NEW YORK – UCLA graduate and iconic basketball player Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, along with Jim Brown and Bill Russell, will receive the Sports Illustrated Muhammad Ali Legacy Award, as announced Wednesday by Sports Illustrated.
 
Abdul-Jabbar, Brown and Russell have been chosen by Sports Illustrated editors to receive the honor for their incomparable athletic careers and decades of leadership as social activists. The trio will be honored during SI's Sportsperson of the Year event on Dec. 12 at Barclays Center in Brooklyn, N.Y.
 
Wednesday's announcement comes one week after Abdul-Jabbar was presented with the Presidential Medal of Freedom at the White House in Washington, D.C.
 
"Muhammad Ali was both a friend and a persona inspiration to me as an athlete and as an activist," Abdul-Jabbar said in a statement. "To receive an award in his name is especially moving because it means I am honoring his legacy as a man who defied conventions and courageously risked life and career to making America a land of freedom, equal opportunity and social justice."
 
Abdul-Jabbar starred on the varsity basketball team for the Bruins from 1967-69, leading UCLA to three consecutive NCAA championships. Elected to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in1995, he helped UCLA compile an overall record of 88-2 in three seasons. Abdul-Jabbar was the only player ever selected Most Outstanding Player of the Final Four three times.
 
A standout in the NBA, Abdul-Jabbar is the league's all-time leading scorer, having played for the Milwaukee Bucks and the Los Angeles Lakers from 1970 through 1989. He led the Lakers to five championships and the Bucks to another. In addition, he was a six-time NBA Most Valuable Player and a 19-time All-Star.
 
Abdul-Jabbar was one of the first two UCLA men's basketball players to have their jersey numbers retired, along with Bill Walton, at a halftime ceremony on Dec. 3, 1990. A charter member of the UCLA Athletic Hall of Fame in 1984, Abdul-Jabbar was a Pac-12 Hall of Honor enshrinement selection in 2003.
 
Brown has been hailed as one of the greatest athletes of the 20th century and is still the standard by which NFL running backs are judged. A multisport star, Brown has been inducted into five Halls of Fame – the Pro Football Hall of Fame (1971), the Lacrosse Hall of Fame (1983), the College Football Hall of Fame (1995), the New York State Public High School Athletic Association Hall of Fame (2016) and the ROTC National Hall of Fame. He played nine seasons with the NFL's Cleveland Brown (1957-65), winning league MVP honors in 1957, 1958 and 1965.
 
Russell, among the most decorated athletes in this nation's history, was a two-time NCAA champion at the University of San Francisco. In 1956, he led the U.S. to a gold medal at the Melbourne Olympics. Drafted by the Boston Celtics that year, Russell led the franchise to its first NBA title as a rookie. That title launched an era of dominance yet to be seen in any sport – he propelled the Boston Celtics to 11 titles over his 13-year career while revolutionizing the center position. He was a five-time NBA Most Valuable Player and in 1966 (while still playing) became the first African-American coach in the league's history.
 
The Sports Illustrated Legacy Award was born in 2008, when Eunice Kennedy Shriver, founder and driving force behind the Special Olympics, was the inaugural honoree. In 2014, Earvin (Magic) Johnson was honored for his two decades as an entrepreneur, philanthropist, social and political activist. Last year, SI renamed the award in honor of Ali in recognition of his decades as a boxing legend, humanitarian, civil rights activist and icon. Jack Nicklaus was the first to receive the rededicated award, during the 2015 Sportsperson of the Year ceremony.
 
The three Legacy Award recipients will be honored alongside the 2016 SI Sportsperson of the Year winner, the SI Kids SportsKids of the Year and other top names and moments from the year in sports at SI's special Sportsperson of the Year celebration at Barclays Center on Dec. 12.