UPDATE: 12/19, 2 p.m. ET —
“You may have heard that Humpty Kareem had a great fall. It’s true,” Kareem Abdul-Jabbar wrote via his Substack on Monday, December 18. “I was at The Manhattan Transfer’s final public concert at Disney Hall, ready to read a letter from Kamala Harris and provide some praise of my own for a group I love and admire. But I fell and was carted off to UCLA Hospital with a broken hip.”
He added, “I’d like to say I fell while trying to save a child from plunging over a balcony, but I just tripped. Hard for me to accept that a once world-class athlete just stumbled. But age is the great equalizer and humbles us all. Now, I’m a world-class patient in a bed convalescing from a hip replacement like 450,000 other Americans every year.”
Original story:
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was rushed to a Los Angeles hospital after breaking his hip in a fall that took place on Friday, December 15.
“Last night, while attending a concert, Kareem had an accidental fall and broke his hip,” Abdul-Jabber’s longtime business manager, Deborah Morales, shared in a statement via X (formerly Twitter) on Saturday, December 16. “He will have surgery today.”
Morales went on to say that everyone was “all deeply appreciative of all the support for Kareem,” thanking the Los Angeles Fire Department, specifically, “who assisted Kareem on site.” She went on to praise the “amazing medical team and doctors at UCLA Hospital who are taking great care of Kareem now.”
TMZ was first to report the news of the NBA legend’s fall.
Abdul-Jabbar, 76, was drafted to the NBA as a center for the Milwaukee Bucks, where he played from 1969 to 1975. From there, the basketball star moved to the Los Angeles Lakers where he played from 1975 to 1989, finishing out a 20-year playing career.
After his tenure as an NBA star, Abdul-Jabbar has continued to be a notable name in the world of basketball. Not to mention he’s been outspoken about various societal issues, including ones pertaining to his own health.
Earlier this month, Abdul-Jabbar shared that he had been diagnosed with atrial fibrillation after “having irregular heartbeat, shortness of breath and had no energy” for years.
“I thought it was a temporary issue,” he told People in February, noting that when he started feeling sick at a baseball game, he took things more seriously. “I had been an athlete and was in shape, so I felt it wasn’t going to bother me for any length of time. But I was quite wrong.”
Amid the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, Abdul-Jabbar also penned a WebMD essay discussing the importance of healthcare for Black Americans and revealed that he had fought prostate cancer and leukemia in addition to undergoing bypass heart surgery in recent years.
“I’ve been fortunate because my celebrity has brought me enough financial security to receive excellent medical attention. No one wants an NBA legend dying on their watch. Imagine the Yelp reviews,” he wrote, in part, at the time. “But while I’m grateful for my advantages, I’m acutely aware that many others in the Black community do not have the same options and that it is my responsibility to join with those fighting to change that. Because Black lives are at risk. Serious risk.”
Abdul-Jabbar continued, writing, “The more insidious and damaging threat to the health, lives, and economic well-being of Black Americans is a health care system that ignores the fact that, though they are most in need of medical services, they actually receive the lowest level.”
