re: Why do people dislike Kareem Abdul Jabbar?

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But his glories on the court have gone hand in hand with private emotional agonies, about which he's always been guarded. There was a break with his parents over his conversion to Islam; the 1973 mass murder of his Islamic teacher's family in the Washington, D.C. townhouse Abdul-Jabbar had given them; a split from his first wife the same year; the notorious 1977 on-court punch that decked Kent Benson and earned him the hostility of press and public; a January 1983 fire that destroyed his $2.5 million Bel Air home along with his priceless 3,000-disc jazz collection. In the past, Abdul-Jabbar's instinct has customarily been to draw deeper into his own protective shell. "Kareem is like a cat. When he wants to be around, he's right there, and when he doesn't, he's unapproachable," observes Cheryl Pistono, 28, his live-in girlfriend and the mother of Amir.

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