Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf got hectored mercilessly by Mississippi State fans when he was in college.
Abdul-Rauf, who grew up in Mississippi but opted to play for rival LSU, was known as Chris Jackson at the time. He was something of a precursor to Steph Curry as a precision deep shooter, and Colin Kaepernick as a social justice martyr. His journey, which resulted in him getting blackballed from the NBA after choosing to sit during the national anthem, was chronicled in Showtime’s documentary, “Stand.”
The sharpshooter was the subject of a 1989 Sports Illustrated cover story that revealed he did not know his father, and the Starkville crowd relentlessly chanted, “Who’s your daddy?” at him.
“When I headed to the court, soon as the fans saw my body, it was some of the loudest boos I’ve ever heard in my life,” Abdul-Rauf said in the documentary.
On the game broadcast, Bill Raftery — who looked like an elder figure even back then! — joked that he thought the boos were for him but they were actually for Jackson.
Shaquille O’Neal, Abdul-Rauf’s teammate at LSU, said in the film, “I’m not going throw the R-word [redneck] around, but they were different … It bothered him that game.”
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Dale Brown, who was the coach at LSU at the time, called the chants “sickening” and “preposterous” and said, “I could regurgitate.”
“There was no let-up,” Abdul-Rauf explained in present day in the film. “You could just feel, in that arena, the air of racism.”
While LSU lost the game 87-80, Abdul-Rauf put up 40 points, in a performance that Shaq called the greatest he’s ever seen.
“Greatest performance that I’ve seen, ever, in the history of basketball,” he said. “I’ve done seen Jordan, Barkley, Isiah, Magic, Kobe, Penny — I ain’t ever seen nothing like that.”
“Stand” was directed by Joslyn Rose Lyons and debuted on Showtime in early February.
