[Excerpt] For those of us who are Donald Trump\u27s age, there is a special pleasure in Kareem Abdul-Jabbar\u27s 16th season in the National Basketball Association. Scoring, rebounding, passing off, Kareem is leading the Los Angeles Lakers to another division championship and playoff appearance. There\u27s nothing new about that. More important now is the unbroken line to our youth that Kareem represents. I was upset when the Rochester Royals left my hometown, but get this: A guy my age is still starring in the N.B.A.

Compa, Lance

English

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4-14-1985 
Thanks to Kareem and His Unbroken Line 
Lance Compa 
Cornell University, lac24@cornell.edu 
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Thanks to Kareem and His Unbroken Line 
Abstract 
[Excerpt] For those of us who are Donald Trump's age, there is a special pleasure in Kareem Abdul-
Jabbar's 16th season in the National Basketball Association. Scoring, rebounding, passing off, Kareem is 
leading the Los Angeles Lakers to another division championship and playoff appearance. There's nothing 
new about that. More important now is the unbroken line to our youth that Kareem represents. I was 
upset when the Rochester Royals left my hometown, but get this: A guy my age is still starring in the 
N.B.A.! 
Keywords 
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, basketball, National Basketball Association, NBA, skyhook 
Comments 
Suggested Citation 
Compa, L. (1985, April 14). Thanks to Kareem and his unbroken line [Electronic version]. New York Times, 
p. S2. 
Required Publisher’s Statement 
Copyright held by the author. 
This article is available at DigitalCommons@ILR: https://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/articles/385 
2 S THE NEW YORK TIMES, SUNDAY, APRIL 14, 1985 
VIEWS OF SPORT 
Thanks to Kareem and His Unbroken Line S\ 
««e "^ 
By LANCE COMPA 
I OR those of us who are Donald Trump's 
age, there is a special pleasure in Ka-
reem Abdul-Jabbar's 16th season in the 
National Basketball Association. Scoring, re-
bounding, passing off, Kareem is leading the 
Los Angeles Lakers to another division 
championship and playoff appearance. 
There's nothing new about that. More impor-
tant now is the unbroken line to our youth that 
Kareem represents. I was upset when the 
Rochester Royals left my hometown, but get 
this: A guy my age is still starring in the 
N.B.A.! 
Abdul-Jabbar is the only N.B.A. player 
who finished college before 1970. That means 
a lot to the tens of thousands of us who were 
high school jocks in the early 1960's. I can 
name the starters and recount the comeback 
of the Loyola of Chicago team that shocked 
Paul Hogue and Cincinnati for the N.C.A.A. 
championship in 1963. I recall necking with a 
girlfriend on Sunday afternoons, guarding 
my celibacy by watching Bill Russell and the 
Joneses on television at the same time. 
The Mew YorK Times 
School: As Lew Alcindor, going 
for tip-in at Power Memorial. 
Abdul-Jabbar, class 
of '69, one of our own, 
is still a star in Michael 
Jordan's game. 
I was a 5-foot-S-inch playmaking guard for 
McQuaid Jesuit High School, the diocesan 
championship team in Rochester in 1964 and 
1965. Like most high school athletes, I got 
winnowed out in college and moved on to 
other things. But I stayed a fan, kept playing 
pickup ball, and now, although I can still turn 
an occasional nice move like a driving, dou-
ble-pump, hand-switching layup, 1 mostly 
settle for perimeter jump shots. It is clear 
why professionals have had it in their late 
30*s: the idea is still there, but the legs fail to 
answer. And yet, there's Kareem, a guy my 
age, still turning it on in the N.B.A.. 
It's not just a matter of age. Kareem and I 
are part of the genuine 60's generation: high 
school from 1961 to 1965, college from 1965 to 
1969. He and a handful of others went on to ca-
reers as pro athletes. The rest of us went on to 
the great, anonymous middle class, content 
to quietly build families and working lives. 
We are the front cohort of the post-World 
War II baby boom. Pretenders like Gary 
Hart and Jerry Rubin are going to have to get 
out of the way. The Yuppie twits and Reagan-
ite clones of the 70's generation are going to 
have to wait. We're first in line for a broad, 
generational movement into positions of in-
stitutional power. But hey, what's the rush 
while one of our own is still astride the old 
game? 
It must have been late in m y sophomore 
year of high school — I was just brought up to 
the varsity for spot duty on steals and assists 
— when we picked up talk of a seven-foot 
sophomore in New York City named Lew Al-
cindor. Word of mouth made legends then 
among high school ballplayers, and the word 
was out about the big fellow in New York 
who'd be taller than Wilt Chamberlain. 
Maybe a year later I finally saw a grainy, 
black-and-white film clip from a Power Me-
morial game. Alcindor's height was the first 
thing that hit me, until he started moving. 
At that time Wilt was the seven-foot stand-
ard. Nicknamed "the Stilt," he seemed stilt-
Lance Compa plays basketball Wednesday 
nights in Takoma Park, Md. 
ed, a little musclebound. It was really more 
his build and his gait; Chamberlain was a 
great athlete. His dominant image, then, was 
one of deliberate strength and bulk. This kid 
Alcindor loped and shot like a skinny six-foot-
er. 
When we were seniors in high school I met 
him. I was visiting my future college room-
mate, Frank McLaughlin, a star guard at 
Fordham Prep and later captain of Ford-
