Abdul-Jabbar was asked “a lot of great questions” about how he dealt with racial issues while playing basketball during the 1960s and ‘70s, when there was civil unrest around the country. James told Abdul-Jabbar how cool it was to see the picture of a young Abdul-Jabbar (then Lew Alcindor), Muhammad Ali, Jim Brown, Bill Russell and other prominent athletes gathered in 1967 in Cleveland with other civil rights activists. The group had come together to support Ali’s position in his refusal to be drafted.