Motivation Quote by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

There’s a quiet defiance in Abdul-Jabbar’s plainspoken framing: not a sermon, not a slogan, just a decision. By saying “I saw Islam as the correct way to live,” he makes belief sound less like inherited identity and more like a moral architecture he evaluated and adopted. The second clause, “and I chose to try,” is the key modifier. It slips humility into what could read as absolutism. Correct doesn’t mean effortless; it means aspirational, a standard you measure yourself against while admitting you’ll fall short. For a public figure whose body and talent were constantly treated as public property, “I chose” is also a reclamation of agency.

The context matters: Abdul-Jabbar’s conversion (and name change from Lew Alcindor) landed in an era when Black athletes were being asked to “stick to sports” while simultaneously being pressed into symbolic roles they didn’t pick. Islam, in the American imagination, was already politicized and frequently misrepresented; a star embracing it wasn’t just personal spirituality, it was a cultural provocation. His wording anticipates the backlash. He doesn’t posture as an authority on Islam; he positions himself as a practitioner in progress, which undercuts the caricature of the rigid, militant convert.

The subtext is a lifetime of disciplined excellence translated into ethics: the same mentality that built a skyhook becomes a way to build a self. Faith here isn’t marketed as certainty; it’s presented as a practice, chosen under pressure, lived in public, and still treated as intimate.