During halftime of the Cal men’s basketball game against Colorado, Cal hoops legend Shareef Abdur-Rahim received the Pete Newell Career Achievement Award, which has been awarded every year by Cal Athletics since the 2010-11 season. Per CalBears.com, the Pete Newell Career Achievement Award is given to “A Cal men’s basketball alumnus who has distinguished himself in his career accomplishments, upholding the highest ideals of Coach Newell and the University of California.” Abdur-Rahim caught up with GoldenBearReport.com and other members of the media about what receiving the award means to him and why he’s glad that he became a California Golden Bear.
Abdur-Rahim played his high school ball at Wheeler High School in Marietta, Georgia, being named Mr. Basketball in Georgia twice in 1994 and 1995. In a rather surprising decision, Abdur-Rahim chose to play for Todd Bozeman and the California Golden Bears, leading them to the 1996 NCAA Tournament, where they lost to Iowa State in the first round by a final score of 74-64. During his freshman year at Cal, Abdur-Rahim averaged 21.1 points, 8.4 rebounds, 1.9 steals, and 1.3 blocks per game.
After his lone year at Cal, Abdur-Rahim went on to get drafted 3rd overall in the 1996 NBA Draft by the Vancouver Grizzlies. He would play in the NBA for 12 seasons, averaging 18.1 points, 7.5 rebounds, and 1.0 steals per game and was named an NBA All-Star with the Atlanta Hawks during the 2001-02 season. Abdur-Rahim is still involved in the NBA as the current president of its minor league system known as the Gatorade League (G-League).
For Abdur-Rahim, one of the best parts of receiving the Pete Newell Award is the chance that it gave him to visit campus again and relive his college days. Since moving to the East Coast, it’s been a little harder for him to visit Cal as often as he would like.
“Well, I’ve tried over the years to get back at least once or twice a year,” Abdur-Rahim said. “My family and I, we moved to the East Coast. Over the last couple years, it’s been harder, but it’s always just great memories and exciting to be back on campus. When I come into campus, I usually have to come past Clark Kerr, where when I was here we lived. So, that’s just fun. Brings back a lot of memories and then the honor of being recognized with the Pete Newell Award, knowing what Coach Newell means to the university and to basketball in general is an honor. So, just excited, honored, and humbled.”
Prior to coming to Cal, Abdur-Rahim knew a little bit about Newell through the Pete Newell Big Man Camp. He saw some tape of it and knew that it attracted some of the top players in the country.
“When I was in high school, someone shared, or someone sat down with me or I think my high school coach had like the tape of the Pete Newell Big Man Camp,” Abdur-Rahim recalled. “Where he would go to Hawaii with all the guys and he’d have them in the Hawaiian shorts and he’d be teaching them his footwork and everything. It was like big time like Shawn Kemp and Kiki VanDeWeghe and these guys. So, that was my first introduction even before I got here and then once I came, coach would be around, but his son was probably more visible at the time and was around and would come and do things with us on the court.”
While he was familiar with Newell, Abdur-Rahim came to Cal for reasons unrelated to the Hall of Fame coach. Todd Bozeman did a great job of selling him on all that Cal could offer. Growing up in Georgia, Abdur-Rahim spent most of his time watching the ACC and SEC, not giving the Pac-10 much thought.
“I was like an SEC, ACC kid. You know?” Abdur-Rahim said. “So, I grew up going to all the Georgia Tech games and Dukes and North Carolinas and Kentucky. Those were the schools. Those were the schools. I honestly didn’t know Cal until Jason [Kidd] committed here. And I was like, I didn’t know it was a school.
“Coach Bozeman just did a wonderful job of painting a picture of the school for me and what he probably did better than anybody else was he recruited my mother. So, he got my mother to like Cal and to like him and she made me pay attention like hey, you should listen to this guy, I like him. And when she told me that I was like alright. So once I did that, he did a really good job of selling the school.”
At the time that Bozeman was recruiting Abdur-Rahim to Cal, the Cal men’s basketball program was coming off a year in which they missed the NCAA Tournament, reeling from the loss of Jason Kidd, who had led them to back-to-back tournament appearances in 1993 and 1994. With not much of a basketball program to offer, Bozeman really focused on selling Abdur-Rahim on all that Cal could offer as a school. Not just as a basketball program.
“Different from other folks, he didn’t really, we didn’t have a huge basketball program at the time, he sold the university,” Abdur-Rahim said of Bozeman. “He explained everything about the university. He literally was like this is before power points, he came in with like a huge board that he carried into my living room and all the different flyers from around the school and different student body programs and all the activities and talked about Harry Edwards and Professor Algar and all the famous professors from African-American Studies, Islamic Studies, and different topics and everything that was going on with campus and it appealed to me. And we’re going to be a good basketball team, too.”
When he got to Berkeley, Abdur-Rahim instantly thrived, averaging around 30 points per game during his first three games. Abdur-Rahim gives credit to Bozeman and the unique opportunity he had to shine at Cal right away. Had he gone to a more established program like Kansas or Kentucky, it’s possible he wouldn’t have gotten off to such a hot start.
