An NBA Star Pays the Price for Speaking Out (feat. Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf)

March 12, 1996. The Denver Nugget's leading scorer, Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf, is shooting around before the big game tonight. Strangely, a large crowd of reporters is gathering. It turns out, they’re here to ask him one big question: what do you think about the American Flag?

Today, Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf faces consequences for not standing during the national anthem. Twenty years before Colin Kaepernick, why does Abdul-Rauf make this controversial choice? And how does he fit into the long line of athletes who have chosen to take a stand?

Special thanks to our guests: Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf, former NBA player, writer and activist; Jesse Washington, senior writer at ESPN’s Andscape; Gotham Chopra, director of the SHOWTIME documentary series “Shut Up and Dribble”; Chris Herring, senior NBA writer at Sports Illustrated and author of “Blood in the Garden: The Flagrant History of the 1990s New York Knicks”; and Dave Zirin, the sports editor at the Nation Magazine and host of the “Edge of Sports” podcast.

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