It's well known he was blackballed, once he stopped standing for the anthem his career was over. You should look it up, everyone knows what happened to him but Abdul-Rauf holds no ill will.
Maybe. But he went from 4 years where he averaged, 19, 18, 16, 19.2ppg on a mediocre at best Denver team down to 13.7 for Sacramento in his last full season. And his assists fell off a cliff from 4.2, 4.5, 3.6, 6.8apg to 2.5 assists per game playing with Sacto & Mitch Richmond.
Next in his final only 31 games in 1997-98 he averaged 7.3ppg, shot just 37.7% from field and 16% from 3. I LOVED him in college, but even at his apex his game never elevated at the NBA level. He was never a significant factor for a contending team. Basically he put up OK volume scoring stats in Denver, good player never great in NBA and nothing approaching the superstardom he displayed in college.
The drop-offs above coincided with his anthem protests and certainly the league moved on, but notwithstanding Kaepernick, sports is a meritocracy and he was absolutely declining and simply not good enough to put up with as a distraction regardless of your politics.
My personal opinion is he didn't work hard enough in the NBA from the get-go, which is fine it wasn't that important to him. Then other things became even more important to him and his game declined to marginal NBA talent. He probably could have stuck around the league longer even with that, but he was never in the right situation and then his politics made it even harder for him to find the right situation.
