Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is an American retired basketball player, coach, actor, and author. During his career with the NBA’s Milwaukee Bucks and Los Angeles Lakers from 1969 to 1989, Abdul-Jabbar scored more points than any player in league history and won a record six MVP Awards and six NBA championships. In college at UCLA, he played on three championship teams, and his high school team won 71 consecutive games.
Abdul-Jabbar was born Ferdinand Lewis Alcindor, Jr on April 16, 1947, and grew up in Manhattan in New York City, the son of Cora Lillian, a department store price checker, and Ferdinand Lewis Alcindor, Sr, a transit police officer and jazz musician. He was their only child. At birth, he weighed 12 pounds, 10 ounces (5.73 kg), and was twenty-two and a half inches (57.2 cm) long. He was raised as a Catholic and attended St. Jude School in the Inwood section of Manhattan. From an early age he began his record-breaking basketball accomplishments. In high school, he led Power Memorial Academy to three straight New York City Catholic championships, a 71-game winning streak, and a 79–2 overall record. He scored 2067 points in his high school career.
He played for the UCLA Bruins from 1966 to 1969 under coach John Wooden, contributing to the team’s three-year record of 88 wins and only two losses, one to Houston and the other to crosstown rival USC who played a “stall game” (i.e., there was no shot clock, so a team could exploit the rules by, basically, holding the ball as long as it wanted before attempting to score). During his college career he was twice named Player of the Year (1967, 1969), was a three-time First Team All-American (1967-69), played on three NCAA Basketball champion teams (1967, 1968, 1969), was honored as the Most Outstanding Player in the NCAA Tournament (1967, 1968, 1969), and became the first-ever Naismith College Player of the Year in 1969. In 1967, 1968 he also won USBWA College Player of the Year which later became the Oscar Robertson Trophy. Alcindor became the only player to win the Helms Foundation Player of the Year award 3 times. Note: Freshmen were not eligible to play, so Alcindor only had 3 years to play, not four. The 1965-1966 UCLA Bruin team was the preseason #1. But on November 27, 1965, the freshmen team led by Alcindor defeated the varsity team 75-60 in the first game in the new Pauley Pavilion.[5] This defeat had no effect on the varsity’s national ranking. It was still number one the following week. Alcindor scored 51 points in that game.
UCLA became the first school to have a top winner in both basketball and football in the same year with Gary Beban winning the Heisman Trophy and Abdul-Jabbar winning the U.S. Basketball Writers Association player of the year award in 1968.
The dunk was banned in college basketball after the 1967 season, primarily because of Alcindor’s dominant use of the shot. It was not allowed again until 1976.
While playing for UCLA, he suffered a scratched left cornea on January 12, 1968 at the Cal game when he was struck by Tom Henderson of Cal in a rebound battle. He would miss the next two games against Stanford and Portland. This happened right before the momentous game against Houston. His cornea later would be scratched again during his pro career, causing him to subsequently wear goggles for protection.