LOS ANGELES — Kareem Abdul-Jabbar hasn’t fallen behind the times. Just read his newsletter, which hits e-mail inboxes a few times a week.

In recent days, the 74-year-old has written about Grammy nominations, the Will Smith slap incident at the Oscars, the founding of Angel City FC and, naturally, the Lakers. A mind as curious and a voice as prolific as Abdul-Jabbar’s can maintain relevance well past his playing days.

Abdul-Jabbar in his playing days was a high-profile pro who also had one of the loudest voices for Civil Rights and was ahead of his time, a legacy the NBA wishes to keep honoring. On Sunday, the league revealed the design of the Kareem Abdul-Jabbar Trophy for the NBA’s annual Social Justice Champion. The first recipient, announced last year, was the Lakers’ Carmelo Anthony.

But even as Abdul-Jabbar unveiled the award that continues his legacy among today’s players, he remained critical of another player who is chasing his on-court records and whom he’s taken aim at in the last year: LeBron James.

Abdul-Jabbar has at least twice written about his disappointment with James’ stance on COVID-19 vaccines, including a meme comparing COVID-19 to colds and the flu which Abdul-Jabbar said in December “has encouraged vaccine hesitancy which puts lives and livelihoods at risk.” And on Sunday, the Captain didn’t shy away from continuing to question the Lakers star of the present.

“It just comes from some of the things he’s done and said are really beneath him, as far as I can see, some of the great things that he’s done,” he said. “He’s standing on both sides of the fence almost, you know? It makes it hard for me to accept that when he’s committed himself to a different take on everything. It’s hard to figure out where he’s standing.”

James is himself vaccinated, but has said he believes that getting vaccinated is a personal decision – an issue that has roiled the NBA given the public stance by Brooklyn star Kyrie Irving to sit out games rather than get vaccinated. James appeared to further question the seriousness of COVID-19 (which has killed nearly 1 million people in the U.S.) in December, likening it to other illnesses: “It’s flu season, so people have forgot about the flu. People have forgot about common colds. That happens, especially with a lot of our kids that’s in school.”

It’s comments like these that Abdul-Jabbar, who has been outspoken on all manner of social issues for six decades now, takes issue with. While there are many things that James has done off the court that he admires – “Sending a whole school to college? Wow. That’s amazing,” he said at one point – that makes the standard set all the higher for James in his view.

“(I have) absolutely a higher expectation for him because he understands the issues and spoken to them quite forcefully and eloquently,” Abdul-Jabbar said. “And I was hoping that he would continue in that vein. … I think he has so much going for him in terms of respect and accomplishment and he shouldn’t stoop to those moments.”

That sense of conflict with who he would like James to be doesn’t extend to the NBA record books. James is now the No. 2 all-time leading scorer (37,062) in regular season history, and he’s well within range to catch Abdul-Jabbar (38,387) next season.

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That doesn’t seem to concern the six-time champion who racked up all those points with his signature sky hook: “I’m all for him doing it. There’s no envy there.”

Abdul-Jabbar added that he would be open to a dialogue with James if he was willing: “I definitely got the time.” James has declined to engage Abdul-Jabbar in the press, saying he had “no response” to his previous comments back in December.

One of the things Abdul-Jabbar is impressed by is how social media has opened new channels for activist athletes like himself to highlight problems and issues in their communities. In his day, he said, “they thought people were complaining about problems that didn’t exist,” but with social media, it’s harder for the world to look away.

Of course, Abdul-Jabbar uses these tools as well. And some 33 years after his retirement from basketball, it doesn’t look like he’s hanging up that particular platform anytime soon.