Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf:
Today many people have looked towards Colin Kaepernick as the first person to stand-up while kneeling down against the oppression created by the dominant society. However, in a time not long before his demonstration, there was Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf. Ahead of his time, he was star player at Louisiana State University. A 6-1 guard who could split through defenders like butter, Abdul could also demoralize his opponent’s morale from long range, averaging thirty points a game for the Tigers. Abdul was picked 3rd in the 1990 NBA draft. That same year, he converted to Islam (Washington 2016).
During the 1995-96 season, Abdul was coming into his prime, presenting a game that resembled the likes of today’s Steph Curry. He was one of the few players that was able to lead his team to a win over Michael Jordan. During that season, he had been troubled with the league’s pregame patriotic salute to America and its flag. At first, the organization allowed Abdul to stay back in the locker room during the anthem. This was a collective effort, agreed upon by Abdul, The Nuggets front office and the NBA.
In March of the 1996 season, fans noticed that Abdul was absent from the opening lineup and anthem routines. Angered by what they felt was a blatant and disrespectful demonstration, they flooded Denver’s front office with calls demanding answers. Under pressure, both the NBA and the Nuggets reversed course and demanded that Abdul take his place with the rest of the team during the pre-game rituals. Kelly Koning of the Washington Law Review reported that Abdul initially refused and he was suspended by the NBA, a move that cost him more than $30,000 per game. Abdul was extremely disappointed by the leagues decision telling The Undefeated, “You can’t be for God and for oppression. It’s clear in the Quran, Islam is the only way,” he said at the time. “I don’t criticize those who stand, so don’t criticize me for sitting” (Washington 2016). Bryan McIentrye, Spokesmen for the NBA presented a rebuttal saying, "The ball's in his court. This is not a religious issue, it's a simple procedural rule” (Denlinger 1996). According to the NBA, his refusal to stand violates a league rule requiring all players to "line up in a dignified posture" for the anthem (Denlinger 1996).
Abdul returned to the line-up the next game and prayed while the anthem and processions commenced prior to the game. Still, the bleeding continued and “the Denver Nuggets received more than two hundred phone calls from irate fans threatening to boycott games as long as Abdul-Rauf remained with the team. During this time,138 fans threatened to cancel their season tickets. Moreover, the league itself feared that the economic consequences of fan reprisals might translate into a reduction in support from advertisers and television networks” (Washington 2016).
While this might have seen like a solution at the time, the wheels of collusion had begun to turn. Abdul, who by most experts would have been considered the team’s star was averaging 19.2 points and 6.8 assist a game found himself traded to the Sacramento Kings at season’s end (Washington 2016). In Sacramento, Abdul found his role diminished, and without the opportunity to earn adequate playing time, he couldn’t find a rhythm and was out of the league at the end of his season. Years later, he believes that ownership and the league colluded to blackball him. He tells Jesse Washington of the Undefeated (2016), “They begin to try to put you in vulnerable positions. They play with your minutes, trying to mess up your rhythm. Then they sit you more. Then what it looks like is, well, the guy just doesn’t have it anymore.”
In the years that followed, Abdul played overseas in Turkey but would never again step foot on the NBA hardwood. The owners and the NBA, the players puppet-masters, successfully made an example out of him. Kelly B. Koeing of the Washington Law Review (1998), made the case that Abdul may have been able to potentially take legal action against the league by “asserting claims under Title VII of The Civil Rights Act of 1964 as amended in 1972. This says that Title VII makes it "an unlawful employment practice for an employer to ... discriminate against any individual with respect to his compensation, terms, conditions, or privileges of employment because of such individual's race, color, religion, sex or national origin. Such a suit would come at a massive legal cost that could be held up in court for years. Abdul wouldn’t have been fighting for compensation by the Nuggets, he’d be taking on the entire league, “The NBA exercised the requisite "monumental control" over each franchise team, including the Denver Nuggets” (Koenig 1998). Hence, it was the league who made the final decision.
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