During his playing days, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar made a name for himself as the master of the skyhook and an unstoppable force inside the paint. However, what many do not know is that after he played for the Milwaukee Bucks in his first six years in the league, he preferred to join another team instead of the Los Angeles Lakers in 1975.
The Bucks' former assistant manager, Wayne Embry, recently had a Q&A with Steve Aschburner of NBA.com, and shared how he handled his situation before. He also gave the reason why the six-time MVP wanted a change of scenery.
Embry: “I think it was the fall of ’74, I got a call that Sam Gilbert – representing Kareem – wanted a meeting. We had no idea what it was for. So Wes and I and Kareem and Sam met at the Sheraton out in Brookfield [western suburb of Milwaukee] and weren’t in the room five minutes when Sam said, “Kareem wants to be traded.” We didn’t want to trade Kareem, obviously, but we knew we were in for a long evening as we tried to hammer this thing out. The reason Kareem gave was, he wanted to go to New York or L.A., larger markets. Actually, Washington was his first choice. But there was that event at his house there…”
NBA.com: That’s right. In January 1973, a house that Abdul-Jabbar owned in D.C. was targeted in a home invasion. [Terrorists murdered several people in an attack on the player’s spiritual teacher Hamaas Abdul Khaalis, a rival of Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad. Abdul-Jabbar was not present at the time.]
Embry: “That took Washington out, so it got down to the Lakers or the Knicks. We did everything we could do to talk him out of wanting to be traded. But he said, “Nope. If you don’t, I’ll become a free agent or I’ll sign with the ABA.” Of course we didn’t want that to happen. So we decided to keep it quiet. “Let’s not go public until we have a deal.”
The deal turned out to be a career-defining move for Abdul-Jabbar as he went on to win five more championships with the Lakers and is the NBA's all-time leading scorer.
Embry on the other hand, became the league's first African-American general manager. He was promoted in 1972 and managed the Milwaukee Bucks until 1979, the Cleveland Cavaliers from 1986-99, and the Toronto Raptors in 2006. He was also selected as NBA Executive of the Year in 1992 and 1998.
As difficult as it is to imagine the former player known as Lew Alcindor not playing for the Lakers, it would have also changed the landscape of the NBA and may have left a different legacy if he had joined the Washington Bullets.
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