The points that broke the NBA’s most hallowed record came on a shot no one uses, in a gym built for college games, in a city with no NBA team, with just one league official present to commemorate the feat and a fledgling cable network there to broadcast it. The moment was magical, emotional . . . and over within minutes, hoops taking precedence over hoopla.
Yes, dear reader, 1984 was a different time.
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was a towering figure, in every sense, when he swished the skyhook that lifted him past Wilt Chamberlain as the sport’s all-time scoring leader on April 5 of that year. But the NBA itself was smaller, less glitzy, less boisterous, less self-promotional, less everything than the league of today.
