Kareem Abdul-Jabbar lives with Leukemia

NBA Obsessed takes you into the hit and run game of NBA Basketball.

Please, be quiet about this, tell it to no one. Hey, keep your head down as the secret will be revealed. NBAObsessed can remember when Abdul-Jabbar was Lew Alcindor, a skinny kid from the streets of New York City that was recruited to play for John Wooden. Ok, that would make my age about minus 14.

Here is a classic story that maybe you have heard before and it happened for real to NBAObsessed. Your intrepid author was reading Sports Illustrated in his youth, an annual issue on college basketball ranking all the teams.

David Stern is probably thanking Kareem Abdul Jabbar for making the league more popular

Back then there was no internet, no VCRs, DVRs, no Cell Phones, and Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter weren’t even dreamed up yet. We only had 5 things to get information from, Network channels on broadcast TV from a TV antennae, Newspapers, Radio, Playboy (in a brown paper wrapper), and Sports Illustrated.

Now with that background you can gather that we read Sports Illustrated from cover to cover and they always hired the best writers. The annual Basketball issue was always a great one. Your gallivanting author tore into it and literally devoured the first story. It talked about a team that was unbeatable with a tall center that was everyone’s pick for player of the year.

There was only one problem with their ranking of both team and player; the story was about the freshman team at UCLA with Lew Alcindor in the pivot and freshmen were ineligible to play varsity basketball in those days. The varsity at UCLA went on to win the National Title that year with Walt Hazzard and Gail Goodrich playing guards, but they were beaten in practice by their own freshmen team!

Lew became Kareem and the NBA was never the same again. Now Lew Alcindor is facing Leukemia and trying to still live the life he has created in the post NBA world.

The NBA’s all-time leading scorer and six-time league MVP was diagnosed last December with chronic myeloid leukemia, he told The Associated Press on Monday.

The 62-year-old Abdul-Jabbar said his doctor didn’t give any guarantees, but informed him: “You have a very good chance to live your life out and not have to make any drastic changes to your lifestyle.”

Abdul-Jabbar is taking an oral medication for the disease. He is a paid spokesman for the Swiss pharmaceutical company Novartis, which makes a drug that treats the illness.

source

Kareem has always found a way to succeed and be a champion and even with Cancer he has found a way!
Image: Zuma Press

As always, any NBA Basketball related comments are welcome.

More blogs about basketball.

As always, any NBA Basketball related comments are welcome.

More blogs about basketball.