Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s appearance as pilot Roger Murdock in the 1980 film “Airplane!” is one of the most famous athlete cameos in cinema history, and Abdul-Jabbar shared the story about how it came to be.
During a Twitter Q&A session on Monday, the NBA’s all-time leading scorer received a question about how he ended up in the film. Abdul-Jabbar replied that the producers of the movie turned to him after they could not get baseball great Pete Rose, also adding that he had the time because he was on summer break from the NBA. The Hall of Fame great also noted how the directors of “Airplane!” hailed from Wisconsin, where he played for many years with the Milwaukee Bucks.
While Rose was probably just as big as Abdul-Jabbar was at the time, hearing him griping to little Joey about dragging Johnny Bench and Joe Morgan up and down the field for nine innings just wouldn’t have been the same. After all, the cameo as is was absolutely glorious.
The film’s directors had their own funny story about Kareem’s participation, so it’s good to hear his version of things as well.
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