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Muhammad-Ali Abdur-Rahkman, a sophomore at Michigan, has started 33 of 60 games in his U-M career.

(Melanie Maxwell | The Ann Arbor News)

Muhammad-Ali Abdur-Rahkman. There's a rhythm to the name. It dances -- pata-pat-pat -- like a boxer's feet. There's a pace and a flow, a rise and a fall.

Muhammad-Ali Abdur-Rahkman. That's a name you can take a ride with.

It's also complicated, not in structure or pronunciation, but in significance. It's a name that lives at the root of the question: Does our name define who we are, or does who we are define our name?

Dawud Abdur-Rahkman gave Muhammad-Ali Abdur-Rahkman his name. He took his life journey and passed it on.

His son took it from there.

***

Photo gallery: Michigan sophomore Muhammad-Ali Abdur-Rahkman 16 Gallery: Photo gallery: Michigan sophomore Muhammad-Ali Abdur-Rahkman

For the 33rd time in the past two years, Muhammad-Ali Abdur-Rahkman was introduced as Michigan's starting shooting guard Saturday night. The 34th time will come Thursday, when the 21-year-old is announced in the Wolverines' Big Ten tournament opener against Northwestern (Noon, TV: BTN).

The sophomore has made a name for himself here. Called to replace injured star Caris LeVert, he's averaged 9.8 points, 2.9 rebounds and 2.3 assists per game in Big Ten play this season.

As usual, Crisler Center fans cheered Abdur-Rahkman before Saturday's regular-season finale against Iowa. They like to call him "MAAR" for short on social media. Coach John Beilein says that Muhammad "gets buckets" by using his "Ali shuffle."

And what does Abdur-Rahkman, who happens to be named after one of the most famous men to ever live, think of his name?

"When you're a kid, you want to be unique -- special kids want to be unique," Muhammad-Ali Abdur-Rahkman says. "I think this was the starting point for me to be where I am now and to keep continuing to be a better person."

Around the Michigan campus, Abdur-Rahkman is known for being outgoing and funny. But only those on the inside see that. When the cameras roll, he appears brief and unsentimental. His voice, flat and indifferent, doesn't match his game, aggressive and inspired.

Sitting for an interview in Crisler Center's upper deck, Abdur-Rahkman confides that his monotone humming for the public eye is mostly an act. He worries that what he says might get misinterpreted, so he instead says nothing. He'd rather outsiders not know him than get the wrong idea about him.

Everyone has always made assumptions.

He remembers his first day in eighth grade at St. Francis of Assisi, a Catholic elementary school in Allentown, Pennsylvania. His name was first in roll call and confused faces turned to find an African-American with a foreign name raising his hand.

He felt the eyes.

The next year, he entered Allentown Central Catholic and those eyes intensified. In a way, it was the same heat felt by his father, coming full circle, some 40 years later.

***

In 1958, David Cody, a grandson of sharecroppers, was born in Moultrie, Georgia. He grew up living on a white family's farm, chasing mules and running around the chicken coop. He knew nothing beyond those fences.

Dad moved the family to Pennsylvania in 1964 to score a job as a truck driver and heavy equipment operator. Once the family was there, dad split, leaving young David and his mother to fend for themselves in Allentown.

Coming from an isolated, uneducated lot in the backwoods of Georgia, Cody met racism head-on for the first time in Allentown, an old coal mining town like many others in eastern Pennsylvania.

At the same time Cody's family moved from Georgia to Pennsylvania, Cassius Clay was breaking the establishment. First, as a 7-to-1 underdog, the 22-year-old slayed Sonny Liston, a hulking refrigerator, and declared himself, "The king of the world!" on live television. Two days later, he ended years of speculation about his relationship with Malcolm X and other black Muslim leaders. He announced, yes, he was a member of the Nation of Islam.

Elijah Muhammad, the controversial separatist of the Nation who guided a sect of extremist black Muslims away from civil-rights liberals, later gave Clay the name Muhammad Ali. As history goes, the boxer turned his back on Malcolm X and followed Elijah Muhammad.

Ali rattled the cages of white America in the 60s and 70s, but his religion was complicated. As famed muckraker Jack Newfield wrote in 2002:

That pride captured Cody. He needed to see a brash, handsome, magnetic black man tell him it was wonderful to be black. Ali filled a void, that of male role model.

Cody's connection to Ali was soulful, not blind hero worship. In 1978, even though his idol was perhaps the most famous conscientious objector in American history, the 19-year-old Cody enlisted in the Army. Still, large swaths of his worldview were painted by Ali.

That's why in the summer of '78, Cody, home on leave, could barely breathe as he turned his brown Buick Regal onto the highway. His was one of three cars packed with kids and teenagers from Allentown. One member of the group had drawn a wonderful pastel portrait of the Ali-Frazier fight and they wanted to present it to the boxer.

Luckily, he was only 40 minutes away. Six years earlier, Ali had established his personal training camp in, of all places, tiny Deer Lake, Pennsylvania. The gym included a ring surrounded by seats for fans to watch him spar. All they had to do was come and ask.

A certain mythology lived in those woods. From there, Ali's words rose -- telling the rest of the world that he was, indeed, the greatest.

***

"Oh!" the 58-year-old booms. "I tell you, man, to this day, it was the most magnificent thing I've ever seen in my life."

