Bidding for Kareem Abdul-Jabbar UCLA jersey passes

A UCLA jersey worn by Lew Alcindor in the 1968 NCAA national championship recreation and the 1969 Final Four is set to garner more than $1 million at public sale.

The man who has owned it for the past half century — a former Los Angeles resident who was a enormous fan of the participant now identified as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar — didn’t have to pay practically as a lot for the historic piece.

In fact, he paid no money at all. Instead, he traded for it after a Lakers recreation in the Forum car parking zone back someday in the mid- to late-Seventies, giving up one of his prized possessions as a teenager dwelling in South Gate:

His transistor radio.

“I used to listen to Dodger games on it under my pillow,” said the public sale’s consignor, a man named David who requested to have his last title withheld because of privateness issues.

Back then, David and some pals would often take the bus to the Forum, where they might strive to persuade followers to give them their additional tickets to attend the Lakers recreation that evening. Afterward, they might wait in the car parking zone for gamers to depart the building.

“We were young and crazy. We waited till the players came out and kind of talked to them,” said David, who says he once walked with Wilt Chamberlain to his car. “And there were other kids there. We would trade stuff, and that is basically how I got the jersey.”

By then, Abdul-Jabbar was a star with the Lakers, after profitable three NCAA titles under legendary UCLA coach John Wooden and main the Milwaukee Bucks to an NBA championship in 1971.

The younger man who was initially sporting the No. 33 Bruins jersey that evening was truly a USC fan, David said, so the commerce was pretty straightforward to pull off.

“Back then transistor radios were real popular,” David said.

Over the a long time, he largely stored the jersey saved away neatly, often pulling it out for a look or to show others. Recently, David said, he was “just cleaning things out” and determined it was time to half methods with the cherished merchandise.

“I said, you know, someone else will really enjoy this,” David said. “And they’ll display it, and people can enjoy it more than I will stuck in some kind of storage thing.”

According to Michael Russek, director of operations for Grey Flannel Auctions, David didn’t know a lot about the jersey’s historical past when he first introduced it in, only that it was issued by UCLA and had probably been worn by Alcindor in some recreation at some level.

Photo-matching revealed that he had worn it in a number of video games, including some very important ones. He wore it while scoring 34 factors with 16 rebounds in UCLA’s 78-55 victory over North Carolina in the 1968 national championship recreation and also during a number of video games the next season, including the Bruins’ 85-82 victory over Drake in a national semifinal recreation (Alcindor had 25 factors and 21 rebounds).

UCLA’s Lew Alcindor steals the ball and dribbles away from a group of North Carolina gamers

(Harold Filan / Associated Press)

“That’s when it really started to come together that we have something that’s truly special,” Russek said.

As of Friday morning, bidding had reached $850,101, with a 22% purchaser’s premium bringing the price to practically $1.04 million. The public sale ends Aug. 16.

David said he was “very surprised at how it took off so quick. I’m not familiar with these kind of auctions or jerseys, really. But there’s a lot of alumni from UCLA down there, and a lot of people would like something like that.”

The current Oregon resident added that he hasn’t thought about what he’s going to do with all that money.

“I’m not the kind of person who does plans for money until I have it,” he said.