Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

  Everybody has read the famous Aristotlian syllogism, ``All men are mortal…’’ but three days back when I heard that Kareem Abdul Jabbar had leukaemia I was most distressed: Good Lord, not him.

I might sound mushy here, but growing up in the 1970s, Kareem was not just the epitome of sporting excellence, but also seemed invincible. He was perhaps the first big NBA star to find resonance in India, and I can recall vividly being introduced to his superb skills and monumental reputation on my first day as a working journalist.

At Sportsweek where I cut my teeth, one of my colleagues was Javed Akhtar (alas, he died earlier this year of cancer), a basketballer of fair repute who had grown up in Nagpada, located in the innards of Bombay, and then gone on to play for the state and in the national championships.

``This guy is my hero,’’ said Javed, holding up a picture of a man with a mop of unruly hair on his head, a scruffy beard and who seemed to stretch taller than Eiffel Tower. There was an intensity in his eyes that was piercing. The visage was unsmiling, almost grim, suggesting a man who was on a mission every moment.

Those were the days of black and white photographs, which actually accentuated Kareem’s ebony hue and his personality. I spent a while on the picture and Javed then provided more details on the player, which were part of the profile the magazine was to carry that week. Basketball was not a very popular sport in India, and had it not been for Javed’s personal interest, it is unlikely that the sport would have featured as extensively as it did in the magazine.

Kareem’s career statistics even then (this was 1979 and he was 32) were already formidable by any account. Even at first glance, it was evident that he was a stellar player, the kind who not only wins games, but draws in the spectators. Javed, who was an avid follower of the NBA through newspapers et al at the United States Information Service (remember, this was before cable tv came to India and the internet was still a few decades away from becoming the greatest disseminator of info) would fill us in with details about Kareem’s progress on a weekly basis.

I must confess though that more than the MVPs he had won and the average, what impressed me most initially was Kareem’s height: Heck, 7 feet 2 inches seemed so unreal, so unlike any other basketballer I had seen or imagined. Javed, who was 6 feet 3 inches, was called `Man Mountain’ in our office. India’s then best-known player Abbas Moontasir was perhaps an inch shorter. Compared to Kareem, they were dwarfs.

Indians, of course, are not particularly well-endowed where length of body frame is concerned, and I had heard that basketballers in the US were extraordinarily tall. But even so Kareem looked different, intimidating. ``Don’t go by just the height,’’ quipped Javed, however, when I threw some queries at him about Kareem’s training, diet etc, ``He is a giant in every which way.’’

It is no exaggeration to say that Kareem was the best known basketballer in India in the 70s and 80s. Hardly anybody outside of the fraternity was aware of even someone like Wilt Chamberlain. Magic Johnson and Larry Bird were names that popped up occasionally in conversations amongst sports aficionados, and that largely through people who had travelled to America. The era of Michael Jordan was yet to come.

At the Nagpada Neighbourhood club in Mumbai (which is how the city is now known) where the NBA has recently established a state of the art court, Kareem loomed large in consciousness – through his reputation carried word of mouth by guys like Javed, bolstered by the occasional large-sized centrespread from some magazine, but most emphatically by players young and old trying to replicate the `sky hook’ which Kareem had patented so brilliantly.

So enamoured was the basketball community with this shot that Javed, essentially a defender, once took me to the court when nobody was around to give me a life demo of how it was played. The difficulty quotient of playing the `sky hook’ was manifest in the fumbles and tumbles that a seasoned player like Javed took in executing the shot.

When the age of videotapes dawned in India, I watched several of Kareem’s matches in thrall. Through hundreds of recorded games, I watched him evolve from a precocious rookie into an all-time great, using his skills with a panache and consistency that is possible only for the truly gifted and motivated.

Has there been a better player than Kareem Abdul Jabbar? The jury is still out on that, but where India is concerned, his contribution to the sustenance of the sport in whatever small way, has been unmatchable. Why, anywhere in the world, when basketball is discussed, Kareem Abdul Jabbar it would be impossible to leave out Kareem Abdul Jabbar.

In that sense, Aristotle’s most famous syllogism might be a trifle skewed. There are a few who achieve immortality.

Ayaz Memon is editor-at-large with the Daily News and Analysis, Mumbai.