Donald Trump vs. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar Will Be the Beef to End All Beefs

The greatest scorer in the history of the NBA dunks on the greatest ego in the history of America.

In a former life, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was an NBA center with an impossibly smooth hook shot and some goofy ass goggles. These days he’s a public intellectual, and in that role he recently wrote an op-ed for the Washington Post lambasting America’spolitical flavor of the month—Donald Trump.

Here’s a taste:

Americans may flirt with the preppy life of the frathouse partier because he’s poked sacred cows, said stuff we all wish we could say (except that reason keeps us from doing it), and acted buffoonishly entertaining. But when you wake up the next morning … Trump’s blustering inarticulation and dodging of questions will seem untrustworthy.

In the parlance of basketball, Trump got dunked on. Like, nuts to the face dunked on. Then he responded like only a 69-year-old man could, with a note written on a print out of Kareem’s article. The note read:

“Kareem. Now I know why the press always treated you so badly–they couldn’t stand you. The fact is that you don’t have a clue about life and what has to be done to make America great again!”

In the parlance of basketball, Trump shot an airball. “You don’t have a clue about life,” is something an eight-year-old says during recess. “Nobody likes you” is something a five-year-old yells back.  And both are exactly the kind of meaningless insults you’d expect from Trump, who’s all bluster and no substance.

With campaign cycles so often marred by petty bickering between obnoxious political candidates, Kareem vs. Donald may actually be the one spat we’re looking forward to watching this election season. Round one of this tete-a-tete goes to Kareem. Round two to the one who was in the funniest movie of all time. Let’s see…yep, that was Kareem. Sorry, The Donald. You lose. 

Photos by Kris Connor/Getty Images, FREDERIC J. BROWN/AFP/Getty Images