Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in conversation with Jim Hill

This talk took place August 29, 2016, at the Moss Theatre in Santa Monica, CA as part of Live Talks Los Angeles series. 

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is the NBA’s all-time leading scorer and a Basketball Hall of Fame inductee. Since retiring, he has been an actor, a basketball coach and the author of eleven books, many of them New York Times best sellers, including What Color is My World?, which won the NAACP Image Award for Best Children’s Book. Abdul-Jabbar is also a columnist for Time Magazine and The Washington Post, writing on a wide range of subjects including race, politics, age and pop culture, and his essays and columns have also appeared in the Huffington Post, in the Los Angeles Times and on Esquire.com, among other publications. In 2012, he was selected as a U.S. Cultural Ambassador. 

Since retiring from professional basketball, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar has become a lauded observer of culture and society. He now brings that keen insight to the fore in Writings on the Wall: Searching for a New Equality Beyond Black and White. He uses his unique blend of erudition, street smarts and authentic experience in essays on the country’s seemingly irreconcilable partisan divide – both racial and political, parenthood, and his own experiences as an athlete, African-American, and a Muslim. The book is not just a collection of expositions; he also offers keen assessments of and solutions to problems such as racism in sports while speaking candidly about his experiences on the court and off.

Timed for publication as the nation debates whom to send to the White House, the combination of plain talk on issues, life lessons, and personal stories places Writings on the Wall squarely in the middle of the conversation, as many of Abdul-Jabbar’s topics are at the top of the national agenda. Whether it is sparring with Donald Trump, within the pages of TIME magazine, or full-length features in the The New York Times Magazine, writers, critics, and readers have come to agree on what The Washington Post observed: Abdul-Jabbar “has become a vital, dynamic and unorthodox cultural voice.”

Jim Hill has been a fixture on CBS 2 in Los Angeles for more than 30 years. He appears on the station’s weekday 6 and 11 p.m. newscasts and also hosts the weekend editions of “Sports Central” – Southern California’s most comprehensive sports newscast. In addition, he co-hosts “LTV,” the Los Angeles Lakers pre-game show on KCAL 9, where he joins Lakers legend James Worthy.

Hill, who played defensive back in the National Football League, draws upon his experience as a player, his talents as a broadcaster and relationships with top athletes and coaches to deliver his award-winning sports reports.