In an interview with the New York Times, NBA commissioner Adam Silver says that former Boston Celtic Enes Kanter Freedom has not been blackballed from the league for calling attention to the Chinese Communist Party’s human-rights abuses.
Freedom disputes NBA commissioner Adam Silver’s account of his treatment since he began his foray into activism in protest of the Chinese Communist Party in the article.
“It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realize why I got little playing time and was released,” he said. “But it does take people with a conscience to speak out and say it’s not right.”
Freedom, who is Turkish, began his human-rights activism by expressing support for the coup attempt against Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in 2016 — support that has resulted in his being banished from the country of his birth.
Recently, however, Freedom has taken up the cause of oppressed peoples in China, advocating for a boycott of the Beijing Olympics in response to the ongoing genocide being carried out by the CCP against Uyghur Muslims in the country, calling Chinese president Xi Jinping a “brutal dictator,” and donning shoes with “Free Tibet” emblazoned on them.
Kanter has alleged that officials have tried to get him to stop wearing the shoes, and told the Times that “instead of advocating on my behalf, I have encountered the union telling me I need to shut up and stop talking about the human rights violations in China.” Kanter was traded from Boston Celtics to the Houston Rockets, from which he was promptly released in February, after Celtics games were discontinued in China this season. Chinese state television had previously stopped airing any NBA games in 2019 after Daryl Morey, formerly the Rockets’ general manager, shared a tweet in support of pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong.
The NBA released a statement at the time calling any offense caused by Morey’s tweet “regrettable,” and Silver has since defended the league’s beholden relationship with China, explaining that “the political science major in me believes that engagement is better than isolation.”
To the Times, Silver expressed that “the league’s position on China has not changed,” and objected to the idea that Freedom has been blackballed from the NBA in the way that some have claimed quarterback Colin Kaepernick has been from the NFL.
“We spoke directly about his activities this season, and I made it absolutely clear to him that it was completely within his right to speak out on issues that he was passionate about,” Silver told the Times. Freedom, the article notes, disputes Silver’s claim but declined to elaborate on his treatment.
The piece — authored by reporter Sopan Deb, who has previously leveled accusations of conservative hypocrisy on China that his own contemporaneous reporting refutes — takes a skeptical view of Freedom that compares him unfavorably to Kaepernick as both a player and an activist.
Among other critiques, Deb takes aim at Freedom for appearing on a program hosted by Tucker Carlson — “the conservative host who has frequently denigrated immigrants and social justice activists” — as well as for being critical of LeBron James, who Deb notes, “is Black.”
Freedom remains unsigned over a month after his release.
Source: National Review
