Kareem Abdul-Jabbar recently had to watch LeBron James break his all-time NBA scoring record. And in doing so, LeBron’s longevity officially surpassed Kareem’s in the eyes of many.
But Kareem Abdul-Jabbar recently spoke about how different things are for players today, highlighting the one thing that might have let him play longer.
Kareem gave his point of view in an interview with ClutchPoints:
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar said, “I didn’t even get to ride in (charter) airplanes, you know, we had to get up at six and five o’clock and take a commercial flight. Man, you know, these guys don’t know how well they’re treated, you know? It’s a big difference now.
“It’s just that I know now that I can see since I retired that if we had flown in a charter jet, I could have played a couple more years. I think that was the toughest thing to deal with, you know, just the grind of the schedule and having to get those early morning flights.”
The NBA is not what it was during Kareem’s day, the late 80s and 90s saw a commercial boom for the league that changed the game entirely. Players today have access to a lot more money, greater facilities, and technological advancements that the legends of the 70s and 80s could only have dreamed of.
Magic Johnson had suggested that Kareem Abdul-Jabbar wouldn’t be thrilled when LeBron James broke his record, and this seems to back that up. While Abdul-Jabbar and other legends of yesteryear will always feel like they could have done more if they had what modern stars do, that’s not necessarily true.
Could Kareem Abdul-Jabbar Have Played At A Higher Level For Longer In The NBA?
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar played a full 4 years in college and had a 20-year NBA career after that. He was the man when it came to longevity in NBA history. But could he have achieved much more than he did in a couple more years?
He certainly would have added to his scoring tally, but Abdul-Jabbar was declining quite rapidly as he got into his 40s. In his last season, he averaged just over 10 points, and things would only have gotten worse after that. By 1990, the Lakers were nearing the end of the Showtime era and their dominance anyway, so the truth is that even if he did play, Kareem wouldn’t have been able to add too much more to his legacy.
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