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Zaid Abdul-Aziz (Don Smith) played in the NBA for 10 seasons from 1968-1978 for the Cincinnati Royals, Milwaukee Bucks, Houston Rockets, Buffalo Braves, Boston Celtics and two stints with the Seattle Sonics after finishing his undergraduate degree and NCAA playing career at Iowa State. Abdul-Aziz earned Big 8 (currently the Big 12) Player of the Year honors for the 1967-78 season for the Cyclones as a senior and was named to the All-Conference Team on three occasions.
After a childhood in Brooklyn, New York that included a tenuous home life, Abdul-Aziz blossomed at Iowa State University after overcoming a difficult adjustment from the fledgling New York City public school system to a major university. He would eventually graduate from Iowa State in 1970 with a degree in Sociology and continue his education with graduate study at Seattle University.
Since retiring from the NBA, Abdul-Aziz has written an autobiography entitled Darkness to Sunlight, which was released in 2006 and operates youth basketball camps in Bellevue. He took some time to chat with the Reporter after speaking Monday at the Crossroads Mall at a celebration for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
BELLEVUE REPORTER: You once scored 33 points against UCLA and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, which was obviously during the era of the great John Wooden. Take me back to that night.
ZAID ABDUL-AZIZ: That had been etched on my calendar for a couple years, ever since I found out we were going to play them when I was a sophomore. I couldn’t wait for that game. When I went out there, just to go to Pauly Pavilion was incredible. The game was pretty close in the first half, then they blew us out. They were the number one team in the country and had a lot of weapons. John Wooden said me and Elvin Hayes were the greatest players to ever play against Kareem. To have the great John Wooden say I was a good player says a lot. I really relished him saying that.
REPORTER: You were honored as a three-time Big 8 All-Conference selection, won the Player of the Year award your senior year and had a 10 year career in the NBA. What is the thing you are most proud of?
ABDUL-AZIZ: One thing I take a lot of pride in, I was never late to a plane, I was never late to a bus and I never missed a game as far as what I was supposed to do. I was really proud of that. A lot of guys today don’t show up to practice or don’t make the plane. I think the difference in the players of today, I think we played better defense and were more unselfish. We moved the ball, hit the open man. Today, I think people just keep the ball. A guy gets the ball and is pounding it and pounding it and other people are just looking around.
REPORTER: Currently, you are doing public speaking engagements and have previously worked in drug and alcohol addiction counseling. Why is it important to you to be involved with youth?
ABDUL-AZIZ: I have six kids and they have never caused me a problem. They say, ‘it takes a village to raise a child’ and I’m responsible for helping people raise their kids because that’s how I grew up. Back in New York, if I did something wrong, my neighbor found out and there were more guidelines. We have to help each other to raise our families.
REPORTER: Having played with the Sonics two separate times and obviously living in the area still, what were your thoughts when the team was taken to Oklahoma City?
ABDUL-AZIZ: I was really sad. Kevin Durant was wearing my number. I had a lot of parallels in playing to him, he reminds me of myself, we have the same type of game. When they left, I really felt sad that the people who are great basketball fans were losing their team. Even when I didn’t play for the Sonics, I always looked forward to coming to Seattle to play. I thought it was a very good to play, in fact, it was my second favorite place to play. My first was Madison Square Garden.
REPORTER: So I have to ask, why are you wearing that Oklahoma City Thunder hat?
ABDUL-AZIZ: I was on my way to Atlanta to see my daughter and on the left side of the airplane I saw a little boy sitting there with a Thunder hat on. I was teasing him and asked him where he was from. He said Oklahoma City so I told him ‘you stole my team.’ He saw I was kidding around. They were some really nice kids, so I took a picture of me and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and signed it for them. I went in the back and fell asleep and two hours later when we landed, there were like 12 people standing there in the waiting area. A guy walked over and said, ‘thank you’ and said that is all the kids were talking about on the plane. I said, ‘that’s my duty, after playing in the NBA’. Then, the young boy walked up and said, ‘when you get to Seattle, can you wear my hat?’ True story.
REPORTER: In your book, there is a story about the reasoning behind your change in religion and name. Can you talk more about what Kareem had to do with those changes?
ABDUL-AZIZ: I was playing for the Milwaukee Bucks and I was a Christian, but I never went to church. I just wore a cross because that’s what I did. One day, Kareem came over to me and asked, ‘what’s that around your neck?’ I went into my apartment with some religious texts and I knew whatever I found to be true from those books were what I would become. I never criticize religions, I just tell people what I believe. In the 1960s, there was a lot of confusion. When people heard “Muslim”, the first thing a lot of people thought was, ‘he hates white people’.
REPORTER: How does the theme of darkness turning to sunlight play out in your book and why was that a fitting title?
ABDUL-AZIZ: I was going to call it, Life’s Full Court Press, but I was talking to my wife and she didn’t know what a full court press was. My wife thought of the name Darkness to Sunlight. There’s a lot of darkness and sunlight in my book. One was when I went from New York to Iowa, from black society to white society. I’ve never been a dinner table with my mom there and my dad here, I don’t know what that is. Now, I have six kids, I went away from that darkness and came to sunlight with my own family.
