The Arc of a Skyhook

On the night before Hoopfest, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar will speak at the Fox about his book and film, On the Shoulders of Giants — a tribute to the intertwined histories of basketball, jazz and the Harlem Renaissance. We caught up with the NBA’s all-time leading scorer just after his Los Angeles Lakers won a 15th championship last week — a number he helped build as a member of six of those previous title teams.

INLANDER: Your book is about the value of tradition, in several areas. You’ve said that players today mostly want to dunk and shoot threes and they don’t care about the traditions of basketball. So why is it important for young people today to care about the history of jazz, basketball and even the Harlem Renaissance?

KAREEM: It’s important to see how we got here, how we got to be who we are. I see, especially in pro basketball, young players who feel entitled to it, who think that millions of dollars are just waiting for them because they’re so wonderful. They don’t realize all the sacrifices that so many people made to give them the opportunities that they have.

And are the Harlem Rens [a team like the Globetrotters, but serious competitors] among those who made those sacrifices?

Yes, and it’s important to know about them, especially for the black ballplayers. If you were to speak to all of the players in the NBA now and ask them, “Was the NBA ever segregated?” I would bet that 99 percent of them would say, “I don’t know anything about that.” So just having that opportunity to play and to make all that great money — they think that’s just a given.

You mention in the book about Thelonious Monk saying, “Be yourself — play your own kind of music,” and how that inspired you to be more confident in your own style of play. What are some other examples of the tradition of jazz influencing you personally?

Well, having the courage to be a soloist in a jazz ensemble … you’ve gotta have something to say, and you’ve gotta have the ability to say it confidently so that it will be a force to affect people positively. It takes a lot of guts to do that, to go ahead and make the statement.

It’s the same thing with basketball: When you run a clear-out on one side and you give the ball to just one player and basically say to him, “OK, it’s up to you to get us two points.” It’s the same idea.

But I’ve asked jazz musicians the reverse — “Is playing in a jazz quartet anything like playing basketball?” — and the answer is usually, “Yeah, except it’s not competitive.”

Well, with jazz, you do get to rehearse it, set it up beforehand to make a statement. But in basketball, when you’re out on the court, there are other guys who are actively looking to rain on your parade. With jazz [laughs], it’s not like there’s another band up there playing at the same time and trying to mess with you.

Hoopfest has 25,000 players on more than 400 courts spread all over downtown. What’s the biggest 3-on-3 tournament you’ve witnessed?

This is great [laughs]. The only 3-on-3 tournament I’ve ever witnessed was one that I played in, in the eighth grade. It was run by the New York City Parks Department. This was all five boroughs. And we won. And that was the first competition that I ever won. My grade school put that trophy in the trophy case, and I could look at that every day when I walked in, and I thought, “I was part of that. I achieved something.”

But that was really the only thing we won that year. In the regular season, we lost to our hated rivals, the Church of the Good Shepherd. They beat us in the playoffs for the best team in all of Manhattan. But that was a great season for me.

Let’s move on to your advice for playing Hoopfest. Street ball doesn’t have transitions, so it’s more physical, with more emphasis on pounding it inside. As you imagine coaching a 3-on-3 team, are there other significant differences from 5-on-5?

Well, you don’t have to run, so it takes that aspect out of it. Ball handling and passing become really crucial, because the game’s more compact — you’re not changing ends of the court, so every attempt at driving the lane becomes that much more important.

I want to draw on the coaching knowledge you’ve been exposed to. So consider four coaches — Jack Donahue [Lew Alcindor’s high school coach at Power Memorial Academy], Coach Wooden, Pat Riley, Phil Jackson — and what they might say about various aspects of 3-on-3 strategy, like … Which of them would say, “Switch everything on defense,” as opposed to “Fight over every screen”?

That really depends on the makeup of your team. Even if you’re all very good defenders, if you have a point guard who’s 5-foot-8 and he gets caught in a pick-and-roll with a center who can shoot from outside and who’s six-foot-8, then it’s better to deny him than to start switching.

