"She straddled me and pressed the bat against my throat with a victorious smile." (pg.5)

"He didnt like to talk, as if each word he uttered cost him twenty hard-earned dollars." (pg.12)

"To them I was an Oreo: a black kid who acted too white--black on the outside, white on the inside." (pg.25)

"Through basketball, I found my superpower. My power wasn't being a great player but in loving something enough to work hard at being better." (pg.42)

"The racism being fought on the streets was both angering and inspiring." (pg.65)

"I looked down at my legs and tried to see what he saw. But they just looked like broom handle legs, nothing special. "I wish I had legs like that," he said." "

During Kareem sophomore year of high school his basketball team went undefeated. They took the city championship that hadn't been won by their school in many years. Even though Kareem loved basketball he didn't understand why he felt relieved that the season was over rather than happy that he had won. It seemed like everyone around him was thrilled with the fact that he was a leader, and treated him with respect. To Kareem winning wasn't even a thrill anymore due to his coach d. Coach D always promoted  working as a team but if  they were to lose, all the blame would be on Kareem, which wasn't fair at all. Since all this pressure on Kareem basketball wasn't fun to him anymore he felt pressured into becoming the best instead of having fun like he'd always had. Kareem felt as if he needed a coach of color to teach him the real history of Black Culture and take inspiration from a different source. He confided in brother Watson at Power. Brother Watson was a teacher, the only black teacher at that school and he thought they could bond over jazz bands. Kareem  brought in a jazz band and played it to Watson but Watson dismissed him and told him Jazz wasn't his thing. Since brother Watson was a drummer, Kareem  thought that this would make him a little more open-minded than he was. He stopped trying to find inspiration from Watson even though his other teachers would say things very racist. He started replying back and debating with his teachers which was also his inspiration into joining the debate team. From that point on Kareem would Express his feelings to teachers when things were wrongly or badly said about black people which made him the speaker for all black people to the white people around him.  The people who taught him at Power tried to change his thinking even though coach D was already taking control of what he was in with his body. You would try to confide in his parents but I said before they're very absent and the only way that his dad would show Pride was by buying copies of his championships and leaving them around the house.

" I played much more aggressively, showing everyone that this was one black person who wouldn't be pushed around. " (pg.97)

They had a winning  streak, there were zero losses in their books until... They played against DeMartha Catholic High School, one of the top basketball schools in their country. They knew the game would be challenging but they still took it on feeling confident and maybe even a little bit cocky. The first half of the game was fine and by the time it was half time there was only up two,  their coach was severely mad and the bleachers were filled with murmurs, snickers and laughter. As they went into the locker room during halftime the coach said something to Kareem that he would never forget. He told the team that they didn't deserve to win, that they were a mess and  weren't doing anything to contribute to winning.  Knowing all that was going on in the world Kareem was very stressed and was just having a bad day. The coach had turned to Kareem and called him racial slurs for the way that he was playing. Kareem never felt more betrayed. He thought as if all the trust that they built and everything that they had been through was broken from that moment on. He hadn't said anything to the coach or anyone in that locker room the whole entire time. Everyone on the team felt sympathetic for Kareem and Kareem took that hate and had a flashback from when his old best friend Johnny also had said similar words to him which ruined their friendship many years back. Kareem went out there and proved coach D wrong . He scored many points and his team ended up winning. In the locker room everyone congratulated him and told him that he had played so well but Kareem couldn't get  what the coach said out of his mind. He barely responded to his teammates and everyone congratulated him. He felt so betrayed as his parents let the responsibility of picking his future College into Coach D's hands. coach D tried to justify calling him slurs by saying that he knew that it would make a difference in his playing.  Kareem didn't say anything to him and still felt that empty feeling in his stomach. He told his parents about the situation and they felt sympathetic for him but they knew that he had to finish his last season with Coach D as he was in control of Kareem's every decision. In his junior year they went undefeated winning the City Championship for the second year  in a row. Kareem still felt  as happy as he did last year but for four different reasons he thought the season would end in happiness and joy but it instead ended in sadness and anger. 

In this summer Kareem made it known that he was trying to get rid of being under Coach Donahue. he said that he wouldn't attend his friendship Farm program this year and wanted to  play street basketball, hang out with his friends, talk to girls and do everything he thought normal boys his age did. He applied to a  program designed to keep kids off the streets And was a journalist based  job, which paid him $35 a week. He was so excited and couldn't be more happy to learn about African American Heritage and get paid to help other people learn about it too. With basketball he knew everything about it, everything came easy to him and it was either you won or you lost there was no way in changing it. But with writing he felt as if he could express himself without judgment and whether he wrote something good or bad no one could take that from him. Once coach D found out he wouldn't be returning to Friendship farm he asked  Kareem to please come back. Kareem felt as if he owed something to Coach D even though he's the one who made coach D out of the coach as people thought he was. Kareem ended up agreeing and only stayed at friendship farm for 3 weeks to make Coach D happy; he knew that after that interaction everything would be done and he would be free from Coach D's teachings.

