Kareem Abdul-Jabbar made a cameo at the Democratic National Convention on Thursday night. His appearance was to introduce a video that would play for the crowd in Philadelphia, but he couldn’t resist the opportunity to make fun of Donald Trump. Abdul-Jabbar started his brief speech by saying that he was Michael Jordan, which got a round of applause. Some people might have been confused, but Abdul-Jabbar explained himself by saying that Trump would not know the difference between the two basketball legends.
It’s not a surprise that Abdul-Jabbar isn’t a fan of Trump. Back in 2015, prior to Trump locking up the Republican Party’s nomination for the presidency, Abdul-Jabbar released a scathing letter in which he called the New York real estate mogul “ISIS’s greatest triumph.” The NBA’s all-time scoring leader is also a left-leaning guy who is a practicing Muslim, so it’s no surprise that he isn’t a fan of the right-leaning dude who has made ostracizing people who practice Islam one of the cornerstones of his campaign.
The NCAA banned dunking from 1967 to 1976 because no one could stop a UCLA star named Lew Alcindor from dunking all over people. Fast forward nearly five decades, and despite changing his name to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, he’s still ruthlessly dunking on guys who he views as general nuisances.