This day in throwback: Lew Alcindor sparks a dynasty at UCLA

The sports world has come to a halt. The global pandemic known as COVID-19 has postponed live sports events. This time of year, the NCAA would be having its basketball tournaments. March Madness would be headed into its second weekend, and I’m sure there would be crazy games, upsets and individual performances to remember.

Repeat champions -- let alone, dynasties -- are hard to have in college basketball. Because players leave early and have a finite time at a school, a program will have a rough time winning titles year after year. Sure, there are programs that always seem to have top-tier talent more often than not. But there hasn’t been a repeat champion since Florida in 2006 and 2007. Think of all the consistently great programs that haven’t won one championship. And now that elite talent is younger and more spread out, chances of repeating are harder than ever. But let’s go back to a time, back to the dynasty, where a run was so impressive that it expanded beyond an average student’s matriculation through college.

The year is 1967. The place is Westwood, California. UCLA is gearing up for an NCAA Tournament run. Texas Western (now UTEP) had famously upset Kentucky the year before, and UCLA won the titles the two years before that. But 1967 was the start of something that will never be seen again.

Lew Alcindor, the young man who would go on to be Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (he had converted to Islam while in college but didn’t change his name until 1971), was the talk of the basketball world. His first year on the team was his sophomore season. He was so dominant at taller than seven feet that dunking was banned because of him. This had little impact on his effectiveness, as Alcindor averaged 29 points a game—still a UCLA single-season record.