Becoming Kareem: Growing Up On and Off the Court by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Raymond Obstfeld

Last week, I started my journey reading the Rebecca Caudill Book Award nominees with Becoming Kareem: Growing Up On and Off the Court by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Raymond Obstfeld. This book is an autobiography about the basketball player, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, who won three NCAA championships with UCLA and six NBA championships. The book covers his life from childhood through his first NBA title. What I enjoyed most about this autobiography was how engaging it was. I loved learning about Abdul-Jabbar's early career and his life outside of basketball. While Abdul-Jabbar does have several experiences with racism, including betrayals by his elementary school best friend and his high school coach, he also has many successes. There were even a few funny moments scattered throughout the book. I thought it was especially cool how many famous people he met early in his life, including Wilt Chamberlain, Martin Luther King, Jr., John Wooden (his coach at UCLA), and Bruce Lee.

Other parts of the book that stood out to me was how important doing well in school was for Abdul-Jabbar and how he participated in social justice movements during the 1960s when he was growing up. One of my thoughts was how the more things change the more they stay the same because I saw a lot of similarities between then and now throughout the book. It didn't surprise me when he explained why he decided against trying out for the 1968 Olympic team because I had watched a documentary about the 1968 Olympics earlier this summer that highlighted the difficult choices that African American athletes had to make that year. I also found his conversion from Catholicism to Islam fascinating, as it led him to becoming who he wanted to be and changing his name from Lewis Alcindor to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Coming of age was a major theme while reading the autobiography.

Interestingly enough, when I brought up reading the autobiography to my father, he mentioned meeting Kareem Abdul-Jabbar a year or so after he won his first NBA championship with the Milwaukee Bucks. My dad was working for a printing company and he just happened to be delivering letterhead paper and envelopes to the Milwaukee Bucks corporate office when Abdul-Jabbar was there. I was completely taken off guard and had to know more about my dad's experience. Even though my dad had no idea what to talk about with a professional athlete, he said they did have a short conversation. Very cool indeed. I ended up recommending the book to my dad, and definitely would recommend it to anyone who loves basketball or other sports.