{"id":134636,"date":"2020-09-27T08:23:50","date_gmt":"2020-09-27T16:23:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=134636"},"modified":"2020-09-27T08:23:50","modified_gmt":"2020-09-27T16:23:50","slug":"showtime-magic-kareem-riley-and-the-los-angeles-lakers-dynasty-of-the-1980s","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=134636","title":{"rendered":"Showtime: Magic, Kareem, Riley, and the Los Angeles Lakers Dynasty of the 1980s"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jeff Pearlman writes in this 2014 book<\/a>:<\/p>\n

* Kareem Abdul-Jabbar hated white people.<\/p>\n

Read that sentence again.<\/p>\n

And again.<\/p>\n

And again.<\/p>\n

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar hated white people and, quite frankly, why wouldn\u2019t he have? Born on April 16, 1947, in New York City, he was named Ferdinand Lewis Alcindor Jr. by his parents\u2014Cora Lillian, a department store price checker, and Ferdinand Lewis Alcindor Sr., a transit police officer and jazz trombonist who graduated from the Juilliard School of music and later played with Art Blakey and Yusef Lateef. Lewis entered the world weighing twelve pounds, ten ounces and measuring twenty-two and a half inches long\u2014signs that America had received its latest future beanstalk.<\/p>\n

Growing up in Harlem\u2019s Dyckman housing complex, Lewis became increasingly aware that life for black Americans was painfully confounding. In his autobiography, Giant Steps, he recalled a boyhood trip with his mother to Associated, the neighborhood grocery store. \u201cThe store manager decided we were dangerous customers, or maybe he just felt like wielding a little power that day,\u201d he wrote. \u201cHe intercepted my mother and told her to check her bag up front. The store was full of people with all sorts of baggage, but he was going to make us the example. My mother took this for what it was, another in a lifetime of petty harassments, and told the man that if he had to satisfy himself that she was no thief, he could inspect the package when she left.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lew Alcindor was not merely black. He was tall and black and painfully aware of the stares and the glares and the suspicious looks and the inevitable sight of store employees tracking his whereabouts. His first best friend was a white child named John. They were classmates at St. Jude\u2019s parish elementary school who bonded over model airplanes and funny jokes. By seventh grade, however, an unspoken racial tension divided the two. One day, during lunch, John and Lew wound up in the principal\u2019s office after a scuffle. As Alcindor left, he heard someone yelling at him. \u201cHey, nigger! Hey, jungle bunny! You big jungle nigger!\u201d<\/p>\n

It was John. \u201cFuck you, you . . . milk bottle,\u201d Alcindor responded.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was the only white thing I could think of,\u201d he later wrote. \u201cIt really pissed him off, but he didn\u2019t come anywhere near me. We never spoke again.\u201d<\/p>\n

* Alcindor graduated junior high in the summer of 1961, and found himself growing apart from white friends. \u201cThey made it extremely clear . . . that I wasn\u2019t at home in their crowd,\u201d he wrote. He arrived at Power Memorial that fall, uninspired by the heavy-handed Catholic doctrine. Inside his new school, Jesus was white and Pope John XXIII was infallible and masturbation could result in an eternity of blindness alongside the devil. There was one lecture after another, mostly warning the students that they were sinners who needed to repent.<\/p>\n

For a young man who absorbed books (he was addicted to Greek tragedies) and questioned doctrine, it was torturous.<\/p>\n

Until basketball started.<\/p>\n

* If Alcindor arrived in Los Angeles with particular misgivings about Caucasians, they were only magnified through increased study. Wooden, as open-minded a white man as Alcindor had ever met, embraced his young future star\u2014but with certain limitations. \u201cThere was warm, mutual respect,\u201d Abdul-Jabbar later said. \u201cBut because I was black, there was never this father-son thing. He couldn\u2019t put his arm around my waist and introduce me as his boy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Alcindor began forgoing standard collegiate attire for caftans, dashikis and djellabas\u2014Afrocentric garb ordered from Ashanti Fashions, located in the center of Harlem. An article with the headline FIENDISH IN THE VALLEY WITH LEW ALCINDOR AT THE LATTER\u2019S SMALL BUNGALOW IN ENCINO appeared in West Magazine (a Los Angeles Times supplement), and portrayed him as an America-loathing racist bent on separatism. Asked to assess backup center Steve Patterson, Alcindor snapped, \u201cA white boy from Santa Maria. That\u2019s all.\u201d<\/p>\n

