ATLANTA — In his penultimate NBA game against the nasty Pistons in the 1989 finals, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar scored 24 points. He was 42.
Today the matter of basketball’s best-ever player splits the audience into Team Jordan or Team LeBron, the latter being only a few games from surpassing Abdul-Jabbar as the career scoring leader. For someone who first watched him when he was Ferdinand Lewis Alcindor Jr., repeated mention of the Big Fella has stirred all manner of memories. It also has made me wonder if anyone was — or is, or will ever be — his superior.
— Abdul-Jabbar was the greatest high school player ever. Over four years at New York’s Power Memorial, his team lost six games, five when he was a freshman. The other occurred Jan. 30, 1965, when DeMatha Catholic of Hyattsville, Md., won 46-43 before a sellout crowd of 12,500 in College Park. The loss snapped Power’s 71-game win streak. DeMatha was coached by the legendary Morgan Wootten. Its best players — Bob Whitmore and Sid Catlett — starred at Notre Dame.
