Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf caused a controversy and received death threats for his anthem protest many years before Kaepernick took the knee and was more or less forced to go and play Basketball abroad.

Now he is back on USA soil playing the game he loves but the anthem protest is still here!

NY Daily News reported:

Before the start of the first-ever Big3 professional 3-On-3 league produced by rapper Ice Cube, Abdul-Rauf, the first face of anthem protest, placed his hands out, palms up, in prayer just as Francis Scott Key’s ballad rang through Barclays Center Sunday afternoon.

Twenty years before Colin Kaepernick sat/kneeled during the playing of the Star-Spangled Banner, Abdul-Rauf, a Muslim, made headlines back in 1996 when he sat during the song, stating then that the American flag was a symbol of oppression and went against his religion of Islam, before working out a compromise with the NBA of praying instead.

Abdul-Rauf, 48, received death threats and hate mail for his stance and was out of the league by 1998, spending the next decade playing abroad.

Source: https://twitter.com/Saszy_Boy/status/863581442735034368

On Kaep, he said “He’s being black-balled,… I’m not surprised. As soon as it happened, I expected it.

The same thing happened to me.”

Read more on NY Daily News here.