Kareem Abdul Jabbar The Unstoppable Sky Hook

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K areem Abdul-Jabbar's NBA scoring record, achieved over 20 years, with 38,387 points, may be an unbreakable record. In the first Lakers game I saw in person, on March 28, 1982, Abdul-Jabbar beat the Cleveland Cavaliers with a skyhook at the buzzer. The next year he made a critical skyhook in an overtime playoff victory at Portland, then let out a yell as he ran back to the sidelines, where Magic greeted him with a drawn-out high five.

There was even more emotion that came with the hook shot that iced the Lakers' Game 6 victory in Boston Garden that delivered the 1985 championship in an NBA Finals that began with the Lakers getting stomped by the Celtics and Abdul-Jabbar being labeled as over the hill.

Abdul-Jabbar's personal favorite came in the same building, 11 years earlier, a dramatic late hook shot that helped the Bucks beat the Celtics in a Finals game.

And, fittingly, it was a hook shot that broke Chamberlain's scoring record on April 5, 1984.

Abdul-Jabbar's skyhook is one of the all-time signature moves, like George Gervin's finger roll or Hakeem Olajuwon's Dream Shake. The modern game has nothing close, not in status or effectiveness. Ironically, the San Antonio Spurs, the team derided as being so style-impaired, have two of the remaining signature shots: Tony Parker's teardrop and Tim Duncan's mid-range jumper off the glass from the wing. (Why do old-school announcers go crazy about the bank shot? Is the game that much worse without it?)

The true test of a signature move is when you can recognize it the moment someone else tries it. (For instance, it's pretty easy to see the influence of Michael Jackson on these dance moves by Usher.) When Abdul-Jabbar took a baseline seat at a 2004 Lakers game during his brief stint as a scout for the Knicks, Shaquille O'Neal noticed him and threw up a hook shot in the lane as an instant tribute, then pointed to Abdul-Jabbar to make sure he picked up on the homage.

O'Neal calls the skyhook "one of the most effective shots" in the history of the game, which makes you wonder why he never adopted it himself.

"My father made me shoot it all the time," O'Neal said. "Being a hip-hop kid, I didn't want to do it.

"We're different. We like to be a lot cooler."

Abdul-Jabbar concedes "it's not a macho shot," and realized it was going out of style even when he first learned it in the 1950s. But he doesn't understand the reluctance of the modern-day player to incorporate it into his game.

"I used it to become the leading scorer in the history of the NBA," Abdul-Jabbar said. "There has to be something about it that works."

There's a lot to be said about a journey being made easier by having a set destination. One reason Abdul-Jabbar always seemed to be a step ahead of the defense is that he knew exactly what he was going to do with the ball. Michael Jordan incorporated elements of this when he came to increasingly rely on his fallaway jumper, and in the past couple of years you've seen Kobe Bryant become more adept at getting to his preferred spots, then pulling up to shoot.

LeBron James seems to improvise every time, and there's a sense of wonder as we discover his capabilities right along with him. But LeBron and Kobe are perimeter players, almost destined to shoot lower percentages. Kareem was a 56 percent shooter for his career and had only one season -- his last, in 1988-89 -- in which he failed to make at least half of his shots.

So even while the latest generation has found more exciting ways to score, they haven't found anything more effective. The skyhook will continue to belong to Abdul-Jabbar. And, not coincidentally, so will the scoring record.

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