A LIFE BEYOND THE COURT\Abdul-Jabbar has found fulfillment in writing.

Byline: Eric Noland Daily News Staff Writer

For most prominent athletes, retirement follows a predictable - and not terribly adventurous - course.

A job in front of a TV camera, commenting on the sport of expertise, is one obvious option. Coaching is another. Sometimes exhibition opportunities with other geriatric ex-athletes beckon. A kiss-and-tell look behind the scenes of a sport always turns heads with book publishers. And don't forget speaking engagements, in which anecdotes from the arena of competition can be told until they fray at the edges.

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, who retired in 1989 after completing his Hall of Fame career with the Lakers, is not bound by these conventions. He is proving every bit as complex and unpredictable as he did throughout a 20-year NBA career.

All-time NBA scoring leader. Six-time league Most Valuable Player. Patent-holder on the sky hook. . . . Man of letters?

That's correct. And Abdul-Jabbar has moved far beyond the world of my-life-in-hoops books. He has nearly finished a book on prominent African-Americans in this nation's history; William Morrow plans a fall release. He says he also has completed about "90 percent" of the research for a novel, a work of historical fiction that likely will be set in the Old West.

This is obviously a man who continues to delight in obliterating stereotypes. It probably has enabled him to make the transition to retirement without the pangs of unease that afflict so many other athletes.

"If you don't have an idea that there's anything else out there when you finally do end up out there," he said the other day, "it can be really frightening. I didn't have to deal with that type of traumatic change. . . .

"For a lot of guys, sports is really the only thing that they've ever been passionate about. I'm fortunate to have varied interests."

Jerry West, the Lakers' vice president of operations, chuckles at the understatement. "He wasn't a typical player," he said. "He wasn't just a basketball player. He has an interest in a lot of different things."

Abdul-Jabbar chose not to delve into coaching, even though he probably could have picked his situation a few years back. He dabbled in individual tutoring, notably with New Jersey's Shawn Bradley, but says the phone stopped ringing - these days, the game is all about facing the basket, driving for a dunk, or retreating to shoot a 3-pointer, not backing in for a hook. He made a few exhibition appearances, with Magic Johnson's traveling team, for example, but lost interest and says he's finished with that now.

Away from the court, he is taking advantage of the boom in sports marketing ventures, and has lent his image to more than a half-dozen product or companies.

But that's just business. His heart lies with much weightier endeavors. As, really, it always has.

This is a guy who earned a degree in history in four years at UCLA while balancing the demands of playing on a three-time NCAA-championship team.

While in the NBA, he commonly prepared for games by reading a book in the hour preceding a game. "And he would read some of the deepest stuff," says former teammate Michael Cooper, shaking his head. "(I'd think), 'How can a guy get fired up behind that?' But that was feeding him and that's what he needed."

The desire to foster that appetite in others - particularly young people - inspired the history book.

With a working title of "Black Profiles in Courage," it will chronicle African-American contributors to this country's history. Some are familiar, some obscure - from Estevanico, a Spanish slave who was part of an early transcontinental expedition, to Rosa Parks, Jackie Robinson, Duke Ellington, scientist Lewis Latimer and black combat regiments.

Abdul-Jabbar has immersed himself in these subjects for years, an avocation that has some corners of his Beverly Hills home resembling a museum.

"I was sitting around thinking, 'Am I qualified to do this?' " he said. "Actually, I am. I was a history major and an English minor. So I am qualified. It's just been so long since I was connected to these disciplines."

For this book and the novel, his research has involved trips to libraries, historical societies and the sites of former frontier forts in New Mexico, Arizona, Texas, Oklahoma and Colorado, with other forays planned this year to Montana and other fort sites. Of particular interest to him are the buffalo soldiers, black Army units that helped tame the West.

Alan Steinberg, a Chicago-based writer who is collaborating on the history book, says he was drawn to the project precisely because of what he termed Abdul-Jabbar's "intellectual drive."

"He owns things that buffalo soldiers wore and rode on - their hats, their saddles," said Steinberg. "He has documentation that goes back to the period. He has a carbine (rifle) that he not only knows was fired by a buffalo soldier, but he knows exactly when and in what battle, and he showed me how.

"But he doesn't just want to know things, he wants to relive it. He knows what kind of spurs they wore, what their hats feel like on their heads because he knows how heavy they are. He knows what kind of saddles they were riding in, and what their (rear ends) must have felt like after riding 100 miles in 100-degree heat in these boots and the heavy wool of the uniforms."

