On this day in 1969: Lew Alcindor makes his NBA debut — 29 points and 12 rebounds as the Bucks beat Detroit

Fifty-seven years ago this Sunday, the player who would become the NBA’s all-time leading scorer played his first professional game. On October 18, 1969, at Milwaukee Arena, 22-year-old Lew Alcindor — the future Kareem Abdul-Jabbar — played all 48 minutes and finished with 29 points, 12 rebounds and 6 assists as the Milwaukee Bucks beat the Detroit Pistons 119-110.

Only 7,782 people were in the building. Twenty years and 38,387 points later, almost nobody would believe a crowd that small had seen the start of it.

• Result: Bucks 119, Pistons 110 — Saturday, October 18, 1969, Milwaukee Arena. Season opener for both teams.
• By quarter: Detroit 30-23-28-29; Milwaukee 35-25-31-28. The Bucks led after every quarter.
• Lew Alcindor (Milwaukee): 29 points (12-27 FG, 5-8 FT), 12 rebounds, 6 assists, 5 fouls in 48 minutes — NBA debut.
• Other Milwaukee scorers: Jon McGlocklin 23 (9-14 FG, 5-5 FT), Flynn Robinson 23 (9-9 FT), Bob Dandridge 14 in his own NBA debut, Guy Rodgers 10 with 6 assists. Greg Smith and Don Smith (later known as Zaid Abdul-Aziz) had 10 rebounds each.
• Detroit leaders: Walt Bellamy 25 points (9-15 FG, 7-7 FT), Eddie Miles 21, McCoy McLemore 19 on 9-12 shooting, Terry Dischinger 13, Howard Komives 12 points and 9 assists, Jimmy Walker 10 points and 12 assists. Dave Bing was held to 5 points in 17 minutes.
• The difference: Milwaukee shot 50-100 from the field (.500) to Detroit’s 43-92 (.467) and won the boards 52-34.

Won on a coin flip

The Bucks only had Alcindor because of a coin. Milwaukee and Phoenix had both joined the NBA in 1968, and both were bad in year one: the Bucks went 27-55 and the Suns 16-66, last in their divisions. Under the expansion terms the two clubs flipped for the first pick in the 1969 draft. On March 19, 1969, Commissioner J. Walter Kennedy tossed a 1964 Kennedy half-dollar in his New York office while both teams listened on a conference call. Suns president Richard Bloch called heads — the choice of Phoenix fans who had voted in an Arizona Republic poll. It came up tails.

Phoenix used the No. 2 pick on Florida center Neal Walk. Milwaukee still had to win a bidding fight. The ABA’s New York Nets wanted the three-time NCAA champion from UCLA too, and Alcindor told both teams to make one offer each, with no haggling. The Bucks offered $1.4 million over five years, and he accepted. When the Nets came back afterward with a much bigger offer, he turned it down because he had already given Milwaukee his word.

One year earlier, to the night

The coin-flip loser had its own October 18 milestone. Exactly one year before Alcindor’s debut, on October 18, 1968, the Phoenix Suns played the first game in franchise history and beat the Seattle SuperSonics 116-107 in front of 7,112 at Arizona Veterans Memorial Coliseum. Phoenix scored 41 points in the first quarter and led after every period.

Gail Goodrich led the Suns with 27 points, 10 assists and 9 rebounds. Dick Van Arsdale added 21, Dick Snyder 20 on 9-for-14 shooting, McCoy McLemore 17, and George Wilson grabbed 19 rebounds to go with 16 points. Bob Rule scored 34 for Seattle, Rod Thorn had 19 and Tom Meschery pulled down 19 rebounds. Under coach Red Kerr, that opener was one of only 16 wins in the Suns’ first season.

The man in both box scores

One player appears in both October 18 games: McCoy McLemore. A forward who was picked up in three different expansion drafts — by Chicago in 1966, Phoenix in 1968 and Cleveland in 1970 — he scored 17 points in the Suns’ first game. Two months later, on December 17, 1968, Phoenix traded him to Detroit for Jim Fox and a third-round pick. That put McLemore on the other side for Alcindor’s debut, where he went 9-for-12 for 19 points.

His path ended up crossing Alcindor’s again. Cleveland traded McLemore to Milwaukee on February 1, 1971, and he played 10 playoff games for the Bucks team that won the 1971 championship.

The season that followed

Alcindor’s debut was not a one-off. Milwaukee won its first three games, beating Seattle 130-106 the next night, before losing at Los Angeles on October 24 in his first meeting with Wilt Chamberlain. By the end of the season the rookie had played all 82 games and averaged 28.8 points and 14.5 rebounds in 43.1 minutes. He was Rookie of the Year, an All-Star, an All-NBA Second Team pick and third in MVP voting.

The Bucks went from 27-55 to 56-26 under coach Larry Costello, a 29-win improvement. They beat Philadelphia 4-1 in the Eastern Division Semifinals before losing to the Knicks 4-1 in the Eastern Division Finals. Bob Dandridge, the fourth-round pick who debuted alongside him that night, went on to the Hall of Fame himself in 2021.

Then Milwaukee added Oscar Robertson. In 1970-71 Alcindor averaged 31.7 points, won his first MVP award and led the Bucks to the championship in only the franchise’s third season. In 1971 he began using the name Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. He played six seasons in Milwaukee before a June 1975 trade sent him to the Lakers, where he won five more titles.

By the time he retired in 1989, at 42, he had played 20 seasons and 1,560 regular-season games, won six championships and six MVP awards, and scored 38,387 points — the league record until LeBron James passed it in February 2023. He was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1995.

It all started with a coin that landed the wrong way for Phoenix, a single offer the Nets could not match, and a 29-point Saturday in Milwaukee. Box scores and season figures above come from Basketball-Reference.