Abdul Jabbar

American basketball star and collegiate champion who made his professional start with the Milwaukee Braves

in 1969. He was voted the Most Outstanding Player of the 1970-1971 season. With parents both over 6' tall,

he grew to 7'2". Abdul-Jabbar likes jazz and his privacy. With an income of some $2 million a year, he had a

$41.75 million home in Bel Air, CA, which burned down in 1985.

In 1976, he sued his former business manager for $55 million for mismanagement of funds. He himself was

sued in February 1987 for $150,000 owed in loans and big debts. In March 1989 he was convicted of

misdemeanor charges stemming from an incident the previous April when he reportedly shoved another

person at a shopping mall in Phoenix, AZ

Abdul-Jabbar retired in 1989 after 20 seasons and six championships. He is the author of "Giant Steps," 1983

"Kareem," 1990 and "Black Profiles in Courage," 1996.

On 3/15/1996, the retired Los Angeles Lakers center was arrested by U.S. Customs officials for the

possession of six grams of marijuana at an airport in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. He paid a $500 fine and was

released. Abdul-Jabbar's run-ins with the law continued when, on 12/29/1997, criminal charges were filed

stemming from a confrontation where the basketball star pinned a man to the ground at a Los Angeles mini-

mall because of a parking dispute. He was arraigned on the charges on 1/29/1998.

On November 10, 2009 it was announced that he was suffering from leukemia; he had evidently received his

diagnosis nearly a year earlier in December 2008..