Over an incredible 20-year career, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar did battle with many of the greats of the game. In the beginning of his career, he was defined by his rivalry with Wilt Chamberlain. At the end, he had many new talents to contend with.
Here is a video detailing six of his toughest opponents.
In the early 1970’s, Kareem sort of inherited the Wilt Chamberlain rivalry from Bill Russell. He was closer to Wilt’s size than Russell was and while Wilt had trouble stopping the Sky Hook, Chamberlain was so powerful
that the much slimmer Kareem had a very hard time containing him, even though Chamberlain was already 33 when Kareem entered the NBA.
Next up was Bill Walton, who like Kareem played for John Wooden at UCLA and who was perhaps the most fundamentally sound center of all time. When he was healthy, he gave Kareem fits.
Moses Malone, Kareem says here, was nothing fancy. He just worked you to death. Intensity and effort were his calling card.
Larry Bird was not a center, but he forced Kareem to think the game on a different level. As he said, “Larry knew where you were going before you got there.”
Hakeem Olajuwon entered the NBA in 1984 when Kareem was 37, obviously on the back-end of his career. Olajuwon was a whole new kind of center and while Kareem held his own, he was not at all the same sort of player. Olajuwon dazzled everyone, Kareem included.
Last of all is Elvin Hayes, but Hayes, a contemporary, battled Kareem in college and gave him one of his few defeats while a UCLA Bruin. They had many battles in the NBA and Hayes always gave as good as he got.
Hayes, incidentally, was born in Rayville, Lousiana, about 20 miles from Monroe, where the great Bill Russell was born.
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