Bidding for Kareem Abdul-Jabbar UCLA jersey passes $1 million
A UCLA jersey worn by Lew Alcindor in the 1968 NCAA national championship game and the 1969 Final Four is set to garner more than $1 million at auction.
The man who has owned it for the past half century — a former Los Angeles resident who was a huge fan of the player now known as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar — didn’t have to pay nearly as much for the historic piece.
In fact, he paid no money at all. Instead, he traded for it after a Lakers game in the Forum parking lot back sometime in the mid- to late-1970s, giving up one of his prized possessions as a teenager living in South Gate:
His transistor radio.
“I used to listen to Dodger games on it under my pillow,” said the auction’s consignor, a man named David who asked to have his last name withheld because of privacy concerns.
Back then, David and some friends would often take the bus to the Forum, where they would try to convince fans to give them their extra tickets to attend the Lakers game that night. Afterward, they would wait in the parking lot for players to leave the building.
A UCLA jersey, worn by Lew Alcindor during the 1968 national championship game and a 1969 national semifinal, is up for bid at Grey Flannel Auctions.
(Grey Flannel Auctions)
“We were young and crazy. We waited till the players came out and kind of talked to them,” said David, who says he once walked with Wilt Chamberlain to his car. “And there were other kids there. We would trade stuff, and that is basically how I got the jersey.”
By then, Abdul-Jabbar was a star with the Lakers, after winning three NCAA titles under legendary UCLA coach John Wooden and leading the Milwaukee Bucks to an NBA championship in 1971.
The young man who was originally wearing the No. 33 Bruins jersey that night was actually a USC fan, David said, so the trade was fairly easy to pull off.
“Back then transistor radios were real popular,” David said.
Over the decades, he mostly kept the jersey stored away neatly, occasionally pulling it out for a look or to show others. Recently, David said, he was “just cleaning things out” and decided it was time to part ways with the cherished item.
“I said, you know, someone else will really enjoy this,” David said. “And they’ll display it, and people can enjoy it more than I will stuck in some kind of storage thing.”
According to Michael Russek, director of operations for Grey Flannel Auctions, David didn’t know a lot about the jersey’s history when he first brought it in, only that it was issued by UCLA and had likely been worn by Alcindor in some game at some point.
Photo-matching revealed that he had worn it in several games, including some very significant ones. He wore it while scoring 34 points with 16 rebounds in UCLA’s 78-55 victory over North Carolina in the 1968 national championship game and also during multiple games the following season, including the Bruins’ 85-82 victory over Drake in a national semifinal game (Alcindor had 25 points and 21 rebounds).
UCLA’s Lew Alcindor steals the ball and dribbles away from a group of North Carolina players
(Harold Filan / Associated Press)
“That’s when it really started to come together that we have something that’s truly special,” Russek said.
As of Friday morning, bidding had reached $850,101, with a 22% buyer’s premium bringing the price to nearly $1.04 million. The auction ends Aug. 16.
David said he was “very surprised at how it took off so quick. I’m not familiar with these kind of auctions or jerseys, really. But there’s a lot of alumni from UCLA down there, and a lot of people would like something like that.”
The current Oregon resident added that he hasn’t thought about what he’s going to do with all that cash.
“I’m not the kind of person who does plans for money until I have it,” he said.