HOT CORNER

A consumer’s guide to the best and worst of sports media and merchandise. Ground rules: If it can be read, heard, observed, viewed, dialed or downloaded, it’s in play here. One exception: No products will be endorsed.

What: “Real Sports With Bryant Gumbel.”

Where: HBO, tonight, 10.

Though he was a Hall of Fame player, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, interviewed by Bob Costas for the lead segment on this edition of “Real Sports,” tells how his temperament and history of aloofness may be the reason no NBA teams are willing to consider him for a coaching job.

“I ended up taking an attitude that strangers should be handled with suspicion and it didn’t serve me well as a professional athlete,” Abdul-Jabbar says. “I didn’t interact with people. I just wanted to play.

“Jim Murray said about me, ‘No man is an island, but Kareem gave it a shot.’ And I did.”

Jerry West, interviewed by HBO, says, “I played with him. I coached him. At times I thought I knew him. Other times I had no idea who the heck he was.”

Abdul-Jabbar says that, by his calculations, there were 55 NBA coaching jobs open this spring, including nine head-coaching jobs. He applied for those jobs, but not one team called. He singles out Kiki Vandeweghe, the Denver Nuggets’ general manger and a former Bruin whom Abdul-Jabbar says he thought was a friend, as among those who didn’t return calls.

He said there is a bias in effect, and calls it “a pretty tough sentence.”

Abdul-Jabbar was hired as an assistant coach by the Clippers during the 1999-2000 season to work with Michael Olowokandi. The experiment was less than a success. Abdul-Jabbar says Olowokandi ignored him.

The good thing, it seems from this interview, is that Abdul-Jabbar has been forced to take a look at himself and admit some of his mistakes. But he also believes his personality failures shouldn’t result in banishment from the NBA.

-- Larry Stewart