So match-ups are what matters.

Yeah. If you’re all about the same height, then switch away.

Which of your coaches would really emphasize blocking out on rebounds?

Well, my first coach, in elementary school — he coached [four sports]. He was a busy guy [laughs]. So the college kids in my parish, they would work with us on stuff. They’d gone to Manhattan College, and they showed me the Mikan drill, and the importance of footwork. And some of the parents would help out in track and baseball.

It takes a village to coach an athlete.

Yeah, that’s it.

In On the Shoulders of Giants, you list your four biggest inspirations as Harlem, basketball, jazz and literature. What would be a fifth?

Trying to impress all the pretty girls. That’s why I went out there. I mean, I saw that’s why the football players went out there. But in basketball, you shed a lot less blood.

You’ve said that John Wooden’s coaching at UCLA made you a better parent. How so?

It was in the way he challenged us. Here we are — we’re 18, 19, 20 years old, and we know it all. So he would let us try it our way. And then, after failing to get it done, he’d say, “OK, this is how it’s done.” His ability to be patient like that, to challenge us, has really paid off for me in dealing with my children. He was ideal like that.

You’ve been a mentor yourself — you’ve volunteered for years on the Fort Apache Indian Reservation in Whiteriver, Arizona. Do kids on the rez take coaching differently, because the stakes are higher and they might find a way to get off the rez?

Same way, same way — they don’t want to hear it. They’ve got their shortcuts, and they’re gonna use ‘em. So you just have to wait for them to run into a wall, and then you gotta show ‘em how to do it.

When you go to the rez, you’ve got the same problems as in the inner city: substance abuse, teen pregnancy, dietary problems — all that stuff. Lack of economic opportunity, poor educational standards. And you have to deal with that.

I didn’t expect that when I first went there, but I might as well have been in Harlem or on the South Side of Chicago. 

At the recent Lakers victory celebration, what was your favorite and least favorite aspect? Because I’ve always admired how you’re reserved and let your playing do the talking, whereas some of these fans get too idolatrous of their sports heroes.

Being on the inside, it was nice to see the guys, especially the younger players, work together toward a common goal and then achieve it. The rest of the guys — except for Kobe [Bryant] and Derek [Fisher], they’d never done it before. So to see them as adults, still learning — I mean, a lot of them didn’t go to college, they’re not finished in that sense. They’re still growing. They’re professionals, but for them to achieve that — that was nice to see.

Basketball can teach some great lessons, but for some people, it teaches negative things — poor sportsmanship, being hyper-competitive all the time. Aren’t basketball and sports in general over-emphasized in our society?

Sports are just a tool. Especially at the level of kids in grade school. Bryant Gumbel just had a piece on how one of these parents — he loved his kids, but he was living his life through them. His son was in wrestling, and they were at a tournament, and the son wasn’t having any fun at all. He was crying. And the dad was getting on his case. The parent had totally distorted what sports are all about. There was a lack of balance, and I’d say there was the potential for that son to grow up and be a jerk.

Some of these parents are like stage parents.

But weren’t you under pressure yourself?

From my parents? None. My dad wanted me to pay more attention to my piano lessons. But I wanted to play baseball. And when I got to play — that was like being beyond the Brooklyn Dodgers. Little League was wonderful for me.

My mom would come to the games, but she would watch from a distance. My dad only came at the end of the year, for the Little League playoffs.

But my good friend in my building — his mom was like a stage parent. She always wanted him to get all the attention. But my friend saw that I was having fun.

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar will discuss "On the Shoulders of Giants" at the Fox on Friday, June 26, at 7 pm. Tickets: $50 (includes T-shirt, CD and autographed book). Visit www.spokanehoopfest.net or www.ticketswest.com or call 624-1200. Kareem will also appear at Nike Center Court inside Riverfront Park on Saturday, June 27, at 9:45 am.