loved him.
        The next year I transferred from USC to UCLA and at one point took a class called The American Novel. It sounded interesting. I like literature. But I was dismayed to learn we’d have to read a complete novel each week for ten weeks, including the 1000-page Gone with the Wind. Definitely not a Mick. On the first day of class, after everyone was seated, a 7-foot-2-inch black man stepped quietly into the room and found an empty seat. Everyone knew he was Lew Alcindor, the most famous college basketball player in the country. Yet all quarter, he faithfully showed up for every class, always quiet and unassuming, and I don’t remember him ever talking to anyone else. Not the flamboyance you expect from a superstar.
        Over the years, I would follow the careers of both, watched O.J. break the all-time NFL rushing record, Kareem win championships with the Lakers and eventually become the highest scorer in NBA history. I loved watching O.J. jump over airport benches in Hertz commercials and play Nordberg, the bungling sidekick in The Naked Gun movies and Kareem playing Roger Murdock, the bizarre pilot in the Airplane movies. I was proud of Kareem for standing up for his beliefs and authoring no less than eight books, devastated when O.J.’s world came crashing down, the slow-speed chase, the If the glove doesn’t fit, you must acquit, and that ugly verdict.
        Their frequent TV presence over the years would often bring me back to those long-ago college days when I’d see them in class: O.J., who had it all and squandered everything, and Kareem, who despite his discomfort with his celebrity and the press, would make the most of his life and become the superstars’ superstar.