Kareem Abdul-Jabbar celebrates ‘Game of Death’ co-star Bruce Lee’s 80th birthday in a special way

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is celebrating the birth of his late friend Bruce Lee Friday.

The NBA legend, actor and best-selling author announced he would conduct a conversation with the martial arts icon’s daughter, Shannon Lee, in honor of what would’ve been Lee’s 80th birthday.

Abdul-Jabbar and Lee were close friends who appeared on screen together in the classic “Game of Death.”

“For all of my and @brucelee fans we have a very special surprise for everyone to commemorate Bruce’s 80th birthday tomorrow,” the former Los Angeles Lakers star wrote on Twitter Thursday about the “Bruce Lee Podcast.”

“For the 1st time ever, his daughter Shannon Lee & I are going to talk in-depth about her father and share some special memories,” he added.

On Instagram, Abdul-Jabbar referred to Lee as a “mentor,” while promoting the sale of inspirational T-shirts and masks with an image of both men accompanied by the message: “Make a friend that doesn’t look like you … you might change the world.”

“We had an unlikely friendship — a 7-foot-2 basketball player and a 5-foot-8 martial artist — but we had a shared interest in music, the arts, philosophy, and improving the lives of people who looked like us,” Abdul-Jabbar said about the apparel collection sold through his Iconomy management enterprise. “We believe that tackling systemic racism starts with making a friend who doesn’t look like you and creating empathy for others. That’s what we’re hoping to promote with our social justice champion/social justice warrior efforts.”

The Chinese-American actor, who struggled to make a name for himself in mainstream Hollywood, famously lost the main role in “Kung-Fu” to David Carradine and was relegated to playing Kato, the sidekick of the 1966 superhero series “The Green Hornet.”

In 1978, the San Francisco native’s big break came as a leading man and director of “Enter The Dragon” — which was officially released as “Game of Death” — shortly following his untimely death at age 32.

Abdul-Jabbar and the Lee family, made headlines last year when they called out filmmaker Quentin Tarantino for his depiction of Lee in “Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood.”

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