--- title: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar remembers his friendship with Muhammad Ali | TIME description: Basketball Hall of Fame center and TIME Magazine contributor Kareem Abdul-Jabbar explains what Muhammad Ali meant to him. canonical: https://time.com/video/97sRvhfj/ og:title: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar remembers his friendship with Muhammad Ali og:description: Basketball Hall of Fame center and TIME Magazine contributor Kareem Abdul-Jabbar explains what Muhammad Ali meant to him. og:url: https://time.com/video/97sRvhfj/ og:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/97sRvhfj/poster.jpg?width=720 og:type: video.other twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar remembers his friendship with Muhammad Ali twitter:description: Basketball Hall of Fame center and TIME Magazine contributor Kareem Abdul-Jabbar explains what Muhammad Ali meant to him. twitter:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/97sRvhfj/poster.jpg?width=720 --- # Kareem Abdul-Jabbar remembers his friendship with Muhammad Ali > Sponsored content. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ## Video: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar remembers his friendship with Muhammad Ali [Watch (HLS stream): Kareem Abdul-Jabbar remembers his friendship with Muhammad Ali](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/97sRvhfj.m3u8) (3:42)  _Published 2016-06-06. Basketball Hall of Fame center and TIME Magazine contributor Kareem Abdul-Jabbar explains what Muhammad Ali meant to him._ --- Jul 27, 2023 8:13 PM UTC --- ## More From This Series [All Videos](https://time.com/video/) [Kareem Abdul-Jabbar: What today's athletes can learn from Muhammad Ali](/video/4siBR6wu/) ### Kareem Abdul-Jabbar: What today's athletes can learn from Muhammad Ali [Kareem Abdul-Jabbar On Racism](/video/QPdUnHb2/) ### Kareem Abdul-Jabbar On Racism [Q&A with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar](/video/ZXibkC74/) ### Q&A with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar --- ## Transcript We want to welcome in now, a basketball hall of famer, a six time NBA champion who's still the league's all time leading scorer, he won three NCAA championships as well. He is a New York Times bestselling author and a columnist for Time magazine, who else But Karim Abdul- Jubbar. Karim, thank you so much for a few minutes today. You wrote so eloquently that you are seven feet two, but you never felt taller than standing in Muhammad Ali's shadow. What did Ali mean to you? Well, Ali had the courage to take a moral stand, at a time when our morality was forgotten, and what we were suppose to be about. The Vietnamese War was totally, it was, geese It's hard to say how corrupt our involvement in that war was. We shouldn't of done that, and he was the only voice that stated that loudly and clearly. And it took a while, but we finally got around to recognizing that he was right. Ali converted to Islam in 196, about 4 or 5. You converted in 1971. And you were both famous athletes, so I think in the public's mind, you two are very much connected. What effect did Ali's conversion have on you. I actually did not join the Black Muslims, as they were called in those days. I was a Sunni muslim and eventually, Ali became a Sunni muslim, but at first we weren't on the same page with regard to our appreciation of the faith. But, it didn't stop us from being friends and I think I should emphasize that because... The other differences after a while were meaningless. We were both about freedom, justice, and equality for Black Americans. Something that had been denied to Black Americans ever since the founding of our nation. So in many ways, you influenced him. What were some of those conversations like? Well, I just stated my concerns and the basis for my beliefs in becoming a Sunni Muslim. And, you know, I didn't convince him, he didn't convince me, but eventually we ended up on the same page. It's funny how those things can work out. In doing what you did, doing what Muhammad Ali did, do you feel like athletes today understand how big of a risk you and Muhammad Ali, Bill Russell and others, Jim Brown? Do you think today's athletes understand how big of a risk that was? Well I don't think they understand it because they can't understand the context that all that evolved in. Especially the older athletes like Bill Russell. I read one of his books where he talks about growing up in Louisiana. When his family moved to Oakland, California it was the first time that he had access to a public library. Prior to that he couldn't go to the library in his hometown in Louisiana because it was segregated. It was things like that that the players You know, and young people now today, they don't understand that. That seems to be from another era, as far away as the civil war when actually this was just 40 or 50 years ago. 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