Hakeem Olajuwon's Ramadan Performances

[al Furqaan]

https://theundefeated.com/features/h...ONXov9yLxjJc6w

This year Trail Blazers' Enes Kanter gained much publicity of fasting during Portland's playoff run while fighting a shoulder injury. What a lot of younger fans might not realize is that he is not the first NBA player to have played basketball at the highest level while fasting.

Interesting article here and how NBA legend Hakeem Olajuwon played at more or less the same level during Ramadan in his career back in the 1990s.

Its especially interesting especially this day and age when a lot of Muslims feel the difficulty of work and/or school during Ramadan (I'm guilty of this myself) and may feel that fasting is a needless burden.

However, fasting isn't done just for physical or even health related benefits, the primary purpose is to develop a heightened consciousness of Allah swt (ie taqwa) via the physical practice of abstinence from otherwise permissible things such as food, drink, and marital relations.

[aklemalp]

Excellent article.

[Tigers_eye]

Mahmud Abdur Rauf, Sharif Abdur Rahim, Hakim, and many others played NBA day games while fasting. That is a reflection of incredible will, determination, commitment. At young age I could play street ball in evening and survive. Just the dryness of mouth felt like after a long distance run.