Kareem UCLA job: NBA legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar recently expressed interest in coaching the UCLA Bruins, who recently fired their coach Ben Howland.
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Kareem Abdul-Jabbar has reportedly expressed an interest in coaching the UCLA baskeball team to replace fired coach Ben Howland.
Abdul-Jabbar—the NBA’s all-time leading scorer, a six-time NBA champion, and a three-time national champion with UCLA—said on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” this week that he is the man to take over at UCLA.
“I certainly would be interested in coaching the team. It would be great to have an opportunity to restore the program to what it was,” he said on the show.
Abdul-Jabbar was the center for the Bruins under John Wooden from 1967 to 1969 and was part of the crew that went 88-2 and won three titles.
“It would be great to have an opportunity to restore the program to what it was. Not in terms necessarily of winning, but just having the guys get their degrees and learn about how to play the game of basketball. UCLA is still putting out fine scholars but the basketball program is suffering a little bit,” he added.
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Elaborating further, he told the Los Angeles Times that “'like all Bruin supporters, the recent trend at our school hasn’t made me happy. The players don’t seem to be learning how to play, and haven’t been graduating. We can do better.”
Abdul-Jabbar has some coaching experience but not in Division I. He has coached high school teams, had some assistant coaching jobs with NBA teams, and coached the Oklahoma Storm of the U.S. Basketball League.
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