* As he dominated on the court, Alcindor turned increasingly divisive off of it. This was hardly the case of a man seeking out trouble. But with media scrutiny came exposure. With exposure came truth. With truth came scorn. Alcindor emerged as a symbol\u2014along with the likes of Muhammad Ali, Jim Brown, Tommie Smith and Juan Carlos\u2014of the black athlete no longer merely willing to go along just to get along. He would play your sport and dribble your ball and accept your cheers. But he refused to be a pawn. On November 23, 1967, Alcindor was one of 120 attendees (and 65 collegiate athletes) at the Western Black Youth Conference, a meeting held inside the Second Baptist Church on the east side of Los Angeles. The matter at hand: Determine whether black athletes would compete in the upcoming Mexico City Olympic Games.<\/p>\n

White media members tagged the gathering \u201cradical,\u201d and they were correct. Harry Edwards, a twenty-four-year-old professor at San Jose State and the movement\u2019s leader, stood before the room and spoke his mind. \u201cWe\u2019ve been put in the position of asking the whites for everything,\u201d he said to an ocean of nodding heads. \u201cWe\u2019re not asking anymore, we\u2019re demanding. We\u2019re fanatical about our rights. We\u2019ve been put in the position of taking our case to the criminal. The U.S. government is the criminal.\u201d<\/p>\n

Midway through the session, Alcindor reportedly rose. \u201cI was born in a racist country,\u201d he said. \u201cI laid my life on the line when I was born. I don\u2019t have anything to lose.\u201d<\/p>\n

Alcindor boycotted, as did UCLA teammates Mike Warren and Lucius Allen. When they declined to participate in tryouts for the U.S. Olympic basketball team, J. D. Morgan, UCLA\u2019s athletic director, told Sports Illustrated the decision was based upon academics\u2014a lie. The real reason was Alcindor\u2019s discontentment with the racial situation in America. \u201cKareem gets along OK with white guys, but you have to be a brother to get next to him,\u201d said Sidney Wicks, a UCLA teammate. \u201cHe still resents the white hypocrites more than ever\u2014the people who say one thing to your face and quite another behind your back.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was in August of 1968 that Alcindor made a bold shift, leaving Catholicism (which, to the dismay of his churchgoing parents, he believed to be racist in dogma) and making a confession of faith toward the orthodox Hanafi sect of Islam. He shaved all the hair from his body, took his Shahadah (a declaration of faith\u2014La illaha ila Allah wa Muhammadun rasoolollah\u2014that must be pronounced before a witness for one to be initiated as a Muslim) and, in his mind, began life anew. The move hardly surprised Alcindor\u2019s friends, who knew of his interest in the writings and philosophies of the late Malcolm X. What did surprise them, however, was when he received a new name\u2014Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (meaning noble, powerful servant).*<\/p>\n

So yes, at this point in his life, he hated white people. Hated them. But with a catch\u2014not individually. Though he rarely befriended whites, he was open to discussions. His spiritual guide, a former Malcolm X disciple named Hamaas Abdul-Khaalis, asked Abdul-Jabbar to look beyond skin color and understand that there were plenty of black sinners, too. Abdul-Khaalis referred to Malcolm X\u2019s famous pilgrimage to Mecca, when a militant, anti-white religious leader came to see that race\u2014while important\u2014wasn\u2019t the sole factor in understanding another human being.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had a very firm grasp of the concepts I didn\u2019t like\u2014white authority, unbending rules, false-faced people\u2014but was much less certain where to draw the line in real life,\u201d Abdul-Jabbar wrote. \u201cI was wary, and angry, that I had to examine everybody I came in contact with\u2014sort of an emotional frisking\u2014because every touch could be a slap. All my whites for everything,\u201d he said to an ocean of nodding heads. \u201cWe\u2019re not asking anymore, we\u2019re demanding. We\u2019re fanatical about our rights. We\u2019ve been put in the position of taking our case to the criminal. The U.S. government is the criminal.\u201d<\/p>\n

Midway through the session, Alcindor reportedly rose. \u201cI was born in a racist country,\u201d he said. \u201cI laid my life on the line when I was born. I don\u2019t have anything to lose.\u201d<\/p>\n

