In
Giant Steps: The Autobiography of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, the successful combination of Abdul-Jabbar’s verbal style
and Peter Knobler’s written style provides an intimate first-person narrative of the first thirty-eight years in the life of a basketball legend. The book is divided into fifteen chapters,
beginning with the star’s childhood and ending with his announced National Basketball Association retirement. In the center of the book are sixteen pages of black-and-white photographs of Abdul-Jabbar that cover each stage of his life from infancy to fatherhood, including many on-court action shots.
In the first five chapters of the book, Abdul-Jabbar reveals the thoughts, actions, and family background of Lew Alcindor, a gangly, awkward, picked-upon child whose gradual emergence into a high-school basketball star was accompanied by much mental anguish and physical pain. He portrays such turning points as unexpected disillusionment with his revered high-school mentor, Coach Jack Donohue, and Al- cindor’s college selection process.
Abdul-Jabbar explores the adjustment of this New York City boy to Los Angeles, college life, Coach John Wooden, and National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) championships. As a college senior, Alcindor continued his search for
spiritual belief. He was attracted to Islam, met his spiritual mentor, Hamaas Abdul-Khaalis, plunged into Islamic studies, and was renamed Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Chapter 9 examines Abdul-Jabbar’s senior year of college, highlighted by his third straight NCAA championship, his interest in the martial arts and friendship with film legend Bruce Lee, and his professional National Basketball Association (NBA) signing.
Abdul-Jabbar describes his professional basketball career in chapters 10 through 15. Beginning with along, cold, and lonely first year with the mediocre Milwaukee Bucks, Abdul-Jabbar embarked upon a successful career. This section of
Giant Steps provides a provocative look into the NBA and life on the road. Abdul-Jabbar details the joys of playing with other great and admired players, as well as the frustrations caused by battles with the press and physical pain on the court. Abdul-Jabbar is matter of fact about his supreme athletic ability.
Abdul-Jabbar weaves the major occurrences in his personal life into the basketball narrative. He describes the agony of his failed marriage and the tragedy of the murder of his spiritual mentor and fellow Muslims. He portrays the melancholy that lurked in the shadows of his personal life as at last dispelled. Abdul-Jabbar realizes the triumph of hard-won maturity, the strength to communicate, and the power to love and be loved. His announcement of his impending NBA retirement at the book’s end signifies the end of one life but the beginning of another.