The Big Fella, the Captain, the master of the skyhook, is in the UAE capital.

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, leading scorer in NBA history, UCLA and Los Angeles Lakers star, arrived in Abu Dhabi tonight, flying in on that new Etihad nonstop from LAX to AUH.

He got off the plane and Tweeted, from @KAJ33: “Best service ever! Totally loved my first @EtihadAirways experience! #SlamDunk #TeamEY170

Earlier, he had marveled at “freshly baked cake at 39,000 feet” … which demonstrates he was traveling in first class — which is only right when you are 7-foot-2.

Why is he here?

A campaign for “healthy living” has been going on, here in the UAE, and Kareem has been a model of healthy living for decades. The man has never been overweight, gets lots of exercise (yoga and martial arts, since he gave up basketball, in 1989) and has “street cred” as being one of the greatest players in NBA history.

Our Jonathan Raymond spoke to him via telephone last week, and we ran that story this morning, which you can see here.

Over the next few days, Kareem will be in walkathons dedicated to diabetes awareness — UAE citizens have one of the highest diabetes rates in the world — and will meet with school groups and spend a day as “guest editor” at The National.

He has lots of other activities in his life, as well, including the five books he has authored and a regular comment piece in Time magazine.

A curious thing (at least to an old person) … is that in the sports story we felt compelled to address the topic of “who is Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and why does he matter?”

And we did feel compelled because basketball is not commonly played or followed in the region (soccer, soccer and more soccer), and because Kareem retired from the game 25 years ago. (Yes, it seems like he played more recently to me, too.)

Be interesting to see what he does and says. We will get back to that, I imagine.