Kareem Abdul-Jabbar on how he helped Joakim Noah win DPOY: “I tried to show Joakim the skyhook, he wasn’t interested” originally appeared on Basketball Network.
Five years into his NBA career, Joakim Noah sought out the legendary Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and asked if he could work out with him during the offseason. Abdul-Jabbar obliged, and the two spent a couple of weeks together in Los Angeles during the summer of 2012, hoping to take Noah’s game to the next level.
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During his guest appearance on “Conversations With Tyler,” Kareem talked about how Joakim did not learn his best weapon but absorbed more than enough knowledge on defense to help him win the league’s top individual defensive honors.
“I tried to show Joakim the skyhook; he wasn’t interested,” said Abdul-Jabbar. “I did show him some things that he could do defensively and how to help his team, and the next season, I worked out with him, and he won Defensive Player of the Year. I know I had some impact, and he thanked me, and I thanked him for giving me the opportunity. It’s worked out pretty well.”
Noah never picked up the sky hook
Abdul-Jabbar was known for the skyhook more than anything else. He perfected the most unguardable shot in basketball history and used it to become the NBA’s all-time scoring leader.
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However, while Kareem was a finesse player with a polished offensive game, Joakim was more known for his energy, hustle and physicality. So, it was no surprise that he had a hard time learning the skyhook.
“I worked with Kareem for a couple of weeks, but just because I worked with Kareem doesn’t mean that I’m going to be throwing sky hooks from everywhere,” Noah said. “But I feel like I learned a lot from him.”
The Chicago Bulls center immediately posted career highs with 11.9 points, 11.1 rebounds, 4.0 assists, 1.2 steals and 2.1 blocks per game during the 2012-13 season and was named to the All-Defensive first team for the first time in his career. The year after that, he had his best year ever in the NBA as he made the All-Star team, All-Defensive first team, All-NBA first team and won the 2014 Defensive Player of the Year award.
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Kareem worked out with Bynum, but the results were different
Before working out with Noah, Abdul-Jabbar also trained young Los Angeles Lakers big man Andrew Bynum during the early stages of the latter’s NBA career. But while the Bulls center made him proud, Kareem wasn’t too thrilled when he talked about Bynum during the same interview, saying the Lakers center disregarded him.
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“It was going well with Andrew Bynum, but Andrew finally got to sign his contract for $50 million, and then at that point Andrew thought that I didn’t know anything and that he didn’t have to listen to me, and we don’t know where Andrew is right now,” the Hall of Famer said. “He hasn’t played in a couple of years, and he’s not going to make it because he wasn’t able to follow through on really learning all the fundamentals.”
After Bynum made the All-Star team in 2012, his career fizzled, and he ended up playing only 26 games in the next two seasons before literally, as Kareem said, disappearing from plain sight. Noah’s career also plummeted after winning the DPOY award, but it was more because of injuries than an attitude problem.
This story was originally reported by Basketball Network on Aug 19, 2025, where it first appeared.