Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf: ‘I lost millions because I couldn’t keep my mouth shut’ Two decades before Colin Kaepernick’s protest of oppression and tyranny during the national anthem, the former NBA star followed a similar path guided by principle – and met a similar fate
by buztabuzt
15 Comments
I wouldn’t call it a similar fate. This man walked so Kaep could run. Kaepernick was getting tryouts as recent as 2-3 years ago. Contract with Nike despite not playing a sport. He’s an emabassador they say.
Rouf changed his name from Chris Jackson and converted to Muslim. People hated this man so much for this act then when he decided to not put his hand over his heart for the American flag he was black balled. Some wild shit
Oh shut up
kaepernick is the richest victim in the world.
Can’t compare Kap to Mahmoud… Mahmoud was truly blackballed, Kap got Nike money, netflix money, etc… Not to diminish what he did, but Mahmoud really gave his career up.
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I’ve never understood the point of playing the national anthem before a sporting event. It’s not like it’s sacrosanct or anything. We don’t do that sh!t for literally any other commercial public gathering.
Mahmoud Abdul Rauf is such a tragic story. Honestly the league owes him some kind of nice role for what he sacrificed
Nah. Kaep is a fraud. He didn’t want to play as soon as he saw the power of playing a victim.
Oh it just hit me, my science teacher was once talking about how bad of a guy this was one time. I didn’t know the player at the time so I assume it was this guy. Since this was before the 2014-15 season I imagine my teacher was telling us a story
I have heard this a few times over the last few years, but that doesn’t really jive with what I remember seeing on the court.
When he changed his name, people were just like “Cool. Like Kareem and Ali did.”
It wasn’t a big deal. Sure, there was some Islamaphobia back then, but it was before 9/11, so it wasn’t running high like it has since 9/11.
He was a score-first point guard with low FG%, and though that was in part due to his 3pt shots, people often looked at raw FG% and made assessments based on that back them.
He didn’t seem like a terribly efficient player.
Besides, after he changed his name, he was still getting lots of minutes. In fact, he got the most minutes of his career. And then topped that the next year. And topped it again his last year with Denver.
He just got injuries. Lost his quick first step. Wasn’t a great defender. I know he was listed as 6’1, but when I saw him on the court, he looked shorter than that. He often gave up a lot height.
He got to Sac-Town. They wanted a point guard to pair with Richmond, but MAR was a score-first time and wasn’t the play maker they needed.
Then he got a rich contract offer overseas. That happened a few times. Nique did that. Played for Greece for a year. Came back. Went to Italy. Came back.
Some teams were offering richer contracts back then.
MAR did the same, and he didn’t even finish out the second year of the contract because he lost interest in the game.
And after taking a year off, the Grizzlies were quick to offer him a deal.
Never really seemed like he got blackballed.
Just a guy who slowed down and didn’t improve/adapt his game.
This new narrative about being blackballed came out a couple years back when he did that Big 3. But that wasn’t how people saw it at the time.
This looks like some serious revisionist history.
It’s like IT more recently. An undersized, score-first point guard, who is not terribly efficient get some injuries, slows down, and doesn’t adapt.
If he was getting blackballed, then he would have been getting record high minutes four years after changing his name and then have a team trade for him to pair with their franchise player in the backcourt. And then have a team offer him a contract after he took a year off.
I don’t get it. Guys are there to play sport. So what if they sit, stand, kneel, tie their laces, stretch or whatever while a song is sung that they didn’t ask for. Forcing them to act in a certain way forces politics into sport, by the same forces that tell athletes to stay out of politics. Hypocritical poppycock
You weren’t good enough bud stop blaming others and look in the mirror
Moral of the story is don’t go against the government narrative. Especially now. It could actually cost you billions now.
Get woke go broke
Wait. No. He got hurt.
The anthem thing didn’t help.