like that
and rebounded and played defense and blocked
shots, then he would have been all-around,
and he would have gotten more credit. He was
like a one-trick pony.
You want guys that can shoot like that on
your team. I’m not saying that he lacked
value, but he would have been considered at
a higher level if he had done more on the
court other than just shoot the ball.
COWEN: Next question.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Two quick questions. My favorite
coach right now is Gregg Popovich. Would you
say he’s the best coach in the NBA?
ABDUL-JABBAR: Got to go with Gregg. He gets
his team to play well most consistently of
all the coaches that I’ve seen out there.
I would give him credit, just the consistency.
Plus, you’ve got to give their front office
credit for looking for players that fit into
the system—players that can play defense
and don’t mind passing the ball. That’s
very important. If you can’t get players
that have that attitude, it takes a while
before they can buy into the team concept.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Second, I was just wondering,
what are your thoughts on affirmative action,
how it started, how it’s progressed since
then, and would you keep it going today?
ABDUL-JABBAR: I think affirmative action has
done a lot of good. It’s been abused sometimes,
but, for the most part, it has done good,
especially for minorities and women. It’s
given them the opportunity to get a foot in
the door.
I think people who don’t like to compete
against minorities and women do the complaining,
because prior to that point they had priority.
Now that the gates are wide open for anybody
who can be successful, people want to try
to eliminate women and minorities just because
they feel they’re missing out on something.
I don’t agree with that. Thank you.
COWEN: Next question.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Wooden produced a lot of
great basketball players at UCLA, obviously,
but it would seem to me that not very many
of those great players went on to be great
coaches. Do you agree with that, and can you
offer an explanation?
ABDUL-JABBAR: I think that the reason that
a whole lot of great coaches haven’t come
out of UCLA is the guys aren’t interested
in coaching. The only one I know of that went
on to coach is Brad Holland who played with
us in 1980. He ended up coaching at University
of San Diego. None of the guys have had an
interest in coaching. There’s not much there.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: [inaudible] produced too
well-rounded of a person?
[laughter]
ABDUL-JABBAR: You’re probably right. I’m
thinking that you’re right, yes.
COWEN: Next question.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Salaam alaikum.
ABDUL-JABBAR: Wa alaikum salaam.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: I wanted to know whether
you ever had the opportunity to meet with
Warith Deen Mohammed and if you had any recollections
or impressions that you would share.
ABDUL-JABBAR: Meet with who?
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Warith Deen Mohammed, the
heir to the Nation of Islam after the death
of Elijah Muhammad who brought him into orthodox
Islam.
ABDUL-JABBAR: No, I haven’t. I haven’t
had a chance to meet him. I don’t know those
people.
COWEN: Next question.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: We already addressed paying
athletes in the NCAA, but I’m curious what
you think about the one-and-done rule.
As the D-League develops and gets deeper and
a more thorough system like baseball’s minor
league system, is there room to maybe change
to giving kids the option if they want to
come straight out of high school again or
wait three years like the MLB draft does?
What would you do with the one-and-done rule
right now? Do you think maybe in the future
there’s a better option?
ABDUL-JABBAR: Which question do you want me
to answer?
[laughter]
AUDIENCE MEMBER: What do you think of the
one-and-done rule? Do you think there’s
a better solution?
ABDUL-JABBAR: The one-and-done rule stinks.
It’s bad for the game of basketball in college,
because all the talent doesn’t stay there.
It’s bad for the pro game, because the guys
coming out of college that have done one-and-done
are arrogant and think that they are prima
donnas.
They don’t think that they’re prima donnas.
They don’t realize they’re prima donnas.
They expect that they’re just going to be
handed a job. They come in and try to dominate,
and they’re not able to do that. I don’t
think it’s good for the game or for the
individuals.
The D-League is a good idea. I think it could
all be solved if the Players Association and
the NBA raised the age of entry into the NBA
to 21. Then that means that some kid in high
school isn’t thinking, “I’m going into
the NBA in two or three years, and I’m going
to get all this money,” because it really
corrupts their work ethic and their humility.
It’s not good. I just haven’t seen anything
good come from it.
COWEN: Two more minutes, one more question.
Last question please.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Thank you, once again, for
coming, Kareem. We’ve covered a myriad number
of questions and categories. What I’d like
to know is when is the last time you had roti
and listened to Mighty Sparrow.
ABDUL-JABBAR: Mighty Sparrow, he’s a hero
in my house. I had some roti last month.
[laughter]
ABDUL-JABBAR: I eat roti all the time. But
the Jamaican restaurant in LA closed. I’ve
got to find another one, but I still sneak
around and try and make sure I keep my roots
foremost in my sights. Thank you for your
question.
COWEN: I’m very happy we closed on Trinidad
and the Caribbean. Kareem, thank you again.
