Kareem Abdul-Jabbar Reveals How He Created His Famous Sky Hook
A little while ago, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar hosted a Zoom call where regular, every day fans like myself got to “watch” a basketball game with him, virtually.
I pounced on the opportunity, and signed up quickly.
As you can imagine, no one was really focused on the game; everyone was far more interested in hearing Kareem’s stories. And the one story that stuck out?
How he created his signature hook shot.
He was more than happy to tell it — as if he’d told it a thousand times. He probably has.
The Story
It began when he was 10 years old. Young Kareem was playing on his school’s basketball team, but there was a big flaw in his game:
He couldn’t dribble.
Whenever Kareem put the ball on the floor, he’d turn it over. Now, pause here for a second.
Far too often, when young players have a huge hole in their game, they let it get to their heads. They fall down, they lose games, and they get disheartened.
Kareem didn’t. He listened to his coach, and he kept pushing.
To remedy his lack of dribbling skills, his coach decided to change up their strategy. Instead of having Kareem practice dribbling over and over again, he’d work on another skill:
Finishing around the rim.
His coach had him do the “Mikan Drill” (named for basketball legend George Mikan) over and over.
If you’re unfamiliar, it’s a drill where you stand on one side of the basket, do a layup, catch the ball with the opposite hand, then do an opposite-hand layup. And so on and so forth.
It helps with your finishing skills, timing, touch, and footwork. Notice that the drill doesn’t involve any dribbling, which was Kareem’s weakness.
Repeating the drill constantly eventually led to Kareem developing a hook shot. Determined, he would go to his grade school gym every day to practice it.
Sometimes he’d even go to the gym at night, having to move chairs around just to have enough space — since, like many schools, the school gym was also the auditorium.
From then on, young Kareem didn’t need to put the ball on the floor in games. No one focused on the one flaw in his game anymore.
Instead, he gave his opponents another thing to think about: trying to stop his hook shot.
In the process, he had transformed his weakness into a strength, while creating one of the most iconic signature shots in NBA history.
The Life Lesson I Learned
The story isn’t new, and it’s been told before. Still, hearing it from Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, himself, was awe-inspiring. Hearing the passion in his voice, sensing his determination as a child as he went to the gym night after night for practices that no one else would ever see.
It truly made me believe that anything was possible — that even the smallest action or habits could make a lasting difference. I may not be an NBA player (or anything close to it), but if a 10-year-old putting in the work 65 years ago could lead to one of the best basketball players in history, then I had no more excuses. And neither do you.
No matter your field, industry, or job: it’s time for you and me to start putting in the work.
And maybe, when we look back on our lives, we can have our own Kareem story one day that we’ll gladly pass on to the next generation. To remind them, and us, to keep going, despite our weaknesses.
