Enes Kanter Freedom worked hard his whole life honing his basketball skills, achieved stardom in the NBA, only to have it all stripped away for his staunch defense of human rights. But the NBA didn’t exclude the 6’10” Swiss-born central figure of Turkish descent for condemning human rights violations in Turkey.
The only time they cancelled him was when he spoke out against China and Nike.
Speaking exclusively to Breitbart News Washington Bureau Chief Matthew Boyle at the Republican National Convention, Cantor Freedom spoke about the goodwill and support his human rights activism received from the NBA and his fellow players before he began speaking out against the NBA’s business partner’s persecution of Uighur Muslims in China and the financial profits Nike is making from the slave labor of Uighurs in that same communist police state.
“I was going to fight the Turkish dictator until 2021. [Recep Tayyip] Erdogan, [the NBA] They really supported me. Adam Silver [NBA]The commissioner, all of the players and almost every front office I played for were supportive of me, but I can safely say that the day I began criticizing China and its human rights violations, all support stopped.
“I thought, ‘This is confusing. We’re not going to talk about politics. This is a human rights issue. Right now we’re talking about 3 million Uighur Muslims being held in concentration camps, being tortured and raped every day. And I talked to Adam Silver, I talked to a lot of my teammates, and they said, ‘Yeah,'” especially my teammates, who were like, ‘Yeah, we love you. We root for you. But we can’t say it out loud.’
“I thought, ‘Why?’ They said, ‘Well, we have the shoe deal, we have the sponsorship deal, we want to get another one.’ I asked them one simple question: Put yourself in their shoes. If your mother, your sister, your daughter was being raped and tortured every day in a concentration camp, would you still choose money and business over your morals, your values and your beliefs?”
“They usually just turn around and walk out of the room.”
The fear that there could be severe consequences for upsetting China, which pumps billions of dollars into the NBA every year, was not only felt by Kanter Freedom’s teammates — I was informed of it directly by his agent.
“To be completely honest with you, the day I started criticizing China, my agent called me and said, ‘Look, I work for the animals, I work for the NBA, and I’m going to be completely honest with you: If you say one more word about China, and especially about Nike, you’ll never be able to dribble a basketball in the NBA again. You’re 29 years old, and that’s going to cost you between $40 and $50 million.'”
“I thought, ‘This is bigger than me.’ I hung up the phone. I’m just going to keep doing what I’m doing.”
At the time, Cantor Freedom’s main activity was to wear sneakers to NBA games in protest of China’s persecution of Uighur Muslims, infuriating Communists in Beijing.
Boston Celtics player Enes Kanter Freedom wears sneakers on the court during a game against the Los Angeles Clippers at Staples Center. Equipment. Los Angeles, California, December 8, 2021 (John W. McDonough/Sports Illustrated via Getty Images)
And, of course, he included Nike in his protests.
Celtics player Enes Kanter’s sneakers bore a message to Nike: “Made with slave labor, hypocritical Nike.” The Boston Celtics host the Washington Wizards during an NBA basketball regular season game at TD Garden in Boston on October 27, 2021. (Jim Davis/Boston Globe via Getty Images)
But if Cantor Freedom was hoping to find common cause in the human rights movement among his American-born teammates, he would be sorely disappointed: Some of America’s billionaire athletes, he said, thought America was the world’s problem.
“Here’s a crazy story. I remember one day, I think it was during the height of the Black Lives Matter protests, I walked into the locker room and all my teammates were like, ‘Oh my God. America is trash. America is the worst. America is the worst country in the world.’ I was like, ‘I want to move.'”
“I went in and said, ‘Hey guys, our season is almost over, and whenever it is over, I’ll buy your plane tickets. Don’t worry, it’s first class. Go to different countries. Go to I-Ran, go to China, go to Russia, go to North Korea, go to Turkey. Forget about calling it trash. If you criticize the government system, you and your family will be thrown in jail and tortured to death.'”
Cantor Freedom continued, “We literally take our freedoms for granted right now, but they are so fragile. We can lose them in an instant.”
The former Celtic player pointed out that even when he criticised China, as long as he did it in left-wing mainstream media, some of his team-mates would at least silently support him. But when he started appearing in right-wing media, that all changed.
“I started engaging with left-wing media, and that was great. Then I started engaging with right-wing media. The next day I walked into the locker room and started getting dirty looks from my teammates. I remember asking one of my teammates, ‘What happened?’ and he said, ‘Well, we saw your interview last night.’ I said, ‘Okay.’ And he said, ‘Well, you’re sending it on a right-wing channel, so we’re no longer supporting your message.’ I was like, ‘Were you listening?'”
[He said] “Oh, no, it was on mute,” I said, “That’s right.”
Kantor Freedom emphasized that many of his teammates had come up to him privately to express their support for his message, but when asked why they offered “whispered” support, he confessed that they did not want to be exposed on right-wing networks or to be known for supporting someone who appears on right-wing networks.
“It’s astonishing,” Cantor Freedom said. “We live in America, we’re a free country, and we’re whispering in each other’s ears… it’s unacceptable.”
