Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is the most decorated player in NBA history. Six MVPs. Six championships. Nineteen All-Star selections. 38,387 career points, a record that stood for 39 years until LeBron James broke it in 2023. He played 20 seasons without missing a beat, and he did it with a signature skyhook that nobody in basketball history has successfully replicated.
None of that is Habiba Abdul-Jabbar’s story. But all of it is her backdrop.
Born Janice Brown, she converted to Islam, changed her name, and married Kareem on May 28, 1971, the same year he led the Milwaukee Bucks to their first NBA championship. They separated in 1973. Their divorce was finalized in 1983. She raised three children largely alone, built a career in fashion design, earned a degree in Creative Writing from Oberlin College in 1997, and has lived quietly in Los Angeles ever since.
That is a full life. Almost nobody has covered it as one.
Janice Brown Before the Name Change
Habiba Abdul-Jabbar was born Janice Brown, likely in New York in the late 1940s or early 1950s. She was raised in a Christian, likely Catholic, household. Her parents traveled from New York to Washington, D.C., for her wedding, which is a detail that comes back with significance later.
She met Kareem, then known as Lew Alcindor, when she was a high school student through a mutual acquaintance named Cliff Anderson, who was dating her at the time. Kareem was playing college basketball at UCLA, already established as the most dominant college player in the country. He was winning national championships. He was the unquestioned first pick of the 1969 NBA Draft.
After she and Cliff Anderson separated, Kareem invited Janice to a UCLA game. Their relationship developed from there. By the time Kareem graduated from UCLA in 1969 and was drafted by the Milwaukee Bucks, they were close enough that the relationship was serious.
One source has Kareem describe her at their first meeting as “bright, pleasant, a senior at Cal State.” He stopped by her house some months later. The relationship grew from that point forward.
Conversion to Islam and the 1971 Wedding
Kareem converted to Islam during his college years at UCLA and changed his name from Lew Alcindor in 1971. His conversion was shaped by his relationship with Hamaas Abdul-Khaalis, a Hanafi Muslim leader who became a significant religious mentor.
Kareem asked Janice to consider Islam. She converted and took the name Habiba, an Arabic word meaning “beloved.” The name was not just a formality. It reflected a genuine shift in her religious identity, one she maintained throughout her life.
Their wedding took place on May 28, 1971, in a mosque in Washington, D.C. The ceremony was Islamic, officiated by Hamaas Abdul-Khaalis. Kareem did not invite his own parents because they were not Muslim.
Habiba’s parents traveled from New York to attend. They were not allowed inside the mosque because of their Catholic faith.
That image of Habiba’s parents waiting outside while their daughter married inside is one of the most specific details in this entire story. Habiba had converted and adopted a new religious identity. Her parents had made the journey to be there. The mosque’s rules did not accommodate them. Whether that decision came from the officiants, from Kareem, or from protocol is unclear. But its emotional weight on a family that had traveled hundreds of miles to witness their daughter’s wedding was real and lasting.
Three Children and a Fracturing Marriage
Kareem and Habiba’s first daughter, also named Habiba (now Habiba Alcindor), was born on May 15, 1972. By December 1973, the couple was already living apart. Habiba moved to Washington, D.C. with their daughter while Kareem remained with the Milwaukee Bucks.
They continued their relationship despite the separation, and Kareem Jr. was born on August 23, 1976. By the late 1970s, Kareem had developed a relationship with Cheryl Pistono, a woman he would eventually have a son with, named Amir. The marriage to Habiba ended through a religious ceremony in 1978 when Habiba was three months pregnant with their third child. Sultana was born in April 1979.
The civil divorce was not finalized until March 1983.
The timeline is important to hold in one place. The couple separated in 1973. Kareem Jr. was born in 1976, three years after separation. Sultana was born in 1979 while Kareem was requesting the divorce. The civil process took until 1983 to complete. That is a decade-long unwinding from 1973 to 1983 of a marriage that lasted formally from 1971 to 1978.
