Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is undoubtedly one of the most influential players in NBA history. Evidently, when he was in the league, many young players looked up to him and dreamed about meeting him for the first time.
Charles Barkley was apparently one of them, and his dream came true during the 1987 NBA All-Star game. Initially, Barkley didn’t have the courage to meet KAJ, but it was Larry Bird and Kevin McHale who pushed him to approach the Los Angeles Lakers legend.
“We’re at my first All-Star game, and Kareem’s sitting at the back,” Barkley said. “[To] Bird and McHale, I said, ‘Man, I wanna go meet Kareem, I’ve never met him.’ They said, ‘Go back there and say hello to him.’ I walked back, and he’s back there reading, and I said, ‘Hey, Mr. Jabbar.’ He looks up, ‘I’m reading.’ That’s okay. I turned around McHale and Bird are laughing their a***s off. Okay, okay, okay, all right, y’all got me good.”
Meeting Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was Charles Barkley’s dream, but the meeting didn’t go down as he thought it would. Kareem may have been one of the best players of all time, but he wasn’t that talkative. There were times he simply liked to be left alone.
Speaking of Abdul-Jabbar’s greatness, Charles Barkley heaped huge praise on him when LeBron James broke his all-time scoring record. Barkley wanted to make sure that people don’t take the Lakers legend’s greatness for granted once he relinquished the NBA’s all-time scoring record.
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar Confirmed Charles Barkley’s Story Of Their First Meeting
Fans have been waiting for quite some time to know whether there was any truth to Barkley’s story or not.
Well, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar himself confirmed the story in a one-on-one interview with Shaquille O’Neal.
“I told him I was reading. There was times where I couldn’t be bothered. Now Charles is making me pay for that.”
(Starts at 21:14)
Abdul-Jabbar simply justified his answer by pointing out that he wanted to be left alone. To be honest, there’s no harm in wanting that, and one cannot hold it against Kareem to ignore Barkley when he approached him.
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