A Quote by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

OK, I'll put it like this: I doubt if we will see another All-American basketball athlete who is a Rhodes Scholar. — © Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
OK, I'll put it like this: I doubt if we will see another All-American basketball athlete who is a Rhodes Scholar.
Dusty Rhodes was a great athlete. Actually, he was a baseball player as well. He played football but he played baseball. That was his number one sport. He wasn't always heavyset like he is. But Dusty Rhodes, The American Dream he just gets charisma.
The truth of the matter is that Dusty Rhodes helped put more money in my pocket than anybody I've ever wrestled. In his time he was the most charismatic and talented performer in the business, and I know he doesn't look like it, but he was a pretty good athlete too.
I was a single mom by choice at 37, and if my love life hadn't quite panned out, most everything else had. I was a classic 'amazing girl' - driven, social, and relentlessly well-rounded - reveling in the fruits of post-Title IX America: an all-metro athlete in high school, Rhodes Scholar at 24, best-selling author by 27.
He who is only an athlete is too crude, too vulgar, too much a savage. He who is a scholar only is too soft, to effeminate. The ideal citizen is the scholar athlete, the man of thought and the man of action.
I could have been a Rhodes Scholar, except for my grades.
So, it's like: I'm an OK singer; I'm an OK guitar player and you put them together and... it's just OK.
I had been cut from the basketball team every year. But I was like, 'I can turn it around! Michael Jordan made it!' You see it a lot of times - you'll have an athlete that you love, and then they'll be like, 'I also want to rap,' and you're like, 'Don't do that.' I was that kid.
When you see that any scholar loves the world, then his scholarship is in doubt.
I hated motivators - never been a motivator. Motivation is like a warm bath, and you should take a bath probably, but you need more than that; you need strategy. I was a strategist, but nobody responded to that, so I was, like, "OK, what am I? I'm a coach. I'm not a guru." As an athlete, I had great coaches, and I was a better athlete than many of them, but they still were better than I was as a coach because they could see when I couldn't see. I thought, that's great, because I'm not better than anybody, but I do have the skills that I can help people.
I've seen myself do stuff on stage that was pretty amazing. I think that would be true for any athlete. Any top athlete will see something that they are very proud of. All my injuries will attest to the fact that besides being a musician, it comes down to being an athlete.
I consider myself an athlete. I train like an athlete, I eat like an athlete, I recover and get sore just like any other athlete.
With basketball, if a guy is having an off night you still can say he's a good athlete. But with a comedian, you see them in front of the wrong audience - and they can look like complete amateurs. It's remarkable.
I learned early on - I can go to a shoot, and they will put anything they want to put on me, and I'll look like an idiot because I didn't say I don't like it. It's OK to have an opinion.
I ask everybody, who's the best between Magic and LeBron? Everyone says Michael's greatest. But, OK, well, we'll give him his props. But LeBron is a better athlete, and he can do more than Michael on the basketball court.
You see the one thing I've always maintained is that I'm an American Indian. I'm not a Native American. I'm not politically correct. Everyone who's born in the Western Hemisphere is a Native American. We are all Native Americans. And if you notice, I put American before my ethnicity. I'm not a hyphenated African-American or Irish-American or Jewish-American or Mexican-American.
The love of basketball, the time and effort I've put into it - I'd be doing a disservice to myself if I didn't see how far I could go in basketball before I tried to do anything in baseball.
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