"They don't like the message, so they're trying to find fault with the messenger"

Abdul-Jabbar, who also wrote a column for Hollywood Insider saying that he was proud of how athletes stood up against “the racist, anti-veteran and anti-American statements by President Donald Trump,” pointed out what Colin Kaepernick was trying to raise awareness for something people don’t want to talk about.

“I think what has happened here is that people are — they don’t like the message, so they’re trying to find fault with the messenger,” he said on MSNBC’s MTP Daily. “But what Colin was talking about is something that concerns black Americans every day. And you have protests and demonstrations across the country when people end up dead for no good reason. And Colin Kaepernick was using his platform to call attention to that.