He was born to Cora and Ferdinand Lewis "Al" Alcindor in Harlem, New York City, in 1947, and was 12 pounds, 11 ounces, and was twenty-two and a half inches. He was raised as a Catholic. From an early age he began his record-breaking basketball accomplishments. In high school, he led Power Memorial Academy to three straight New York City Catholic championships, a 71-game winning streak, and a 96–6 overall record.

He became a legendary US NBA basketball player with the Milwaukee Bucks (1969 - 1975) and the Los Angeles Lakers (1975 - 1989), the 7' 2" Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (born Lew Alcindor) has made numerous guest appearances on US TV shows including "The Man From Atlantis", "21 Jump Street", "Tales from the Darkside" and "Scrubs".

However, he's best known to film audiences for two very different film roles. Firstly, as a very tall adversary to Bruce Lee during a rather unique fight sequence in Lee's final film Game of Death (1978), and then Kareem played an airline pilot with a remarkable similarity to "Kareem Abdul-Jabbar" in the hilarious _Airplane (1980)_ .

Trivia

- Height 7 ft 2 in (2.18 m)
- NBA's all-time leading scorer with 38,387 points
- Studied Jeet Kune Do Martial arts under Bruce Lee
- Pearl Jam's Jeff Ament wrote a song about him based on the urban myth that he lost all of his money investing in hotels for tall people. The song, entitled "Sweet Lew," appears on the album "Lost Dogs"
- The #33 on his basketball jersey was a tribute to his friend Bruce Lee who died in 1973

VMAC 2007

First round:

Kareem Abdul Jabbar links

Basketball hall of fame

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