Options Are Open for Abdul-Jabbar After This Season

What does a 7-foot-2 basketball center do after he retires?

If you’re Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, almost anything you want to do.

And what Abdul-Jabbar wants to do is get into the television and entertainment business, but not necessarily behind a microphone.

“People have suggested I get into basketball commentating,” he said. “But that’s not what I want to do, at least not now.”

What interests Abdul-Jabbar is producing films. He has formed his own company, Kareem Productions, which has already completed two projects.

One is a one-hour special, “All-Star Tribute to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar,” which will be on NBC tonight at 8.

Due to some ingenious programming by NBC, it runs opposite the Lakers’ 7:30 game at Seattle on Channel 9, so if you’re a Laker fan and interested in yet another Kareem tribute, you’ll have to crank up the VCR.

Pierre Cossette, producer of the Grammy Awards show, and Abdul-Jabbar are the co-executive producers of the star-studded special, which was taped April 24 at the Century Plaza Hotel.

Cossette, asked about Abdul-Jabbar’s abilities as a producer, said: “Kareem knows what it is he wants. There are 30 different ways to do a show like this, but he was very specific on the format, very creative. That’s what the production business is all about.”

Kareem Productions has also made a videotape, “Kareem: Reflections From the Inside,” which is available in video stores.

Richard Crystal, the older brother of comedian Billy--Richard is 43, Billy 40--produced this film with Abdul-Jabbar.

And it is excellent, showing a more human side to Abdul-Jabbar than publicly seen before, plus some outstanding footage from his playing career, going back to when he was a 6-foot-8 eighth-grader.

Channel 9 recently had a one-hour feature on Abdul-Jabbar, called “Summer of 42,” which was very good, but the tape he did with Crystal is even better.

Crystal and Abdul-Jabbar, who met through a mutual friend when both were in high school in the New York area, are close friends.

After Abdul-Jabbar made a deal with CBS Fox Video, the distributor of the tape, he asked Crystal, a writer-producer, to work with him on the project.

“I feel we got Kareem to be himself,” Crystal said.

Abdul-Jabbar said the film goes deeper than others because he felt comfortable working with Crystal.

He said that is not to imply he does not get along with Ted Green, the producer of “Summer of 42,” even though Green, who once covered the Lakers for The Times, was often critical of the Laker captain.

“That’s water under the bridge,” Abdul-Jabbar said. “That has been forgotten.”

What next for Abdul-Jabbar?

“For now, I’m concentrating on the playoffs,” he said. “Then I’m going to take a couple of months off.

“After that, I’ll have time to see what happens and where I fit into the business. I don’t want to try and do everything at once.”

What’s new at Channel 2: Beginning this weekend, there will be a new set and a new name for the Sunday night sports wrap-up show at Channel 2, but the host will be the same.

The 11:15-11:45 p.m. sports segment, to be called simply “The Keith Olbermann Show,” will be done on a set that resembles Olbermann’s office, filled with sports memorabilia.

Maybe the changes will also change Olbermann’s luck. He’s had a tough go the past two weeks.

First, he got some heat for reporting that Al Davis was negotiating to move the Raiders to Sacramento.

Gregg Lukenbill, managing general partner of basketball’s Sacramento Kings, called the report, in which Olbermann used unidentified sources, “irresponsible journalism.”

The story, however, is still alive. The Sacramento Bee, also quoting unspecified sources, reported Thursday that Lukenbill was heading a group continuing negotiations with the Raiders.

Asked by the Daily News’ Paola Boivin about doing stories using unidentified sources, Olbermann was quoted as saying: “I don’t like to do them. I certainly don’t do them for the glory that’s supposedly involved. The principal purpose is that people need to know what’s going on.”

Steve Roah, a sportscaster who used to work with Olbermann at Channel 5, has a different opinion.

“While I’ve worked with a lot of big egos in this business, I don’t think I’ve worked with anyone who is more concerned about glory for himself than Keith,” he said.

Olbermann also was supposed to do a three-part series on sports memorabilia. It was cut to a single segment.

“One part was enough,” said Erik Sorenson, Channel 2 news director.

And finally a contest to come up with a name for the Sunday night show was nixed.

Said Sorenson: “Although we had some interesting names submitted, such as Keith Olbermann Sports-o-Rama and Keith Olbermann Sports Emporium, we decided to keep it simple and go with ‘The Keith Olbermann Show.’ ”

What’s new at NBC: The one person at NBC Sports who figured to have job security was executive producer Michael Weisman.

He was bright, creative, willing to take chances, liked by staff members and reporters, and he had won all kinds of awards, which most television types think is important.

But Weisman, 39, was fired this week and replaced by Terry O’Neil, also 39, even though Weisman had 2 1/2 years left on his $600,000-a-year contract, which NBC must pay.

Last month, Arthur Watson, also respected and liked, was replaced by Dick Ebersol as the president of NBC Sports.

More changes are reportedly forthcoming.

It’s a crazy business.

TV-Radio Notes

HBO offers an attractive fight Saturday night when unbeaten lightweight champion Julio Cesar Chavez takes on super-lightweight champion Roger Mayweather at the Forum. The word super in this case is not a description, it denotes a weight class. If you’re going to apply the word super to one of the fighters , it better fits Chavez, 60-0 with 50 knockouts and considered by many as the best boxer, pound-for-pound, in the world. Mayweather is 34-5, and one of the losses was to Chavez, who stopped him in the second round of their 1985 fight. But Mayweather has improved since then and is 6-0 against Mexican opponents in Los Angeles.

Chavez, from Culiacan, Mexico, recently toured East Los Angeles and HBO producer Rick Bernstein sent along a crew to film the visit. It will be shown as part of the prefight coverage, which begins at 7 p.m. Announcers Jim Lampley and Larry Merchant will work the fight without regular commentator Sugar Ray Leonard, who is busy preparing for his June 12 bout against Thomas Hearns. Former boxer Ruben Castillo of Bakersfield, who was knocked out by Chavez in April of 1981, will work the fight as a translator. . . . HBO will also provide a Spanish-enhanced telecast to cable companies in Spanish-speaking areas, and radio XPRS (1090) in San Diego will carry a Spanish-language broadcast of the fight. There will be no English-language radio coverage.

After two weekends of National Basketball Assn. playoffs, the ratings on CBS are up from an average of 5.6 a year ago at this juncture to 6.2. CBS will televise doubleheaders both Saturday and Sunday, with games at 10 a.m. and 12:30 p.m. both days. The Saturday games are New York-Chicago, with Dick Stockton and Hubie Brown, and Phoenix-Golden State, with Greg Gumbel and Quinn Buckner. The Sunday games are New York-Chicago, Game 4, with Stockton and Brown, and the Lakers at Seattle, with Verne Lundquist and Tom Heinsohn.

The Tribute to Kareem ceremony held at the Forum April 23, before the Lakers’ final regular-season game, finally was shown by Prime Ticket Wednesday night after the Lakers’ victory over Seattle. Prime Ticket is tentatively planning to show it again next Tuesday at 6 p.m. before Game 5 of the Laker-Seattle series, provided there is a Game 5.

Tom Lasorda and Don Drysdale will be Bob Costas’ guests on “Costas Coast to Coast” on KFI Sunday night at 6. . . . Prime Ticket and GGP Sports of San Francisco have entered into a production deal in which GGP will provide such shows as “This Week in the Pac-10” and “Pac-10 Today” during the college football season.