"You're going to need to pack on some meat if you want to bang with the big boys." (pg.122)

Kareem describes his senior year as a roller coaster ride. He didn't have much of a social life, only hanging around his few friends and building a small group. Jazz had been the one thing in his life that was very consistent. It helped him express his emotions, find himself and lift him up when he was sad. His parents had loosened up a little bit since he was doing so well academically and athletically they didn't know about his colleagues and the parties, nightclubs that he had been to.  His basketball season that year was a breeze; they had won  71 games in a row and hadn't lost a game since freshman year. During this year they had to face DeMartha again, this gave Kareem a bad feeling. He had PTSD from the last time that they played them.  He noticed his teammates playing more aggressively after what had happened to him many years back, but this year DeMartha was ready for them there were two big men waiting for him. Something that most people didn't understand about being tall and playing basketball was there were also other tall people in the same exact position as you. These men would later be drafted onto some of the greatest NBA teams. Just made it even more difficult for Kareem to navigate the court as they are all much bigger in size than he was. They  had thicker skin than him and were very fast as well. The game was hard; they ended up losing by three points. That is how their streak ended; it was 71 to 1 and it took some relief off of the team's backs. But not off of Kareem's, Kareem was thinking about the last time that they played him and how many more points that he had scored then versus now and Coach D had noticed his mood and asked what the issue was. Of course Coach D made this into an argument and ended up lecturing the boys on taking a win or a loss as a team instead of individually. To everyone outside of the team coach he seemed liked superman. He was, to them but only Kareem knew how and what his true intentions were. He was only relieved he was going to be out from under Coach D soon.

"It was endurable only because I knew in a few months I'd be gone forever." (pg.153)

"

"My mother warned me to be careful not to intrude." (pg.140)

Since Kareem was now living in LA and was a well-known athlete he met a ton of famous people. But one person that stuck out to him the most was Muhammad Ali, he had looked up to Muhammad all his life. Him and his friends after meeting him would talk about how cool meeting him was but they didn't understand how life-changing that experience was for Kareem.  Muhammad Ali was one person who had changed their name. And this was very inspiring to Kareem, see this whole time I've been calling him Kareem but during this whole journey and his whole time growing up his name was Lewis.  Muhammad Ali had found himself, and studied Islam which inspired him to convert, change his name and become Muslim. What stuck out to him the most was that he didn't Americanize anything that he did. He was a fighter and he stuck to it. He showed the world that you can do what you love and still find spirituality in it. Muhammad Ali and Kareem would later go on to be great friends and Muhammad portrayed the image of Kareem that he changed his name because that's who he wanted to be and not who others wanted him to be. Throughout all the coaches in Kareem's life Kareem stated that Muhammad Ali was the only one to show him what to do with winning.

Now that basketball season was over Kareem could spend more time reading. Kareem loved reading but there was one book that quote on quote changed his life. This book was the ‘Autobiography of Malcolm X’. As I said before Malcolm X had a huge impact on Kareem he was very inspired by him and took everything he said into consideration. In this book Malcolm X expressed how he wanted to end racism ‘by any means necessary’. Kareem found  himself being overly joyful and very happy that he helped spread the message of the Nation of Islam.   When Kareem was getting to almost finishing the book Malcolm X embraced his means of being a muslim. he explained how through Islam he found himself and how it was a journey of spirituality awakenings and how it was brought to him and broad daylight. This book changed Kareem’s life because Kareem knew he could relate so much to it. After being around Muhammad Ali, doing his own research, and thinking about all the other people in the world who were going through the same realization as him he was so touched that someone had come forward and publicly changed themselves for the better.

Now that he was fully himself he was finally becoming Kareem. The transition from playing college basketball and professional basketball was easier than he thought but was still very hard. He was living alone in a big city away from his family and friends. The place that he was living had a very good Muslim population which he was happy about and yes he was a famous athlete with lots of money but he felt so lonely and started to struggle with his religion. He started to ask what Islam was and what message Prophet Muhammad (SAW)  said and he seemed to answer them  in the most simple way. He expressed to his teammates, friends and people asking him that God was in the details and we don't focus on the details. That's why it was so hard for many people to find god. She learned how to adapt to both professional basketball and the questions he was getting even though she was still trying to find out himself he finished his season and ended up scoring 2,599 points. After the season was over and after they became NBA champions he legally changed his name to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and he hasn't felt as good as he did ever before in his life. Throughout his whole life he allowed people to name him control his body control, his mind and everything he was feeling. But this was the one thing he felt he had control over and after doing so he had felt so much better there was no more Lew who won all those championships and now he became Kareem and the world just needed to just stick around long enough to see what he can do.