But “Stand,” which premiered Feb. 3 on Showtime, was the biggest stage yet to share his story. Abdul-Rauf sat through hours of interviews and shared intimate details and recalled tough times. “Everybody’s going through something. Everybody has a story, and I don’t want to hold back,” Abdul-Rauf told The Athletic prior to the premiere. “I want people to see my vulnerabilities. I want them to hear it in my voice and to see it in my face. If I have to cry, d— it I’m going to own it, I’m going to cry. If I get mad and want to curse, I’m going to curse.”
Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf Rumors
“(The Big3) allowed me, to some degree, without sounding cliché, to be reborn again and not only in the field of basketball,” Abdul-Rauf said. “I was blessed to be able to keep my body up to a certain degree where people are able to say, ‘Whoa, if he’s this fast now at 53, 52, 51, darn, how fast was he then?’ And (Ice Cube will) tell you, ‘Every time Mahmoud sees me, he thanks me.’” Abdul-Rauf admits he’s made plenty of mistakes and that he’s “still working on myself.” He still sees many of the problems in the world that bothered him in 1996 — whether it involves a lack of health care, wars or racism.
Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf not interested in an apology from the NBA
It’s been more than 20 years since Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf suited up to play an NBA game. He says the league has never formally apologized and he’s moved past that. “There are people in the NBA who privately say things. ‘How would you feel if the NBA gave you an apology?’” he said. “Families were hurt. People lost income. Reputations were destroyed. And so you just can’t apologize and make it all right. No, I could care less about the apology.”
His on-court play would eventually take a back seat to his beliefs off of it when he converted to Islam and stopped standing for the national anthem, sending shockwaves through the sport. “I became a Muslim and I began to read more than I’ve ever read before,” he said. “But as I’m reading, you know, whether it’s foreign policy, domestic policy, I’m seeing America’s hand in so much corruption. And then I’m looking also at the history of this nation. Slavery and Jim Crow and segregation, right? I can’t reconcile standing up for this symbol, right? I just can’t.”
In 1996, then-NBA Commissioner David Stern suspended Abdul-Rauf, who received death threats. The home in Mississippi that he was building for his family was burned down by the Ku Klux Klan. “I wasn’t surprised that that was the reaction,” he said. “Why? Because history has shown, in particular, when young or African American athletes, entertainers, whoever, step outside of the athletic box and speak out on something else, ‘You’re condemned.’”
Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf says he didn’t know Colin Kaepernick well, but did spend time with the quarterback a few years back. “We never talked a lot, but we did meet up in the Bay Area when he was going through what he did,” Abdul-Rauf told us. “We had a mutual friend. We met in like a private office. We spoke for about an hour. We just shared information and if it resonated, we took it.”
Mahmoud says there was one thing Kaepernick said that stuck with him above everything else. “The biggest takeaway for me during that whole night was when he said this is the most freedom he’s ever felt in his life. I said to him, ‘well, it’s because of this freedom that allows people like yourself and those who came before us and those who’ll come after us to take those risks and do what you did.'”
