222 years before Colin Kaepernick would cause a controversy during the National Anthem — Nuggets guard Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf would be suspended for sitting during the Anthem in 1996. He called the American flag “a symbol of oppression, of tyranny.”
Following the one-game suspension, Rauf met with league officials and worked out a compromise to where he would stand in silent prayer during the anthem. He continues to do so as a player in Ice Cube’s BIG3 League.
The former 49ers quarterback has remained unsigned since the 2016 season ended, and in his place have been lesser quarterbacks getting signed throughout the league, with each team giving terrible reasons as to why they didn’t consider Kaepernick.
Mavericks owner Mark Cuban said Kaepernick’s protest wouldn’t have kept him out of the NBA, and David Stern agrees with that assessment.
The former NBA commissioner, who ran the league when Abdul-Rauf got suspended, had this to say about the issue:
Eben Novy-Williams and Scott Soshnick of Bloomberg:
Colin Kaepernick, the quarterback whose NFL career was cut short after he knelt in protest during the national anthem, would still have a job if he were a basketball player, according to former NBA Commissioner David Stern.
Click on ‘Follow Us’ and get notified of the most viral NFL stories via Google! Follow Us
Stern said that Kaepernick should have been suspended by the NFL when he first began kneeling, and if he had been, his career would have been able to continue.
Basically, punish the player to save the player. The league would’ve likely caught a lot of flake for that decision, but it wouldn’t have come close to the spectacle it has become some two years later.
