Kareem 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 (183 cm), he grew to 7'2" (218 cm). 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, California, 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, Arizona.

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 15 March 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 29 December 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 29 January 1998.

On 10 November 2009 it was announced that he was suffering from leukemia; he had evidently received his diagnosis nearly a year earlier in December 2008.