It's a Saturday morning in Manhattan and Dawud Abdur-Rahkman -- the former David Cody -- is rolling. The busy coffee shop disappears as he smiles and squints, telling the story of how he met Muhammad Ali in 1978. His voice crackles like old vinyl.

Every memory is vivid: Ali's sweat flying as he sparred. Ali looking 10-feet tall. Ali taunting the kids in jest, "I told you chumps I'm the greatest!" He remembers meeting Ali one-on-one and only being able to muster, with a tremble, "How you doing, Champ?"

He remembers all those years spent rooting for Ali being validated that day.

The story zigs and zags, and comes to 1980. That year, Cody converted to Islam and changed his name to Dawud Abdur-Rahkman. The Army printed new dog tags.

Dawud Abdur-Rahkman didn't change his name because his idol, Cassius Clay, changed his name. He did it because of what Muhammad Ali revealed to him. Loud and proud, Ali referred to Clay as his "slave name," capturing a growing sentiment at the time that African-Americans lost their heritage when slave-owners changed their names upon arrival in the United States. Taking a Muslim name reclaimed those robbed identities.

"It was (Ali's) perpetuation of the identity of slavery and having something that you control, as opposed to other people controlling it for you," Dawud Abdur-Rahkman says. "It was more of, for me, something that I felt owed to those who came before me."

Sixteen years after meeting Muhammad Ali, Dawud and Tammy Abdur-Rahkman gave birth to a third child in 1994. A first son was named Shahad. A first daughter was named Nailah. The third would be Muhammad-Ali.

Some might think such a name would set unfair expectations or cast unneeded attention. Not Dawud Abdur-Rahkman. Of his son, he says, "All I saw was greatness."

"I think that he feels respectful enough that he would never do anything to tarnish the name," dad says. "That's how he carries himself."

The morning in Manhattan ends with the elder Abdur-Rahkman checking his watch. Now an assistant basketball coach at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, he doesn't get to see many of his son's games in person. He claps softly. There are about 90 minutes until tipoff between Michigan and Penn State across the street.

Dawud Abdur-Rahkman leans forward to stop from screaming and offers a reminder: "My son, Muhammad-Ali Abdur-Rahkman, is about to play in Madison Square Garden."

Muhammad-Ali Abdur_Rahkman and his father, Dawud Abdur-Rahkman.

***

Does our name define who we are or does who we are define our name?

Muhammad-Ali Abdur-Rahkman began his answer in 2010 when he enrolled at Allentown Central Catholic, a mostly white high school, instead of the local public school. Dennis Csencsits, the basketball coach there, calls the school and its surroundings a "very traditional area."

Abdur-Rahkman's mere existence there would challenge that.

At a school that rarely saw underclassmen impact varsity teams, Abdur-Rahkman, who grew up in Washington D.C. after his parents' divorce and spent years playing for his father in the well-regarded D.C. Assault AAU program, was the best basketball player upon arrival. He skipped the JV team and went straight to varsity, being named a starter. It was a big deal in a town that has local news broadcasts, two local cable stations and a newspaper beat writer covering most games.

"We're not a pro sports town," Csencsits says. "We're a high school sports town."

The name spread. Abdur-Rahkman caught locals off guard. Muhammad-Ali Abwhat? Here was a Muslim, one year older than all his classmates because he repeated eighth grade when he moved from D.C., dominating for a Catholic high school. Some were open to it. Others were not.

Abdur-Rahkman, the son of that introverted kid from Moultrie, Georgia, didn't care. Csencsits notes: "Instead of feeling like an outsider, I think he felt like he stood out."

Two-thousand, one-hundred and thirty-six points later, Abdur-Rahkman was Central Catholic's all-time leading scorer. He was the first from the area to be a four-time, first-team all-state selection. Having considered transferring as a freshman and sophomore, by the close of his senior year, he was popular in the school and the community. Central Catholic games drew never-before-seen crowds during his final season.

Being named The Morning Call's player of the year in 2014, he told the local paper, "There's no other place I'd have rather been." The next month, Abdur-Rahkman signed a scholarship to play at Michigan.

Now he's sitting perched up in the seats at Crisler Center, looking out over the court, speaking openly. While his father chose to change his own name in 1980, Muhammad-Ali Abdur-Rahkman was born with his name and all the expectations that came with it -- the good, the bad, the complicated.

And there are complications. It's 2016, and while Abdur-Rahkman is not a practicing Muslim, he sees and feels the anti-Islamic sentiment in our national discourse. He knows airport security sometimes gives him an extra once-over. He hears the occasional cheap shot from opposing student sections.

Abdur-Rahkman says he finds "humor in serious situations," usually laughing it off.

On that note, he jokes, leaning back and saying: "I'm glad I was given this name, even though it holds as a lot of weight -- you know, being the greatest of all time."

It's an easy default. He's been asked about his name so many times that he's got a bag of one-liners.

When he goes off-script, the covers are pulled back. Abdur-Rahkman is asked to consider all this -- the 40-year path from his father needing Muhammad Ali's inspiration to his own journey of self-discovery.

"Now that I look back at it," Abdur-Rahkman says of his name and all its complexities, "I may not have liked it when I was going through it, but I'm glad it happened. I used it."

Maybe that's the answer. In young Abdur-Rahkman's case, he not the greatest of all time, nor does he think he is. He's a basketball player, a sophomore in college and a young guy, like any other, trying to make his own identity.

"That made me the person I am now."

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