Pat Riley: Kareem never had potential, ‘only greatness’
By TIM REYNOLDS Pat Riley remembers just about every detail surrounding the events of Dec. 29, 1961. It was a cold night in Schenectady, New York. A little snowy, the roads a little icy. And when the bus carrying the opposing team from New York City arrived, all of Riley’s Linton High teammates peered out the window.
They saw a giant. Long before Riley and Kareem Abdul-jabbar were winning NBA championships together as 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 — Abduljabbar’s name before converting to Islam — 74-68 that night.
Abdul-jabbar, then a 6-foot-10 freshman, was held to eight points because he spent virtually the entire game in foul trouble. He told Riley several times over the years that Linton won because Riley’s father — a lifelong baseball man — had his umpiring friends refereeing the game.
“Which we did,” Riley acknowledges.
Riley knew it then and came to appreciate 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. Abduljabbar is on the verge of being passed by the Lakers’ Lebron James, the 38-year-old who was nearly nine months from being born when the unforgettable center made one of his signature sky hooks on April 5, 1984 to overtake Wilt Chamberlain and become the league’s scoring leader.
“Kareem was a guy that never had any potential. He just had greatness,” said Riley, now the president of the Miami Heat and one of the few who has worked with both Abdul-jabbar and James. “You could see that. When you can bypass potential and you move right to greatness as a high school player, and then college and then the pros ... there are very few like him. There’s a handful. Two handfuls, at the most.”
James is one of them, going from high school straight to the NBA. Now in his 20th season, he is just 89 points away from passing Abduljabbar’s record. The Lakers play Thursday in Indiana, then Saturday at New Orleans.
The most realistic target for the recordbreaker is Tuesday in Los Angeles against Oklahoma City or — perhaps symbolically — next Thursday in L.A. when the Lakers play host to the Milwaukee Bucks, the team that Abdul-jabbar started his NBA career with.
In October, Abduljabbar — on his Substack page where he offers opinion on a variety of topics, often nothing to do with sports — wrote when James passed Kobe Bryant for No. 3 on the all-time scoring list, he “knew it was just a matter of time before he passed me too.”
Abdul-jabbar added that every time a record is broken, all people are elevated.
“When I broke Wilt Chamberlain’s scoring record in 1984 -- the year Lebron was born -- it bothered Wilt, who’d had a bit of a one-sided rivalry with me since I’d started doing so well in the NBA,” he wrote. “I don’t feel that way toward Lebron.
Not only will I celebrate his accomplishment, I will sing his praises unequivocally.”
The relationship between Abdul-jabbar and James seems complicated. Abduljabbar was outside of the Cleveland locker room during the 2016 Eastern Conference finals as James was jogging by. They embraced and shared a few kind words, prompting James to discuss the respect he has for Abdul-jabbar and others who paved the way in the postgame.
Abdul-jabbar also has lauded James “as a community leader and athlete.” 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, 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 Year 20. Abdul-jabbar set the record while playing for the Lakers; James will do the same.
If nothing else, James’ pursuit of the record may have exposed a generation that never saw Abdul-jabbar play to how great he was.
“We have to always acknowledge those who come before us, those who’ve paved the way,” Lakers coach Darvin Ham said. “You think of all those points Kareem scored and he had, what, one 3-pointer? You think about all of that, and these kids get to learn about a different era. It’s high, high-level education in the game of basketball, particularly NBA basketball.”