“I think in some ways, the opportunity was right for me here,” Abdur-Rahim said. “Coach Bozeman needed me to do a lot early and I could have gone other places and just that opportunity wouldn’t have presented itself for me. And I tried to work hard. I really cared about it. I wanted to be good. I didn’t have an expectation of doing as well as I did as early as I did. It was hard. I think back, it was hard for me to leave school because that wasn’t. It really wasn’t my expectation. I thought I’d be in school for a while and I was enjoying it. But I think a lot of it is Coach Bozeman really put me in a situation to succeed. The opportunity was there for me. I had really good teammates and I think I worked on it. I tried to apply myself.”
After having such a fabulous freshman year, Abdur-Rahim received feedback from NBA scouts that if he declared for the 1996 NBA Draft, odds were really good he would be one of the first players chosen. Given that opportunity, Abdur-Rahim made the call to leave for the NBA after just one season. However, he knew that he wanted to finish his degree someday, fulfilling a promise he made to his mother.
“When I decided to come to school here or when I decided to leave school, I told my mother I would finish school,” Abdur-Rahim said. “I don’t know [if she believed me]. It was like a request she had, and I was like look, I’ll come back and finish. And after four or five years I started. I kinda started the process. While I was still playing I was taking classes and coming back here in the summer. That was kinda the starting of the extension classes, so just everywhere I was I would try to find classes. And then at the end of that process, I had to be here on campus and luckily my family we were living in Sacramento, so I would just come up a couple days a week and take classes.
“And for me when I was here and I was a student athlete, the rigors of all of that was just so much I’d say I didn’t, it was tough to totally engage in the campus and the university and everything that the school offers. When I was here at that time, when I was just a student, it was fun because I was able to just kinda navigate the campus and I discovered libraries I didn’t know were there and learned about famous professors and so forth. With classes I was taking, I really got to appreciate all that this school has to offer.”
In addition to fulfilling a promise to his mom, going back to school and finishing his degree at Cal meant challenging himself in new ways. After finishing his NBA career, Abdur-Rahim was eager to have new challenges and completing his degree was one way to keep himself stimulated and engaged with the world around him.
“Once I started back and I started the process, I just enjoyed the challenge of learning,” Abdur-Rahim said. “It’s similar to the process of sports and training. It was just in a different way. Having to learn and challenge myself to learn new information and apply myself differently. I started to enjoy that process. And when I finished I kind of experienced a similar lull as I did when I ended my playing career. It’s like ok, what do I do now? How do I manage that energy that I was using? So, again I’m unbelievably thankful through that process I still leaned on a lot of the infrastructure and the resources that the athletic department offers in just helping me organize and find the right classes. So, Cal has been even through that process, was wonderful to me.”
Abdur-Rahim has a different relationship with Cal than he did before he completed his degree. As an official alumnus, Abdur-Rahim now has two different Cal experiences to draw from. That of being an athlete and that of being a student. While the term “student-athlete” is used to describe those who play college sports, Abdur-Rahim made it clear that it’s very different experiencing Cal as an athlete than it is as a regular student.
“It’s great. I see folks everywhere that were here,” Abdur-Rahim said of interacting with the alumni community. “It’s like I have two experiences. I have the experience when I played here and I was a student. And so the community of folks that I was connected to then and then I have the connection of like coming back and connecting with like a whole group of folks that had nothing to do with athletics. I learned a ton in both experiences. I’m just thankful to have the relationship and connection to the university.”
As an alumnus, Abdur-Rahim has developed a special bond with another former Cal player who is currently making his way in the NBA in Jaylen Brown. Brown also played at Wheeler High School and chose Cal over more high profile programs like Kentucky. Also like Abdur-Rahim, Brown was selected 3rd overall in the 2016 NBA Draft by the Boston Celtics 20 years after Abdur-Rahim was selected 3rd overall by the Vancouver Grizzlies in 1996.
“Yeah, it’s just been organic,” Abdur-Rahim said of his relationship with Brown. “Really. Same high school just by chance. Some of the same, guys that were more contemporaries for me in that area that I grew up with playing with or playing against, coached him in the summer. We had the same high school coach. My high school coach coached him in high school. I had two younger brothers that were good friends with him. So, like that connection early on was just natural.
“And then I think similar to me, I never talked to him about Cal. I think similar to me, Coach Bozeman was daring enough to think that he could recruit a kid from Marietta, Georgia and get him to come to Cal, Cuonzo [Martin] thought the same thing and positioned the school differently than other folks were positioning their recruiting and it worked out. I think, like Jaylen has just done fantastic. He’s mature beyond his years. Was unbelievable here and has gone on to really do special things so far.”
An even more important relationship that Abdur-Rahim has is the one who he has with his son Jabri, who is committed to Virginia in the 2020 class. Like his dad, Jabri is going to a top-flight public school and looking to excel both on the court and in the classroom.
“Take advantage of the complete opportunity,” Abdur-Rahim said of what advice he gives his son. “I think he’s a smarter kid than I was at that age. He’s going to a really terrific university and a really terrific coach and what I’d say is go and work hard and work hard on the court and get after everything and work hard off the court in the classroom and get to know people and enjoy Charlottesville. The same way I think that, different, but similar communities. Charlottesville to Berkeley. Similar, real kinda unique campuses.”
When looking at all that he has accomplished, it’s no surprise Shareef Abdur-Rahim received the Pete Newell Career Achievement Award. He accomplished a ton at Cal during his playing days, went on to have a fantastic NBA career, came back to get his degree, and now is a major force in basketball as president of the G-League. When talking about distinguished Cal men’s basketball alumni, few have resumes that match up.
