It’s easy to look at our heroes and believe that they will live forever. Don’t buy it? Then take a look at those who are still in shock following the death of Michael Jackson as further evidence. We’ve become so accustomed to witnessing these larger-than-life figures performing jaw-dropping, amazing feats that we tend to view them only through the lens of those accomplishments, never processing the fact that they, just like we, are human.
That realization was further crystallized by the news that pro basketball Hall of Famer Kareem Abdul-Jabbar has been diagnosed with chronic myeloid leukemia. Facing a very real fight for his life, the NBA’s all-time scoring leader saw his plight as an opportunity to bring national awareness to his rare condition.
“I’ve never been a person to share my private life, but I can help save lives,” he explained during a press conference in midtown Manhattan. “It’s incumbent on someone like me to talk about this.”
Now that he’s talking about it, the other approximately 4,500 adults who also suffer from this condition in the United States can now find solace in the fact that they have a national advocate in their corner. Like many, Abdul-Jabbar had viewed a leukemia diagnosis as a death sentence, which brought him face-to-face with his own mortality.
“Having lost one of my closest friends to a different, highly aggressive form of leukemia, I knew how serious my diagnosis was,” he said. “My own life expectancy became a question mark.”
That question mark has now turned into an emphatic exclamation point, as Abdul-Jabbar has defied the odds after living with the condition for close to a year now. Citing the effect his former teammate Magic Johnson had with AIDs research following his own diagnosis, Abdul-Jabbar is striving to provide a similar boon in the efforts to combat this rare form of cancer.
While the basketball star’s plight has certainly humanized him in many ways, it also shows that Abdul–Jabbar, now 62, can still score when the game is on the line. Only this time, he’s winning at the game of life
–dewayne rogers
