Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

He scored more points than anyone in the history of basketball and kept that record for thirty-nine years. LeBron James finally passed him on 7 February 2023, and needed a longer season and a three-point line to do it.

He won six championships and six Most Valuable Player awards. Nobody has won more MVPs, as of 2026. He was an All-Star nineteen times in twenty seasons, and the one he missed was a suspension of sorts — he had broken his hand punching an opponent.

He did almost all of it with one shot.

Ferdinand Lewis Alcindor Jr. was born on 16 April 1947 in Harlem.

He learned the hook shot in fifth grade, practising the Mikan Drill, and kept it for a specific reason he gave later: "the only shot I could use that didn't get smashed back in my face."

At UCLA, under John Wooden, his teams went 88–2 across three varsity seasons and won three consecutive national championships. He was the outstanding player of the tournament all three times. He scored 56 points in his college debut, which is still the NCAA record for a debut as of 2026.

The two defeats: Houston, when he had an eye injury, and USC, who held the ball — there was no shot clock — and limited him to four shots and 10 points.

After his first season the NCAA banned the dunk. It was called the Alcindor Rule.

Milwaukee took him first in the 1969 draft. He averaged 28.8 points and 14.5 rebounds as a rookie and was Rookie of the Year.

In his second season they added Oscar Robertson, and he averaged 31.7 points and 16.0 rebounds, won the scoring title and his first MVP, and Milwaukee swept Baltimore 4–0 in the Finals. He averaged 27 points on 60.5% shooting in the series and was Finals MVP.

That was 1971, his second year in the league. He had changed his name that season, after converting to Islam.

The following year he averaged 34.8 points and 16.6 rebounds and won MVP again.

It worked because of geometry rather than athleticism, which is why it lasted twenty years.

He released it from as high as his arm would reach, turning his body sideways so that it sat between the defender and the ball, with his free arm extended. A defender trying to reach it had to go through him, and anyone who did get a hand to it late risked a goaltending call because the ball was already descending.

Wooden had told him to keep the ball close to his body and shoot with a straighter motion rather than the usual sweeping hook, so it could not be blocked from behind.

It is the most famous unguardable shot in the sport, and essentially nobody has copied it.

He was traded to the Lakers in 1975 and won MVP in each of his first two seasons there, then again in 1979–80 at thirty-two — a sixth, which no one has matched as of 2026.

He also broke his hand twice. In the 1974 preseason he took a fingernail in the eye, punched the backboard stanchion and broke two bones. He came back wearing the goggles he is remembered in. Two minutes into the opening game of 1977–78 he broke the same hand punching Kent Benson, who had elbowed him, and missed twenty games.

Then Magic Johnson arrived in 1979 and the Lakers became Showtime.

In the 1980 Finals against Philadelphia he averaged 33.4 points. In Game 5 he sprained his ankle, came back, and finished with 40. He could not play Game 6 — and Magic, a rookie point guard, started at centre in his place and put up 42 points, 15 rebounds and 7 assists.

That is the most famous game of Magic's career and it happened because Kareem could not walk.

Boston beat the Lakers 148–114 in Game 1 of the 1985 Finals, a result still called the Memorial Day Massacre. He had 12 points and three rebounds.

He was thirty-eight. The obituaries were being written between games.

In Game 2 he scored 30 with 17 rebounds, eight assists and three blocks. Across the four Lakers wins in that series he averaged 30.2 points, 11.3 rebounds and 6.5 assists, and at thirty-eight years and fifty-four days he became the oldest Finals MVP there has ever been.

It was the first time the Lakers had beaten Boston in a Finals. They had lost to them eight times.

1988–89: 10.1 points a game across 74 games, the lowest of his career.

He was given a farewell tour — standing ovations in every arena, and gifts, including a yacht named Captain Skyhook and a Persian rug. In his last home game at the Forum every Lakers player wore his goggles.

The Lakers were swept by Detroit in the Finals and he announced his retirement in the locker room afterwards, at forty-two, after twenty seasons.

He held the all-time scoring record from 1984 until 2023 — thirty-nine years.

Six is the record, and still stands in 2026. The sixth came at thirty-two, in his eleventh season.

Pat Riley, who coached him at the Lakers: "Why judge anymore? When a man has broken records, won championships, endured tremendous criticism and responsibility, why judge? Let's toast him as the greatest player ever."

Julius Erving: "In terms of players all-time, Kareem is still the number one guy. He's the guy you gotta start your franchise with."

Isiah Thomas: "If they say the numbers don't lie, then Kareem is the greatest ever to play the game."

The case for him is the longevity, and longevity is the least glamorous argument in sport. He won a championship in 1971 with Oscar Robertson, who was born in 1938, and another in 1988 with Magic Johnson, who was born in 1959. He was the best player in the league at twenty-four and the Finals MVP at thirty-eight.

Twenty seasons, 1,560 games, and a scoring record that stood for thirty-nine years — set by a man who was never the most spectacular player of his era and simply could not be stopped from scoring, because there was no way to reach the ball.