Enes Kanter Freedom

Monday

Cockburn

Enes Kanter Freedom exploring run for office

2024’s Republican National Convention in Milwaukee is hoping to showcase the GOP’s present and future, with the vice presidential selection of Senator J.D. Vance indicating a push by Donald Trump to cement his legacy. While the convention center is filled with current candidates for offices of every kind, one attendee just told Cockburn that he’s looking at joining the GOP’s ranks in a cycle or two: former NBA star Enes Kanter Freedom, whose towering figure has already been dominant at the Fiserv Forum. Freedom told Cockburn that, while he currently lives in Washington, DC, he wants to run for office in the near future, while acknowledging that he’ll probably have to relocate somewhere in order to make that happen.

enes kanter freedom

Monday

John Pietro

Enes Kanter Freedom on LeBron, Erdoğan and the earthquake

Basketball player and human rights activist Enes Kanter Freedom was invited as Leader Kevin McCarthy's guest of honor to the State of the Union last week, an address in which President Biden barely touched on foreign policy. The former Boston Celtics and Oklahoma City Thunder center spoke with The Spectator about democracy, autocracies and hypocrisy. John Pietro: How far does China’s influence reach into the NBA, in your estimation? Could you see the NBA ever standing up to China in the way the Women’s Tennis Association did in defense of Peng Shuai? Enes Kanter Freedom: I didn’t know how deep the relationship between the NBA and China was until Daryl Morey tweeted and said "stand with Hong Kong" and after that obviously the NBA lost millions and millions of dollars.

enes kanter freedom

Friday

Cockburn

Mr. Freedom goes to Washington

Cockburn had a sojourn through the corridors of power on Thursday — attending a congressional reception on global human rights in the Rayburn House Office Building, hosted by basketball star Enes Kanter Freedom. Freedom has a storied past when it comes to dealing with dictatorships: the Turkish government revoked his passport in 2017 and jailed his father over his support for Fethullah Gülen, a cleric who is feverishly critical of President Erdoğan. He caused a controversy at the start of this season after donning shoes highlighting the persecution of Uighur Muslims and Tibetans in China while playing for the Boston Celtics. The NBA stopped broadcasting his team’s games, and midway through the season he was cut from their roster.

kanter freedom

Friday

Stephen L. Miller

Did China just take out an NBA player?

It sure looks like basketball player Enes Kanter Freedom has been blackballed by the NBA for his candor over the league's cozy relationship with China — concentration camps filled with ethnic Uighurs in Xinjiang and all. Freedom, who earlier this year began wearing human rights messages on his game shoes illustrated by Chinese dissident artist Badiucao, became a vocal critic of the NBA's cherrypicking of human rights issues. That included directly targeting the league’s star and arguably most recognizable athlete on the planet, LeBron James. In 2019, after Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey spoke out against China and in support of the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong in a series of now-deleted tweets, China suspended all NBA broadcasts within its borders.