L.A. Laker fans must have hoped that their team’s imploding in this year’s NBA playoffs during coach Phil Jackson’s likely last season was the end of the this year’s Staples Center soap opera. Well, as it turns out, that was wishful thinking.
Now suddenly the Lakers faithful are witness to an even more bizarre melodrama. Their legendary, Hall of Fame center Kareem Abdul-Jabbar has, in recent days, taken to Twitter and other media outlets to express his genuine displeasure that the Lakers have not yet erected a statue in his honor outside the Staples Center, where Magic Johnson, Jerry West and the late, long-time Laker announcer Chick Hearn are all bronzed, along with Wayne Gretzky and Oscar De La Hoya.
The sky-hook’s disappearance defies all logic. You don’t have to be a seven-footer to shoot it – today’s big guards and fast forwards can get close to the basket, and toss it over their opponents. Magic Johnson, for example, toyed with a “Junior Hook” during his career; he even helped the Lakers win a championship by hitting a famous hook over Kevin McHale and Robert Parish of the Boston Celtics, in the final seconds of Game 4 of the 1987 NBA Finals.
In grade school, when he was relatively uncoordinated, Jabbar started shooting the hook because he needed to score over older, bigger kids. “The sky hook is not a difficult shot, but you have to work on the fundamentals,” he says. “It really doesn’t take that long to learn. Once you get the footwork, and how to hold the basketball, down, you can shoot it. It just takes somebody showing it to you, and then taking the time to work on it.”
Few have done so. Kareem has given a gift to aspiring basketball players, a formula for astounding success. And all we’ve done is squander it. The least we owe him is a statue.
Gregory is a staff writer at TIME. Keeping Score, his sports column for TIME.com, appears every Friday. Follow him on Twitter at @seanmgregory.
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