All in the Family, but Without the Skyhook : Basketball: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar Jr. spurns the West Coast to begin his college career at Valparaiso as a backup forward this season.

He has the same face, the same smile and the same name. About the only thing Kareem Abdul-Jabbar doesn’t have is his father’s legendary skyhook.

At 19, the younger Abdul-Jabbar is used to the stares and the questions that come when he introduces himself. He is, after all, the son of the NBA’s all-time scoring leader. A man who won six NBA crowns in his 20-year pro career, as well as three NCAA titles at UCLA.

“Sometimes it’s tough, but sometimes it’s good,” Abdul-Jabbar said of his name and what comes with it. “There’s advantages and disadvantages. Sometimes it doesn’t seem fair, but I try to make the most of the good situations and try and learn from the bad situations.”

Abdul-Jabbar knows people are going to compare him to his father, especially when it comes to basketball. After helping Brentwood High School in Los Angeles to a 21-7 record his senior year, Abdul-Jabbar turned down offers from colleges on the West Coast to come to Valparaiso University.

“We did not recruit him because of his dad, we recruited him because of Kareem,” Coach Homer Drew said. “As a person, he is a gem.”

He was redshirted his freshman season, deciding with his father and Drew that it was better to give himself a year to adjust to college before taking on the rigors of Division I basketball.

Abdul-Jabbar won’t start this year, playing backup instead to the Crusaders’ two senior forwards. The 6-6 Abdul-Jabbar played center in high school, but said he is better suited physically to playing forward.

It’s also easier playing a different position than his 7-2 center father, Abdul-Jabbar said.

“What he did in college, I won’t be able to do that. I don’t think anybody is going to be able to,” Abdul-Jabbar said. “His first game he scored 56 points and I think if they expect that out of any other freshman . . . those will be some pretty big shoes to fill.”

His father never pushed him to play basketball, but it was always around, Abdul-Jabbar said. He remembers tagging along to Laker practices at the Los Angeles Forum when he was about 5. Abdul-Jabbar and his little brother would run through the Forum or play on the sidelines as his father and other basketball greats like Magic Johnson and James Worthy practiced.

Abdul-Jabbar laughs when he recalls going into the locker room to see his father. Worthy often would sneak up behind the young Abdul-Jabbar, grabbing him around the waist and tickling him.

“It’s kind of different now that I look back on it, back then I didn’t really think much about it,” Abdul-Jabbar said. “Back then I just thought it was what (I was) supposed to do. . . . Now I realize how different it was.”

Abdul-Jabbar was almost 10 when his father’s celebrity began to sink in. The Lakers won the NBA championship in 1985, and Abdul-Jabbar said he remembers watching the victory parade and seeing his father.

Even after the celebration ended, people continued to talk about the championship. For days, it was all over the news, Abdul-Jabbar said.

“It was in the newspaper and all my friends at school were talking about it,” he said. “That’s when I kind of got an idea how big basketball was and everything.”

Abdul-Jabbar said his father and mother, Habiba Herbert, always encouraged him to do his own thing while he was growing up. For Abdul-Jabbar, that was basketball.

He wore 33, his father’s number, in junior high, but the jersey was taken when he got to high school so he switched to 40. He switched numbers again at Valparaiso and now wears 42.

Abdul-Jabbar said his father is proud he’s playing basketball, but he’s much more concerned with his son’s grades. A psychology major, Abdul-Jabbar is in the honors program and had a 3.82 grade-point average his first year.

“If I quit basketball tomorrow, he’d probably ask me why, but he wouldn’t yell at me, he wouldn’t really care,” Abdul-Jabbar said. “If I told him that I didn’t know if I was going to get my degree or not, that’s when he’d flip out.”

Abdul-Jabbar caused a stir among his Valparaiso teammates when he showed up last year. He looks so much like his father and everyone had things they wanted to know, said Bill Jenkins, a sophomore forward. Now, though, he’s just one of the guys.

“When I first met him I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, it’s Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s son,”’ said Greg Grimwood, a redshirt freshman forward and Abdul-Jabbar’s roommate. “I don’t even think of it like that anymore.”

It helped that Abdul-Jabbar wasn’t the only one on the team with a famous father. Drew’s son, Bryce, was a freshman, too.

The two often went off on their own to talk, knowing they wouldn’t have to worry about anyone asking them questions about their fathers, Bryce Drew said.

“It was kind of a good release for us,” he said. “We didn’t have to dwell on it.”

Abdul-Jabbar doesn’t mind answering questions when asked, but it’s not often that he volunteers information about his father. Sometimes, Abdul-Jabbar won’t even give his last name when he meets people so he knows they like him for who he is, not for his father, Grimwood said.

Abdul-Jabbar said he knows people are going to have questions. He probably would, too, if he were someone else.

“No matter what you do people are going to talk about you one way or the other, so you just have to put that aside and just do your thing,” Abdul-Jabbar said. “I’ll always be referred to as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s son. That’s just something I’ve gotten used to and I don’t have any problems with it.”