ham's 1969 N.I.T. team. Frank and I went 
from his Bronx home base to The New York 
Post for him to be photographed with the 1965 
all-city basketball team. He introduced m e to 
M i • 
The New Yoric Times 
College: An early version of his 
shot during tenure at U.C.L.A. 
Alcindor there. The big guy enveloped m y 
hand in a shake, we talked shop for a few 
minutes, and that was that. Since then, I've 
only seen Kareem on television, sometimes 
in Sunday games — and always at playoff 
time. 
I haven't been particularly a Lakers fan. I 
was in New York and New England in the 
early 70's for great Knicks and Celtics teams. 
In the late 70's I moved to Washington, where 
we had a championship Bullets team. It's 
only lately that I have begun to realize what 
Abdul-Jabbar is accomplishing. 
Many shooting stars younger than Kareem 
have flashed in the N.B.A. during basket-
ball's past 16 years — Charlie Scott, Spencer 
Haywood, Rick Mount, Dave Co wens, Mar-
vin Barnes, Pete Maravich, Bill Walton, 
David Thompson and others. But Kareem 
has been the North Star, pulling rebounds, 
posting down low, drop-passing an assist, 
turning for the great sky hook, always lead-
ing his team to the playoffs. 
I always thought the sky hook was mis- " 
named. To me a hook shot implies a sweeping 
arc, like Cliff Hagan's specialty (if that name 
means nothing, you're missing nay point). 
Kareem's move is straight up with a slight 
lean, like a long, narrow rectangle trans-
forming itself into a tilted parallelogram 
poised on one point. Then, a gentle detent as 
the shot is released. 
It is as skilled a shot as Julius Erving's 
looping, under-the-basket reverse layups. 
It's sweeter than the slam dunks of all the 
"human highlight films." Kareem's sky hook 
is a craftsman's shot, the fruit of genius and 
experience. As much as sheer physical condi-
tioning, this foul-proof move has helped Ka-
reem survive 16 years among the N.B.A.'s 
musclemen. 
At this point in our contemporaries' l ives— 
at least, those of us who prefer a good pickup 
basketball game to an hour on the squash 
court — such a joining of excellence and sur-
vival is the most attractive part of Kareem's 
game. In our late 30's we reach the top of our 
own crafts in the working world — writing 
briefs, analyzing balance sheets, drafting 
policies, presenting proposals, managing 
operations and the like. We still need some 
years of seasoning for judgment, but we've 
learned to get to the heart of a problem and 
skip the unnecessary. That is the essence of 
Kareem's game now. 
As for many of us, Kareem's success did 
not come trouble-free, even with his natural 
advantages. He didn't complain when he was 
drafted by lowly Milwaukee in 1969. He could 
have forced a move to Los Angeles or New 
York to give the N.B.A. a media boost. In-
stead, he went to Milwaukee and led them to 
a championship in two years. (He did move to 
Los Angeles later, of course, in a concession 
to economic reality that we all make at some 
point.) 
Kareem has played through broken noses 
and poked eyes (he has to use goggles now, 
like a hockey goalie). He has suffered per-
sonal w o e s — a failed marriage, lives lost in a 
bizarre shooting incident in a Muslim com-
munity home he owned; his possessions de-
stroyed in a mysterious fire. 
He has been shoved around by bulkier cen-
ters, with the fouling overlooked by referees 
who figure, rightly, that Kareem can take 
care of himself when push comes to position 
for a shot or a rebound. He has a mortal court 
The New York Times 
Pros: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and 
his classic sky hook. 
personality, too, none of Magic Johnson's 
bubbly innocence or Moses Malone's impas-
siveness. Kareem grimaces at bad breaks, 
yells at refs for bad calls, jaws at Dr. J and 
Larry Bird. 
Despite his consistent stardom, Kareem's 
N.B.A. teams have won only three champion-
ships. He can never equal Bill Russell's 12 
championship seasons. But Kareem's teams 
have always been at or near the top. That's 
good enough for us who have learned that we 
can't win them all. 
The N.B.A.'s newest sensation is Michael 
Jordan of Chicago. He was only 2 when Ka-
reem and I got out of high school. Will Jordan 
still be at the top of bis game in the year 2000, 
as Kareem has accomplished? I doubt he can 
sustain those aerobatics for 16 seasons. But 
bald Kareem, class of '69, one of our own, is 
still a star in Michael Jordan's game. 
"Check out the moves, watch the shot—no 
way these guys are over the hill," says Ka-
reem in his autobiography, speaking of a 
pickup game with his old high school buddies 
a couple of years ago. He's talking to a lot of 
us. Even though I know better, I like to think, 
remembering that handshake when we were 
18, that a molecule of mine is still caught on 
Kareem's fingertip, helping guide the sky 
hook home. 


Thanks to Kareem and His Unbroken Line

[Excerpt] For those of us who are Donald Trump's age, there is a special pleasure in Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's 16th season in the National Basketball Association. Scoring, rebounding, passing off, Kareem is leading the Los Angeles Lakers to another division championship and playoff appearance. There's nothing new about that. More important now is the unbroken line to our youth that Kareem represents. I was upset when the Rochester Royals left my hometown, but get this: A guy my age is still starring in the N.B.A.!Compa52_Thanks_to_Kareem.pdf: 181 downloads, before Oct. 1, 2020

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