Basketball players tend to be tall. There are exceptions – Tyrone ‘Muggsy’ Bogues, the shortest player ever to grace the National Basketball Association (NBA) of America was a mere 5’ 3’’ – but well over six feet is the norm. But even among the titans of the basketball court one player, one of the best ever in the history of the NBA, stands out. At 7’ 2’’, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar had an obvious advantage on court, but he also suffered for his height with a succession of eye injuries.
There are many examples of sportsmen wearing prescription spectacles or goggles on the field of play. Cricket can boast many, including Geoff Boycott, Clive Lloyd, Zaheer Abbas, Daniel Vettori and, in the recent ICC World Cup, Pakistan’s Imam-ul-Haq. Football can claim the Dutchman, Joop van Daele (see The Estudiantes Incident, Optician 02.02.18). In the NBA there is Kurt Rambis who, while playing for the glitzy Los Angeles Lakers in the 1980s, sported tortoiseshell spectacles. An interesting case, also in the NBA, is Horace Grant who was part of the all-conquering Chicago Bulls team of the 1990s that included the legendary Michael Jordan. Grant began wearing prescription goggles on court to correct his myopia. The goggles became somewhat of a trademark for Grant and, because of feedback he received from parents that he was a role model for spectacle-wearing children, he continued to wear (non-prescription) goggles even after having had corrective Lasik refractive surgery.
It is much more unusual to come across a top-level sportsman wearing spectacles or goggles as a protection from ocular pathology. Football fans will remember Edgar Davids, the star of Ajax, AC Milan and Juventus wearing protective goggles on the pitch. He also wore them while playing for Tottenham Hotspur in the Premier League. He began using them after undergoing an operation on his right eye for glaucoma (itself the result of previous eye injuries) and did not take kindly to being ribbed about his eyewear. Apparently his Dutch international teammate, Jaap Stam, an imposing seven inches taller than Davids, once joked to him in the changing room, ‘Come on Edgar, we’re playing football, you haven’t got time to go skiing!’ Davids, nicknamed ‘the pitbull’ by his manager at Ajax, Louis van Gaal, gave a suitably unprintable response. Davids had to gain permission from football’s governing body, Fifa, to wear his goggles; interestingly he also had to seek permission to take Diamox medication for his glaucoma as it contains the normally banned substance acetazolamide.
Among basketball aficionados the most famous instance of a player using goggles as protection for an eye condition is that of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. He was born in New York City in 1947. Considered a freak of nature by his schoolmates, his height nevertheless helped him to dominate high school basketball, earning him a place at UCLA and their famous college team, the Bruins. His prodigious skills enabled him also to continue that domination on the college scene, helping UCLA to three national championships and earning him the most outstanding player of the college tournament title in 1967, 1968 and 1969, while being voted Player of the Year in 1967 and 1969 by no fewer than four press and sportswriter associations.
It was while at UCLA playing for the Bruins that his eye problem first occurred. On January 12, 1968, during a match against the University of California, he suffered a blow in a rebound battle with an opponent, Tom Henderson, which resulted in a scratched left cornea. Abdul-Jabbar missed the next two games as a consequence. It was to become a recurring theme. Because of his unusual height, he would often be on the receiving end of – mostly accidental – pokes to his eyes. He would also discover to his annoyance that the match officials in the professional NBA game tended to be more tolerant of these occurrences, treating them as just a natural physical aspect of the game due to his height. Once opponents noticed the leniency shown by officials in these instances Abdul-Jabbar began to be the target of intentional pokes to the eyes too.
A stellar college career naturally made him a prime target for NBA teams. He joined a relatively new franchise, the Milwaukee Bucks, helping them to four straight seasons as division leaders and an NBA championship in 1971. He also won the NBA Most Valuable Player (MVP) award three times in five years. A turning point came during a preseason match in 1974. He got his cornea scratched again while being bumped hard by an opponent and got so frustrated that he punched the basket support stanchion. He ended up with a broken hand for his troubles, missing the first 16 games of the 1974/75 season. It was this incident that persuaded him to start wearing protective goggles on his return to action. In a sense, though, the damage had already been done. The constant blows to the face and, especially, to the eyes led to Abdul-Jabbar developing recurrent corneal erosion syndrome and dry eyes. Later in his career, during the 1986/87 season, dry and swollen eyes caused Abdul-Jabbar to miss an entire game.
But none of his ocular traumas stopped Abdul-Jabbar from having a hugely successful career to the point where he is still considered to be one of the all-time NBA greats. He was also ahead of his time in following a strict health and fitness regime which included yoga, martial arts and pre-match meditation. This not only enabled him to have a virtually injury-free career (which must have made his eye-related problems all the more frustrating to him) but also allowed him to carry on playing until the age of 42. It was notable that even players 10 years his junior would have trouble keeping up with him. In fact his only other spell on the sidelines due to injury was for another broken hand, this time sustained in a fight with an opponent.
Early on in his professional career Abdul-Jabbar underwent another life-changing experience. He had, in fact, been born Ferdinand Lewis Alcindor, Jr, the only child of Catholic parents. It was a difficult childhood, his mother’s overprotectiveness and his father’s strictness and lack of empathy fostering resentment in the young Lew, as he was known. In 1971 he converted to Islam, taking the name Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, which means ‘noble, powerful servant’. He began to feel that the culture around him was out of step with his new religious beliefs, so asked to be traded. A transfer to the LA Lakers was arranged, a move which was to herald the second great phase of his career.
At the time of Abdul-Jabbar’s arrival, in 1975, the Lakers were in a mini slump after the retirement of several key players. Nevertheless he was named the NBA’s MVP twice more (five in eight years altogether) to equal the all-time record. A new coach and, crucially, the arrival in 1979 of Earvin ‘Magic’ Johnson ushered in a decade of unprecedented success. Nine division titles and five NBA championships were won in those 10 years.
The hallmark of the Lakers’ game was the lightning fast break that became known as ‘Showtime’. Even now, well into his thirties, when most players would be retiring, he was still recording high points-per-game tallies, not least with his trademark ‘skyhook’ a one-handed shot after turning a defender where the ball was looped gracefully into the basket from well over head height. One of these manoeuvres in a match against Utah Jazz in 1984 earned him his 31,420th point to make him the NBA’s all-time leading scorer. Abdul-Jabbar’s final tally when he retired aged 42 in 1989 was 38,387 points (a record that still stands) from 1,560 games spanning 20 years. ‘He’s the most beautiful athlete in sports,’ Magic Johnson once commented.
To summarise Abdul-Jabbar’s playing career is to list a series of ‘mosts’. He had scored most points, blocked most shots, won most MVP awards, chalked up most All-Star games (in which the best players of the season are chosen to play) and played for the most seasons. He was also Rookie of the Year in his first season, won six NBA championships, claimed six NBA MVPs and two NBA Finals MVPs. And there were numerous play-off and All-Star records. His signature skyhook shot has been imitated but never bettered.
Magic Johnson recalled that in Abdul-Jabbar’s last game, which included legends from the Lakers and Boston Celtics, every player wore the Abdul-Jabbar goggles and all the players – with very mixed results – had to attempt a skyhook at least once. His new name was certainly well-chosen. In overcoming the disability of his ocular pathology he was both noble and powerful; and there is no doubt he was a great servant to basketball.