Kareem-Abdul Jabbar
During his college days prior to fully converting to Islam, Jabbar was extremely dominant because he could dunk the ball with ease. However, the NCAA subsequently ruled that the dunk was illegal, which led him and many other people to believe that the rule was made with the sole purpose of slowing him down. It was called the “Lew Alcindor” rule, Jabbar’s name prior to converting to Islam. The rule was in effect between 1967 and 1976, but it incidentally made the future Lakers star an even better player. Because he was not allowed to shoot the ball down through the rim, he was able to develop his hook shot, one of the moves which made him an unstoppable force in the NBA.
Kareem-Abdul Jabbar
Paul Westphal
Nowadays, it seems preposterous to think that a slam dunk was illegal in basketball, but it is still not as crazy as the idea of a team having as many timeouts as they want. In the 70s, if you called for a timeout which you didn’t have, the opposing team got a free throw but you still got the timeout and retained possession of the ball. Westphal’s team was down by one and the clock had almost run out, so he called for a timeout intentionally despite knowing his team didn’t have any left, which awarded a free throw to the opposing team. The Celtics were subsequently up by two, though the Suns still got the timeout and came up with the play which ended up sending the game into triple overtime. This meant that a team could call an infinite number of timeouts, possibly dragging out games to great lengths, so the league decided to do something about this – nowadays, the opposing team gets two free throws and also gains possession of the ball.
Paul Westphal
