Ivica Zubac: So I’m in the gym and Bill Bertka comes in. He says, “Come to the court, Kareem’s waiting for you.” I’m like, waiting for who? “Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is on the court, he’s not gonna wait forever.” “Let’s go.” So I walk out and Kareem’s standing there. He says, “I heard you can shoot the skyhook, show me.” Now I’m nervous, it’s Kareem! I shoot it… He invented the move. I take a few shots and he’s like, “Yeah… that looks good.” And then he starts showing me, he’s been shooting it for 70 years. At his age he’s still shooting skyhooks. His footwork is unbelievable. I don’t know, he makes everything. Baseline turnarounds, skyhooks, all net. So we did a few workouts together. Q. Was he nice to you? Zubac: He was great to me. I remember he looked at Bynum weird. There are a lot of stories about him not being the friendliest guy. He even admitted that, he said he used to be like that and that he’s tried to change. But he told me he wanted to mentor me. He was working with the Lakers then. He had some meeting… Q. with the front office? Zubac: I don’t know what happened, but it never materialized in the end. Rob Pelinka was involved too. He wanted an official role with the team, to work with me and the big men, but it never ended up happening. Unfortunately, that was it with Kareem. But we did have a few workouts, and then he came to one game to watch me.
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