Miguel A. Herguedas
Updated Thursday, March 28, 2024-1:18 p.m.
Lotus 72 A radical work of art marked by tragedy
Lancia Delta Integrale A beast under suspicion
New Balance The sneakers that ignored the stars
His father,
Ferdinand Sr
, had served as a police lieutenant in New York. A severe and bulky guy, nicknamed in the body as
Big Al
, who would transmit his overflowing passion for jazz. Her mother,
Cora
, had worked as a seamstress, so from the cradle she made stoicism a priority.
Lew Alcindor
, known to basketball history as
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
, knew the hardness of life in Harlem, but his first blow came when he was just 14 years old. "It was my debut with Power Memorial and they gave us a good beating. It was all so ridiculous (...) I was in the locker room and I started crying. When I looked up, my teammates were looking at me as if I had just gotten off a spaceship There I realized that I had arrived in the big world and could not cry like a child. From then on, I never showed a symptom of vulnerability until the day I retired," he says in his documentary
Minority of one
(2015). However, during two decades in the NBA, resulting in six rings and dozens of records, something always throbbed beneath his enormous armor. Something like an ancient fear lurking in his gaze.
It was a trauma that doctors classified as "recurrent corneal erosion syndrome." It caused irritation and dry eyes, but also a flood of tears. The scar tissue could flake off and disturb her vision. An endless number of problems that he wanted to put a stop to with glasses. The most illustrious in the history of basketball. And not because he was awarded eight
honorary
doctorates or because he still serves as Cultural Ambassador of his country. Nor for his Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian decoration in the United States. Kareem's glasses - which would serve as an example to
Moses Malone
,
James Worthy
,
Hakeem Olajuwon
and
Horace Grant
- were, in addition to being an icon, the only dam against pain.
If it is possible to set a date, January 12, 1968 would suffice. A match of a certain local rivalry between the all-powerful UCLA and the University of California.
Tom Henderson
- a 196 cm forward with whom decades later he would form a certain friendship - caused him a scratch on the cornea in the middle of a dispute over a rebound. At that time, the referees did not even pay attention to these trifles, but the rivals did begin to sense the weak point of the colossus. And if the indulgence was extended they could profit from it. In reality, there was no other way to stop someone who, after 88 wins in 90 games, was going to win three consecutive NCAA titles. His foundations, polished under
John Wooden
, would also wreak havoc on the NBA. Along with
Oscar Robertson
, he led the Bucks to the 1971 ring, after a historic regular season with only 16 losses. However, the base's withdrawal was going to coincide with the second fade to black for his eyes.
In the glove compartment of the Mercedes
It was a simple preseason friendly against the current champions. A game organized in Buffalo by
Don Nelson
as a repeat of the last Finals. The Celtics forward only wanted to make money, although he would end up playing the villain. With 11 minutes left he accidentally elbowed Jabbar in the eye. The pain turned into fury and the frustrated punch against the basket support, into a fracture of the fourth metacarpal bone of his right hand. The first injury of his career didn't really mean that much. What was truly worrying was the view. For this reason, that October 5, 1974, he decided that he would protect himself, forever, with glasses. Now, who would be responsible for the supply?
Only a report by
Pat Putnam
, published two months later in
Sports Illustrated
, offers accurate answers. Some of them hilarious. Like Kareem's flat refusal to play on the night he himself had scheduled his return. That November 21, 1974, the center had traveled by road to Kansas City and forgot to pack his brand new glasses. The first model, with a black frame and crude plexiglass design, gave him a bizarre aviator look. He didn't care at all about aesthetics, so he wouldn't go out without them.
According to Putnam, a Bucks manager, he had to return by car to Milwaukee to look for them at the player's apartment. Since he couldn't find them, he had to phone the pavilion table to ask Kareem personally. He finally knew how to find them in the glove compartment of his Mercedes. So Jabbar played with them for the first time on November 23 against the Nets. The people at Madison Square Garden seemed stunned, but Jabbar was not at all satisfied. Not being wide enough, they eliminated any hint of peripheral vision.
The new model, with stronger lenses and two extra centimeters on the edges, was commissioned by physical trainer
Bill Bates
. It was a design from the French brand Brevete, with a foam pad on the bridge, plus an elastic band to hold it to the ears. The latest technology of the moment. A few years ago,
former Bucks ball boy
Patrick McBride
sold one of those pairs for $6,500. He took them out of a trash can after Jabbar got rid of them because they were scratched.
Landing in Los Angeles was not going to be so easy. His unquestionable dominance was recognized with the MVPs of 1976 and 1977, although the Lakers did not even get past the first round of the
playoffs
during their first four seasons. From the offices,
Bill Sharman
wanted to rebuild with
Jamaal Wilkes
,
Adrian Dantley
or
Norm Nixon
, but the real leap did not occur until the arrival of
Pat Riley
on the bench and the
draft
choice of a 2.06 m point guard, named
Earvin Johnson
. According to
John Papanek
,
Kareem was again "playing like a child", with "vitality and excitement, leading counterattacks, dunking with authority, high-fiving, from time to time, (...) smiling." In fact, he allowed himself to play the three qualifying rounds on the way to the ring without the "infernal glasses" to which the
Sports Illustrated
journalist alluded . Five months later, in October 1980, a blow to
Rudy Tomjanovich
's right eye during a game against Houston made him return to them.
"I had trusted once and had my heart broken, so I wouldn't let it happen again."
In addition to corneal erosion syndrome, which in December 1986 left him out of three games in Dallas, Houston and Sacramento, Kareem had had to live with hellish migraines since his early adolescence.
Larry Costello
, his coach with the Bucks, even improvised a treatment based on reviewing videos of old games. Riley, for his part, rushed the deadlines more than was convenient during the first game of the 1984 Finals. The Boston Garden, in those days, did not seem like the best environment for a headache. Tons of Irish pride against those hateful smiling acrobats of
show time
. And also, why deny it, an excess of white viscerality.
The first to utter the word
nigger
in his presence in a locker room was
Jack Donahue
, his high school coach: "I had trusted once and my heart had been broken, so I wouldn't let it happen again. He forced me to distrust. "Especially from older white men who pretended to be my friends." After that supposedly motivating talk, his fight never gave up. Carrying
Martin Luther King
's coffin
, giving up the Mexico Games or completing a fervent conversion to Islam. The semantics of his new baptism did not require further explanation. "Generous. Servant of Allah. Powerful."
He had promised not to show his emotions, not even a hint of a smile after the umpteenth
sky hook
. In his opinion, the discipline and spirituality of martial arts, in the company of
Bruce Lee
, had kept him away from injuries. At 38 years old, during his 17th season as a professional, he still averaged 23.4 points, 6.1 rebounds and 1.6 blocks. And when the Lakers, in April 1989, paid him one of their last tributes at The Forum, he sat in a chair, barely stifling tears.
Byron Scott
, in first person, left a testimony that well explains his 20-year career. "That day was the first time I saw his father give him a hug."