Abdul-Jabbar admits to a desire to explore subjects exhaustively, even for the fiction, so as to write from as informed a viewpoint as possible. "The history book (research)," he said, "was real easy, because I knew enough about the subjects. It wasn't where I had to go digging real hard. The novel is something else, because you've got to know people. People's lives.

"Let's say you want to write about a blacksmith. You're going to have to have a pretty good knowledge about horses, steel." He pauses to laugh. "We could keep going."

The laugh, the smile, the engaging conversation - even in an interview - occur more frequently now with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. It's a jarring contrast for many who endured an off-court personality that often fluctuated between sullen and surly during his playing career.

"One of the more uncooperative players ever," says longtime Lakers beat writer Mitch Chortkoff of the South Bay Daily Breeze. ". . . Now his career is being Kareem. In any case, he has become less angry and a better person."

Abdul-Jabbar says his demeanor during his playing career stemmed largely from media probes into his private life. "They were digging dirt," he says. "The more dirt they could get, the better. It made me cautious."

It's been said that he has benefited greatly from the influence of his gregarious former teammate, Magic Johnson. Not having to deal with game competition any more probably helps, too - this was a player who brought extreme intensity to his work, and it didn't seem to ease any when he stepped off the court.

Today, there seems to be an altogether different vent for the fervor within him.

"I know," said Steinberg, "that the prevailing image of Kareem is he is kind of a brooding character, or remote. The opposite is true when he gets into that subject (of history). He's kind of like (Civil War scholar) Shelby Foote. He becomes so animated with the subject that you know he's living it, that it's inside of him."

And, apparently, there is a similar zeal for kindling it in others.

Just before being voted into the Basketball Hall of Fame last year, Abdul-Jabbar visited his former grammar school in New York City. When a young girl asked him to identify his proudest accomplishment, one of the most decorated players in NBA history said, "that I got my college degree in four years and made All-American at the same time."

Meanwhile, his son, Kareem, who is a freshman basketball player of modest promise at Valparaiso University in Indiana, said of his father: "If I quit basketball tomorrow, he'd probably ask me why, but he wouldn't yell at me. He wouldn't really care. 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 will go on a tour of college campuses next month to promote his history book. He says his uphill battle is often manifested in sports-crazy college kids whose energies are devoted entirely to achieving stardom in the professional game.

"They will probably see me as someone who lived the life they would like to live," he says. "But there are many examples - which I will point out to them - of how it did not go that way."

Steinberg insists that Abdul-Jabbar's words do not bear a hollow ring. As evidence, he offers the chronicle of black achievement.

"To hell with the commercial value of the book," he said. "Kareem's main idea was first to reach kids. We now see that it has greater range, but his initial idea was, How can I reach kids, particularly black kids, who just don't have any concept of how deeply ingrained the African-American legacy really is in American history? . . .

"I mean, we're striking a blow for something serious in our culture, and there's not too many people striking blows for that any more, particularly with athletes and famous names.

"There are precious few people in his position, with his (fame), who give a crap about anything other than selling themselves. I can tell that he is not in that. Here's a guy who really does want to have an impact."

It's clear that these objectives, and the indulgence of these passions, have eased Abdul-Jabbar's transition into retirement as a major sports figure.

Others have noticed. "He's always got that smile on his face now," said Cooper, the ex-teammate. "Before, you know, things were so tense with him - the game, and stuff like that. Now I watch him when he comes into the arena. I know he doesn't see me watching, but he's smiling.

"That's a guy who's content with himself."

Abdul-Jabbar doesn't stay long at the occasional Lakers home games he attends. He says to sit in the stands, where people seek him out for an autograph, a photo or a few words, is too disruptive to the night's entertainment. So he usually slips out at the first opportunity.

He probably has more important matters to attend to anyway - tucked away in some musty volume on a shelf in his den.

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Photo (1--color) Kareem Abdul-Jabbar can often be found working on the books he is writing in the library of his Beverly Hills home. (2) Kareem Abdul-Jabbar laughs it up with Magic Johnson as they promote a video game at the Forum. Gus Ruelas / Daily News (3) In his playing days at UCLA, Abdul-Jabbar, then known as Lew Alcindor, led the Bruins to three national championships. Associated Press