Posted by Andrew Unterberger on 06/29/2011 at 2:52 PM Videos

The Popdust Files: kareem abdul-jabbar, smashing pumpkins, wtf

“Here’s the Weirdest Thing Smashing Pumpkins Have Ever Done, Starring Lew Alcindor,” reads the Amplifier headline. Hard to argue with either part of that statement. The new Smashing Pumpkins promotional video—we’re hoping they had something to do with it, anyway, and that the NBA legend of the ’70s & ’80s didn’t just decide to make this vid in his spare time for the hell of it—features Lew (a.k.a. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar) dunking a pumpkin through a net (yes, it smashes on the floor), then facing the camera to offer the following: “Check out the new Smashing Pumpkins album, Oceania. It’s coming soon.”

Who. When. Why. How? No questions are answered, only posed. But if the all-time points-scored leader in the history of professional basketball can’t catapult the one-time alt-rock mainstays back to relevance, well, then we think it’s safe to say that the book is closed on Smashing Pumpkins. (Maybe they should have gotten fellow Chicagoan Michael Jordan instead.)