Why do people dislike Kareem Abdul Jabbar?

He was a Lakers assistant and help turn Bynum around.

He was a dick to everybody when he played though. He's paying for it now.

he's "out there", but not in a fake way like bill walton, who has used his weirdo/outsider views to become a lovable idiot

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I think he's the greatest...but my dad says that he didn''t work hard enough on defense. And he says that lots of times, he didn't even run down court. And that he didn't really try... except during the playoffs.

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I already covered this in the Oscar Robertson thread.

He is a big ninny

I think he was very aloof toward teammates and fans. He also kept to himself off the court -- he collected Persian rugs and ran a jazz label. Kareem and Magic were as different as night and day.
A lot of that had to do with his size. I read his autobiography years ago and he talked about being insecure over his height -- like when he was in high school he got turned down for a job at a diner because he was too tall. Girls were scared of him too.
These were the days when a big center was kind of scary and intimidating. This was before the idea of the big man being an overgrown kid, like Shaq or Dwight Howard

He's not only aloof, but he seems overly sensitive and judgmental. He prefers to be alone and from all appearances those that know him prefer it as well.

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I think he was very aloof toward teammates and fans

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It's hearsay evidence so take it for what it's worth but I've heard stories that he's kind of a dick and brushes people off that ask for autographs.

Huge fan of Kareem, good for him for not being one just another athlete. Kareem, in my eyes, is the educated center. He might have been selfish, but I wouldn't call him a diva. Especially compared to some his contemporaries and successors (Wilt,Shaq).

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But his glories on the court have gone hand in hand with private emotional agonies, about which he's always been guarded. There was a break with his parents over his conversion to Islam; the 1973 mass murder of his Islamic teacher's family in the Washington, D.C. townhouse Abdul-Jabbar had given them; a split from his first wife the same year; the notorious 1977 on-court punch that decked Kent Benson and earned him the hostility of press and public; a January 1983 fire that destroyed his $2.5 million Bel Air home along with his priceless 3,000-disc jazz collection. In the past, Abdul-Jabbar's instinct has customarily been to draw deeper into his own protective shell. "Kareem is like a cat. When he wants to be around, he's right there, and when he doesn't, he's unapproachable," observes Cheryl Pistono, 28, his live-in girlfriend and the mother of Amir.

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This is an excerpt from a People's magazine article in 1984.