Kareem Abdul-Jabbar Biography

Fast Facts

• After winning 71 consecutive basketball games on his high school team in New York City, Alcindor was recruited by Jerry Norman, the assistant coach of UCLA where he played for coach John Wooden on three consecutive national championship teams and was a record tree-time MVP of the NCAA tournament
• Alcindor was drafted with the first overall pick by the one-season-old Bucks franchise in the 1969 NBA draft
• After leading the Bucks to its first NBA Championship at age 24 in 1971, he took the Muslim name Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
• Using the trademark "shyhook" shot, he established himself as one of the league's top scorers
• Abdul-Jabbar played a key role in the "showtime" era of Lakers Basketball
• The teams that he played for made the playoffs 18 times and got past the first round 14 times
• The teams that he played for reached the NBA finals ten times