Habiba raised all three children largely on her own through that period. Kareem was one of the most famous athletes in the world. He was a six-time MVP playing at the highest level of professional basketball throughout this entire period. The domestic responsibility landed on Habiba.
A Career in Fashion and Education
After the divorce, Habiba built her own professional identity. She worked as a fashion designer, founding a brand called Tutu Glam. Earlier in her career she had worked as a model for the Black Fashion Museum in America and as a buyer for a clothing store in Los Angeles. She later worked as a fashion consultant in Seattle before returning to Los Angeles.
She also pursued education on her own timeline. She graduated from Oberlin College in 1997 with a degree in Creative Writing. Oberlin is one of the most academically respected liberal arts colleges in the United States. Completing a degree there in her late forties or early fifties, after raising three children through a complicated divorce, is not a casual accomplishment. She also reportedly attended California State University, Los Angeles, at some point.
The fashion work and the creative writing degree together suggest someone who built an identity rooted in craft and expression, well outside the orbit of basketball or celebrity.
What Happened to Their Children
The three children Habiba raised reflect different paths.
Habiba Alcindor, the eldest daughter born in 1972, became a playwright and medical social worker. She chose the Alcindor surname rather than Abdul-Jabbar, returning to Kareem’s birth family name. She writes for the stage and works in therapeutic care.
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar Jr., born in 1976, played college basketball at Valparaiso before transferring to Western Kentucky, following his father’s sport without quite reaching his father’s level. He later transitioned into television acting.
Sultana Abdul-Jabbar, born in 1979, is the most private of the three. She worked in administrative roles including with the Los Angeles Lakers organization. She holds a degree in literature. She does not maintain a public profile.
Two out of three children became serious athletes or artists. The third worked for the same franchise where their father built his legend. All three reflect a household where both sport and creativity were part of the environment, which comes from both parents, not just from Kareem.
Kareem’s Own Account
Kareem has been more candid in his writings about the marriage than most people realize. He has acknowledged that he demanded a great deal from Habiba and provided limited emotional support. He has said that he was not prepared for the realities of marriage during his early NBA career. He was moving between cities, consumed by basketball, and developing his faith in ways that isolated him from the people closest to him.
His religious mentor Hamaas Abdul-Khaalis, who officiated the wedding, was later convicted in connection with the 1977 Hanafi siege in Washington, D.C., one of the most significant hostage-taking events in American history. That conviction directly affected Kareem, who had been deeply influenced by and invested in that community. Whether it affected Habiba specifically is not documented, but it was a significant rupture in the religious world she had joined.
Life in Los Angeles
Habiba Abdul-Jabbar lives in Los Angeles. She is in her mid-to-late seventies. She does not maintain public social media accounts. She does not give interviews about her years with Kareem or about the divorce. The fashion work appears to have wound down in recent years. The creative writing degree from Oberlin suggests an ongoing interior life that has never required a public audience to validate it.
Kareem was diagnosed with chronic myeloid leukemia in 2008 and has managed the illness since. He has written extensively about his life, including about the marriage to Habiba, and has been vocal about his regrets regarding the emotional availability he failed to provide during those years.
Habiba’s response to any of that has been silence. Consistent, decades-long silence.
Quick Facts
| Detail | Information |
|---|---|
| Birth name | Janice Brown |
| Born | Late 1940s, likely New York |
| Religion | Converted from Christianity to Islam |
| Married Kareem | May 28, 1971, Washington, D.C. |
| Separated | December 1973 |
| Civil divorce finalized | March 1983 |
| Children | Habiba Alcindor (b. 1972), Kareem Jr. (b. 1976), Sultana (b. 1979) |
| Education | Oberlin College, BA Creative Writing, 1997 |
| Career | Fashion designer, Tutu Glam brand; model; fashion buyer |
| Current residence | Los Angeles |
