David Stern believes he would have handled the Colin Kaepernick situation differently than the NFL in which he would have been suspended and then his career could have continued thereafter. 

Stern suspended Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf and imposed a $32,000 fine for protesting during the national anthem in the mid-1990s. Abdul-Rauf eventually reached an agreement that allowed him to stand for the anthem with his head bowed in prayer.

“As we were digging out of a terrible hole for us -- in the late ’70s and ’80s, when there was a fair amount of racism exhibited about players -- we felt as a matter of policy we had to promote our players and show that they were real people,” Stern said during the podcast, which will air on Feb. 18. “And it worked.”

Stern, however, imposed a controversial dress code in 2005 that many criticized as being racist.