Editor’s note: Second in a series about basketball icons in Colorado. Profiled last week was Alex English.
In another era of NBA basketball, former Nuggets guard Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf could’ve been a star.
A quick-trigger shooter, slippery ball handler, deft outside scorer — there’s a reason Phil Jackson once called him a precursor to Steph Curry.
Instead, Abdul-Rauf’s 1996 national anthem protest hastened his departure from the NBA. There was a swift and lopsided trade out of Denver that summer followed by a few unremarkable seasons after that. From the time the Nuggets traded up to draft Abdul-Rauf (then Chris Jackson) in 1990, to the moment he was unceremoniously sent to the Sacramento Kings in 1996, he was a polarizing phenomenon.