Magic, NBA stars snub Kareem

"If I were to play a game of life and death, the first player I would pick would be Kareem."

This was the sentiment of Pat Riley, after steering the Los Angeles Lakers to dominance in the NBA in the 1980’s. All told, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar — with the help of Magic Johnson, Jamaal Wilkes, James Worthy and a few other all-stars - had led the Lakers to five titles in the decade, including the first back-to-back since the Boston Celtics’ run of eight straight two decades earlier.

So you would think that the six-time Most Valuable Player, who retired as the league’s all-time leading scorer, would be foremost in the minds of his contemporaries and teammates when all-time teams are mentioned, right?

Wrong.

A new NBA book entitled "The Perfect team: the Best Players, Coaches and GM — Let the Debate Begin!" published this year has a panel of all-time greats name their own favorites. Jabbar is at the top of the list of those conspicuously left out.

The book lists twelve NBA greats on a roster of what would be considered by some as a sort of "greatest of all time" line-up, with each being given an extensive profile by a well-known sports writer. Those named to "the perfect team" are each assigned an outstanding character trait, such as general manager Red Auerbach (Basketball IQ), coach Phil Jackson (Flexibility/The Power to Motivate), and players Michael Jordan (The Will to Win / Competitive Spirit), Magic Johnson (Leadership), Larry Bird (Confidence), Allen Iverson (Courage), John Havlicek (Perpetual Motion and Hustle), Jason Kidd (Selflessness and Sacrifice), Shaquille O’Neal (Will to Dominate), Oscar Robertson (Versatility), Bill Russell (Pride), Bill Walton (Precision), Jerry West (Dealing with Pressure) and ... Bill Laimbeer (Intensity).

The 12 players (who named them was not revealed, are each asked to give their own all-time greatest team. Bird, Havlicek, Iverson, Magic, Kidd, Shaq, Russell, Walton and Auerbach made their own lists, many listing Jordan as a small forward to accommodate the other guards of past eras. All inadvertently would mention themselves, too.

But only Walton and Havlicek, included Abdul-Jabbar, with his fellow UCLA alumnus making him a sixth man and his Celtic nemesis putting him on the second team. O’Neal even goes so far as to rate himself the fourth-greatest center of all time, behind Russell, Wilt Chamberlain (another glaring omission) and Abdul-Jabbar.

As for Magic?

"Even though I love my man Kareem, you have to defer to Bill (Russell), because he won eleven championships. He was fundamentally sound. He didn’t block the shot out of bounds. He blocked it where he could control it."

Coming from someone who rode on the Big Fella’s sky hook all those years, and continually referred to the Lakers as "Kareem’s team" even long after he was the actual leader of the franchise, this seems strange, if not downright hypocritical.

Let’s examine Johnson’s own all-time team. His starting unit goes as follows.

Guards: Isiah Thomas and Michael Jordan. No surprise here. Thomas was Johnson’s best friend, and Jordan beat both of them in the race to the finals. Forwards: Julius Erving and Larry Bird. Again, friendship and worship also count for a lot, although they are two forwards who led their teams to championships in the 1980’s. At center, as mentioned, Bill Russell.

His back-ups: James Worhy, Kevin McHale, Charles Barkley, Wilt Chamberlain, Jerry West, Shaquille O’Neal. Very heavy on Lakers. But when you look at it, Worthy, for example, was not even included by NBA TV stats guru Elliott Kalb in his book "Who’s Better, Who’s Best in Basketball?," wherein he lists his own fifty greatest NBA players, based on his substantive reservoir of statistical data and having seen them firsthand. Kalb says Worthy was a great fastbreak finisher, but would have been less spectacular if he didn’t have Magic and Kareem alongside him.

Perhaps Abdul-Jabbar didn’t need the accolades, and he certainly didn’t need anything to boost his resume. It just seems awkward that, when a discussion of all-time greatness is held, one of the scorebook’s greatest contributors is ignored by the players he routinely defeated or pushed to higher levels, and even his greatest teammates (Robertson and Johnson) whom he won championships with.

What gives?