Despite making huge strides in football, the USA will never really embrace the sport like the rest of the world has, according to basketball legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

Abdul-Jabbar, a six-time NBA champion, feels that football, despite the recent popularity with the World Cup, doesn’t generate huge revenue for the country, as well as resembling the North American attitude regarding points accumulation.

American audiences see people kicking the ball to a teammate, only to have it intercepted by the other team. A lot. To the average American used to the hustle of basketball, the clash of titans in football, the suspense of the curve ball in baseball, or the thrilling crack of the slapshot in hockey, the endless meandering back and forth across the soccer field looks less like strategy and more like random luck. It lacks drama.

Soccer doesn’t fully express the American ethos as powerfully as our other popular sports.  As a result, we like to see extraordinary effort rewarded. The low scoring in soccer frustrates this American impulse. We also celebrate rugged individualism, the democratic ideal that anybody from any background can become a sports hero.

Check out the original story on TIME.