As Kareem’s run atop the NBA’s scoring list ends, Pat Riley reflects
Pat Riley remembers almost every detail of the events of December 29, 1961. It was a cold night in Schenectady, New York. A little snow, the roads a little icy. And when the bus carrying the opposing team from New York City arrived, everyone at Riley Linton High looked out the window.
They saw a giant.
Long before Riley and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar won NBA championships together as a coach and player with the Showtime-era Los Angeles Lakers in the 1980s, they were opponents. Riley and Linton beat Power Memorial and Lew Alcindor — Abdul-Jabbar’s name before he converted to Islam — 74-68 that night.
Abdul-Jabbar, then a 6-foot-10 freshman, was held to eight points as he spent virtually the entire game in foul trouble. He has told Riley several times over the years that Linton won because Riley’s father, a lifelong baseball man, had his umpire friends umpire the game.
“What we did,” Riley admits.
Riley knew it then and appreciated it even more years later: There were only a few ways to stop the player who would eventually spend nearly four decades as the most prolific scorer in NBA history. Abdul-Jabbar is about to be surpassed by the Lakers’ LeBron James, the 38-year-old who was barely nine months old when the unforgettable center made one of his signature sky hooks on April 5, 1984, to overtake Wilt . Chamberlain and become the league’s leading scorer.
“Kareem was a guy who never had any potential. He just had greatness,” said Riley, now president of the Miami Heat and one of the few to have worked with both Abdul-Jabbar and James. “You can see it. When you can bypass potential and go straight to greatness as a high school player, and then college and then the pros … there are very few like him. There are a handful . Two handfuls, at most.”
James is one of them, going straight from high school to the NBA, and now in his 20th season, he is now just 89 points away from surpassing Abdul-Jabbar’s record. The Lakers play Indiana on Thursday and then New Orleans on Saturday.
The most realistic goal for the record-breaker is Tuesday in Los Angeles against Oklahoma City or, perhaps symbolically, next Thursday in LA, when the Lakers host the Milwaukee Bucks, the team with which Abdul-Jabbar began his NBA career.
Last October, Abdul-Jabbar, on his Substack page, where he discusses and opines on various topics, often nothing to do with sports, when James passed Kobe Bryant for No. 3 on the all-time scoring list times in 2020. , “I knew it was only a matter of time before he happened to me too.”
Abdul-Jabbar wrote that every time a record is broken, all people are uplifted.
“When I broke Wilt Chamberlain’s scoring record in 1984, the year LeBron was born, it upset Wilt, who had had a bit of a one-sided rivalry with me since I started doing so well in the NBA.” . “I don’t feel that way about LeBron. I’m not just going to celebrate his success, I’m going to sing his praises unequivocally.”
The relationship between Abdul-Jabbar and James seems complicated. Abdul-Jabbar was outside Cleveland’s locker room during the 2016 Eastern Conference Finals as James jogged by; the two hugged and shared a few kind words, leading James to discuss the respect he has for Abdul-Jabbar and others leading the way in his postgame comments.
Abdul-Jabbar also praised James “as a community leader and sportsman.” But he criticized James for not doing more with his platform to encourage people to get vaccinated against COVID-19. And earlier this season, James said he has “no relationship” with Abdul-Jabbar.
There are ties that bind them together, though. Both are champions. Both have worked to promote social justice and spoken out against racial inequality. Abdul-Jabbar played 20 years in the NBA; James is in his 20th year. Abdul-Jabbar set the record while playing for the Lakers; Jaume will do the same.
And if nothing else, James’ pursuit of the puck may have exposed a generation or two who never saw Abdul-Jabbar play to the great he was.
“We always have to recognize those who have gone before us, those who have paved the way,” Lakers coach Darvin Ham said. “You think about all those points that Kareem scored and he had, what, a three-pointer? You think about all that, and these kids learn about a different era. It’s a high-level education in the game of basketball, especially basketball of the NBA.”
When Abdul-Jabbar broke the record, Riley said Magic Johnson, then the Lakers’ point guard, made sure he was the one who got the assist on the play. Johnson almost turned in the game against Utah in Las Vegas that night when Abdul-Jabbar was two points away.
Years later, when the Lakers from those championship teams of that era met in Hawaii last summer for a meeting, Abdul-Jabbar arrived a day late due to personal issues. The Lakers in 2022 celebrated its arrival the same way they did the record in 1984.
“He felt special because he was special, because he is special,” Riley said of the man who once stood shoulder-to-shoulder with a battered Muhammad Ali during the boxing champion’s legal troubles of late 60, and featured Bill Russell, another. basketball giant and champion of social change, as a mentor. “He was treated like the patriarch by all the players. It was a big week for him. He was engaged, came to everything we did, had some spontaneous chats. And he’s a shy guy, but he felt very comfortable in his group.”
Riley coached Abdul-Jabbar in Los Angeles and later lured James to Miami for a four-year run beginning in 2010. James sees much of what he saw in Alcindor when the bus rolled into Schenectady in 1961 .
“Right now it’s about LeBron, and it should be, with his unique career and unique opportunity to do that,” Riley said. “Training, travel, personal chefs, personal trainers, all these things have come into play since Kareem. I hope people also realize Kareem’s story and how different he was. He went to college for four years; LeBron came out of high school. But they both dominated from Day 1. They both turned potential into greatness from Day 1.”
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