Tag: Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf

LSU men’s basketball all-time roster: Tiger Legends

The Tigers have had a surprising amount of talent come through their basketball program over the years

March is upon us, and that means that the madness will also return to us soon.

Unfortunately, LSU (in all likelihood) won’t be participating in the festivities after a rough first season under coach [autotag]Matt McMahon[/autotag] that featured a 14-game losing streak that lasted from late December until the end of February.

This will be the first NCAA Tournament the Tigers have missed since 2018. Although LSU basketball has, historically, been a bit of an afterthought compared to the more successful football and baseball programs, it’s had a surprising level of consistency.

Aside from several lengthy droughts — most notably in recent years from 1993-00 and 2009-19 (with the exception of 2015) — this team has regularly appeared in the postseason for much of the last several decades, though it is still searching for its first national title. Those teams have, unsurprisingly, featured quite a bit of talent over the years.

With that in mind, we’re taking a crack at piecing together an all-time two-deep LSU basketball roster including one head coach and two assistants. Let’s start things off with the coaching staff, with our first choice likely coming as no surprise.

Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf: I would tell them, …

Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf: I would tell them, No, I still feel the same way. I still feel there’s systemic oppression. I still feel the flag is this way. I wanted to make a point that my outlook wasn’t going to change. But this is the route I’m going to take. I will stand but with my head down in prayer during the anthem. At the end of that season, I got traded. I saw my minutes drop. I saw the interview requests drop. And by 1998, teams weren’t looking to give me any offers. There was actually only one team that gave me an offer, but I felt like it was an insulting offer because I was still in my prime. It became obvious to me that me not playing anymore was a setup. I was trying not to be the type saying, Oh, they’re doing me wrong! After games, though, reporters were asking me why I wasn’t playing. It became obvious to everyone.

Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf: Then one day, it …

Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf: Then one day, it was like 4 o’clock in the morning, I was asleep and the phone rang. It was a sister in the community calling and saying, “Mahmoud, turn on the television! Your house is burning!” I turn on the TV and I’m looking at images of the house on fire. I drove down there. I told the community to come down. I put down targets, brought our guns and started shooting on the property. I was basically saying at the time, It is what it is, but I’m not going anywhere. I was trying to buy property there and section it off and then sell so that other people could buy property and we could develop a community because we had a huge lake and huge farm land. We were like, Let’s build and establish our own community. It was 53 acres. But then I thought about it. I didn’t feel comfortable leaving my children and my family there, and so that’s what made me sell it. Now, if it was just me alone, it’d be a different story. Looking back at everything, I’d rather live and die with a free conscience.

How are you feeling and processing …

How are you feeling and processing everything right now? Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf: Outraged. But this is a feeling I’ve been having for many, many years, and I think Black people in general [have]. To constantly wake up to televised and broad-daylight public executions in what we would classify as the murder of Black people, with George Floyd being the most recent and visible casualty. It’s reminiscent of when you reach back in history where people used to send postcards of lynchings and burnings and mutilated bodies to share with their loved ones and their friends. Now it’s just video shared and it’s on television.

David Fizdale: No matter how powerful, …

David Fizdale: No matter how powerful, how rich or how famous you become, racism is an inevitable obstacle that black men face. As Colin Kaepernick took a knee during the national anthem, many of us in the sports world were asked, “What will you do?” While leading my team, would I kneel in support of Kaep? My answer was simple: If my team kneels, then I’m kneeling. This would no doubt anger some, and I asked myself, “Should I just shut up and coach?” Our team at that time decided not to kneel, but a big part of me lives in regret for not taking a knee. If more of us took that knee, where would we be as a country today? I don’t know. There was also a part of me that feared that protest would be putting my career at risk. Just like Kaep, Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf or Muhammad Ali, who all had their careers damaged for protesting injustice.

These are the top scorers in Big3 history

Lots of former NBA stars at the top of the Big3’s all-time scoring list.

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Very fine former NBA players are still getting buckets late in their 30s (or even 40s) in Ice Cube‘s Big 3 league.

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Abdul-Rauf, who played under his given …

Abdul-Rauf, who played under his given name Chris Jackson at LSU from 1988-90, received a standing ovation as he was honored at midcourt, surrounded by four of his five children, LSU teammates, former LSU coach Dale Brown and Pettit. “Never could I have written this story for myself, to be in this position, 30 years later, and have my jersey retired,” Abdul-Rauf said.