Mahatma out of no where - I am Chris Jackson/Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf
Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf (born Chris Wayne Jackson on March 9, 1969 in Gulfport, Mississippi) is an American former professional basketball player.
Abdul-Rauf changed his name in 1991 upon his conversion to Islam. After a record-setting college career at Louisiana State University, he was selected with the third pick in the 1990 NBA Draft by the Denver Nuggets. He played with Denver until 1995, and was a key player on that team, winning the Most Improved Player award in 1993. Abdul-Rauf later went on to play for the Sacramento Kings and later the Vancouver Grizzlies. He led the league in free throw percentage in 1994 and 1996, narrowly missing (for one missed free throw) the NBA all-time record for free-throw percentage in a single season in 1993-94 (he went 219-229 from the line for a 0.956 percentage as opposed to Calvin Murphy's 0.958 (206-215) all-time record dating back to 1980-81). After leaving the NBA he played professional basketball in Europe, retiring at the end of 2004-05 season. For the season 2006-07 he came out of retirement for the third time in his career to play for Aris Thessaloniki.
Abdul-Rauf overcame the challenge of Tourette syndrome to have an athletic career.
Since retiring from NBA, he has built a mosque in his home town of Gulfport, Mississippi, and has become an Imam. He transformed property that had been a crack-house into the mosque as a symbol of his mission to mobilize the neighborhood to rid itself of drugs and crime.