Exclusive – Interview with Blackballed Former NBA Player Enes Kanter Freedom: 'After I Criticized China and Nike, My Career Was Over'
Blackballed former NBA player Enes Kanter Freedom says his human rights campaign had the NBA's full support, until he criticized China.
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“Until 2021, when I was going against the Turkish dictator [Recep Tayyip] Erdogan, [the NBA] actually, they got my back. Adam Silver, the [NBA]commissioner, all the players, and pretty much all the front offices that I played for, they had my back, and, you know, the day I started to criticize China and their human rights violations, I promise you, like the whole support stopped.
“And I was like, ‘I’m confused, I don’t talk about politics. This is a human rights issue. We’re talking about 3 million Uyghur Muslims in concentration camps right now, getting tortured and raped every day. And, I had a conversation with Adam Silver, I had a conversation with so many of my teammates. They said, ‘Well,’ especially my teammates, they said, ‘Well, we love you. We support you. But we just cannot do it out loud.
“I was like, ‘Why?’ They said, ‘Well, we have shoe deals. We have endorsement deals. We want to get another contract.’ I asked them one simple question: I was like, put yourself in their shoes. If your mother, if your sister, if your daughter was in those concentration camps, getting raped and tortured every day. Would you still pick money and business over your morals, values, and principles?
“They usually turn around and leave the room.’
“I started to join the left-wing media, and I did it; it was amazing. Then I started to join the right-wing media, and the next day, I walked into the locker room, and I started getting these dirty looks from my teammates. And I remember asking one of my teammates, I said, ‘What happened?’ And he said, ‘Well, we watched your interview last night.’ I said, ‘Okay.’ And he said, ‘Well, because of the right-wing channel that you send it, we don’t support your message anymore.’ I was like, ‘Did you listen?’
[He said] ‘Oh, no, it was on mute.’ I was like, ‘Exactly.’
Kanter Freedom stressed that many teammates came to him privately and expressed their support for his message. However, when he asked why they “whisper” their support, they confessed that they didn’t want to be outed on a right-wing network or be known to support someone who appears on a right-wing network.