Alcindor boycotted, as did UCLA teammates Mike Warren and Lucius Allen. When they declined to participate in tryouts for the U.S. Olympic basketball team, J. D. Morgan, UCLA\u2019s athletic director, told Sports Illustrated the decision was based upon academics\u2014a lie. The real reason was Alcindor\u2019s discontentment with the racial situation in America. \u201cKareem gets along OK with white guys, but you have to be a brother to get next to him,\u201d said Sidney Wicks, a UCLA teammate. \u201cHe still resents the white hypocrites more than ever\u2014the people who say one thing to your face and quite another behind your back.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was in August of 1968 that Alcindor made a bold shift, leaving Catholicism (which, to the dismay of his churchgoing parents, he believed to be racist in dogma) and making a confession of faith toward the orthodox Hanafi sect of Islam. He shaved all the hair from his body, took his Shahadah (a declaration of faith\u2014La illaha ila Allah wa Muhammadun rasoolollah\u2014that must be pronounced before a witness for one to be initiated as a Muslim) and, in his mind, began life anew. The move hardly surprised Alcindor\u2019s friends, who knew of his interest in the writings and philosophies of the late Malcolm X. What did surprise them, however, was when he received a new name\u2014Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (meaning noble, powerful servant).*<\/p>\n

So yes, at this point in his life, he hated white people. Hated them. But with a catch\u2014not individually. Though he rarely befriended whites, he was open to discussions. His spiritual guide, a former Malcolm X disciple named Hamaas Abdul-Khaalis, asked Abdul-Jabbar to look beyond skin color and understand that there were plenty of black sinners, too. Abdul-Khaalis referred to Malcolm X\u2019s famous pilgrimage to Mecca, when a militant, anti-white religious leader came to see that race\u2014while important\u2014wasn\u2019t the sole factor in understanding another human being.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had a very firm grasp of the concepts I didn\u2019t like\u2014white authority, unbending rules, false-faced people\u2014but was much less certain where to draw the line in real life,\u201d Abdul-Jabbar wrote. \u201cI was wary, and angry, that I had to examine everybody I came in contact with\u2014sort of an emotional frisking\u2014because every touch could be a slap. All my reservations became conscious, each chance meeting with a stranger and every introduction by a friend became a potential source of pain. I read all gestures intensively, and terribly often found them racially hurtful, therefore personally unacceptable. People who tried too hard to be friendly were being patronizing racists; people who didn\u2019t try hard enough were blatant racists. People I didn\u2019t know weren\u2019t worth knowing; people I did know had to watch their step.\u201d <\/p>\n

* \u201cThe truth is, the friction between Earvin and Norm went way beyond basketball,\u201d said Cooper, who was close with both guards. \u201cThat situation went to the party life. They were fucking the same girls. That was a problem. Dr. Buss was best friends with Hugh Hefner, and that door was open to Magic. And Norm being known, until then, as the number one available bachelor in Los Angeles, as the swinging guy who liked everything, it was awkward.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis was his team before, but he hadn\u2019t won anything until Magic came along. So they\u2019re bumping heads with girls, they\u2019re fucking the same girls. They didn\u2019t argue about it, but you could hear them talking about it\u2014\u2018Well, man, you need to stay away from Peggy,\u2019 and such and such. They were friends. Good friends. But then it became competitive with them over basketball and women. We used to call ourselves the Three Musketeers, because we did everything together, and now it was as if I was torn between two lovers.\u201d<\/p>\n

Added Ron Carter: \u201cNorm was my friend, but he was cocky as all hell. He has zero lack of confidence, ever. On or off the court. He saw everything Magic did as a competition. For the ball. For playing time. For women. Who\u2019s the coolest? Who\u2019s the smartest? Me and Coop would sit back and just watch. They certainly respected each other. But there was this weird tension.\u201d<\/p>\n

* Everything started at the top, where Buss\u2014fifty years old, but with the libido of a rabbit\u2014paraded around town with women barely of age to drive. \u201cJerry loved the excitement of it,\u201d said Rothman. \u201cAnd the little nymphettes thought he could get them movie careers.\u201d It was, to the uninformed, a disconcerting sight. Though Buss was certainly a handsome enough man, he looked downright grandfatherly alongside many of his women. Buss seemed to date a different person every week, and\u2014before moving on to the next bubbly beauty\u2014would snap a photograph and place the image in one of his dozens of scrapbooks. Every so often, upon request, he would break out an album and talk about the experiences. Many names he remembered. Many, he forgot. \u201cJerry once told me something I\u2019ve often thought of,\u201d said Lance Davis, Buss\u2019s longtime friend. \u201cHe said, \u2018Lance, people try and give me shit over the women I go out with. Why would I want to go out with an older woman when I can go out with one with a fresher, hotter body? Why wouldn\u2019t I go out with a twenty-six-year-old Playmate with a hot body?\u2019 Jerry said it kept him young and alive\u2014and it clearly did. He was the king, and the Forum was his palace.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jeff Pearlman writes in this 2014 book: * Kareem Abdul-Jabbar hated white people. Read that sentence again. And again. And again. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar hated white people and, quite frankly, why wouldn\u2019t he have? Born on April 16, 1947, in New … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[29581],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-134636","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-basketball"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t