Former NBA player Enes Kanter Freedom, sidelined from the league after wearing shoes reading “Free Tibet” to a basketball game in 2021, told Congress on Tuesday that his manager estimates he has lost $50 million in player salaries and potential endorsements since condemning China.
Kanter Freedom was invited to testify before the Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC) — a bicameral body chaired by Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ) and Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR) — on the topic of American corporations subsidizing human rights atrocities in China and abetting communist influence at home. The hearing, titled “Corporate Complicity: Subsidizing the PRC’s Human Rights Violations,” also featured testimony by Shi Menglei, the wife of Chinese political prisoner Cheng Yuan; Homeland Security official Robert Silvers, and several academics.
The hearing occurs as one of the NBA’s top basketball players, champion Giannis Antetokounmpo, and his family continue an ongoing trip to China that began last week, where the Milwaukee Bucks star has been repeatedly mobbed by fans and offered regal treatment by the Communist Party. The Chinese state-run propaganda newspaper Global Times celebrated Antetokounmpo’s travels as an opportunity to remind NBA players of the “significant commercial opportunities” available to them if they cooperate with the Communist Party.
We out here learning new moves 🐲🕺🏾 pic.twitter.com/oWSNECjbKj
— Giannis Antetokounmpo (@Giannis_An34) July 6, 2023
Kanter Freedom testified that, while spending about a decade advocating for respect for human rights in his native Turkey, he felt supported and encouraged in speaking out. The NBA, he claimed, actively pressured athletes to discuss “social justice” in interviews. But when he began addressing the genocide of fellow Turkic people in occupied East Turkistan at the hands of the Chinese Communist Party, the league turned its back on him and attempted to prematurely end his career.
“My career ended in a very brutal way,” he lamented in his written testimony, insisting that he remained physically fit and able to return to NBA-quality playing at any time. “According to my manager, I lost around 50 million dollars, with all the NBA contracts and endorsement deals that I could’ve signed.”
Kanter Freedom took on the cause of occupied Tibet — where the Chinese Communist Party for years has engaged in ethnic cleansing and violent repression of Tibetan Buddhism — when the 2021 NBA season opened. At the time, he played for the Boston Celtics and published a series of videos in defense of human rights in China in addition to wearing his anti-communist shoes. For much of the season, Kanter Freedom appeared on court wearing shoes with various messages including condemnation of China’s genocide of Uyghurs and Muslim populations in East Turkistan and honoring the victims of the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre.
The Chinese government – which maintains lucrative deals with the NBA, its players, and team owners –swiftly banned the streaming of Celtics games in the country. The move followed years of tensions between Beijing and the NBA initially prompted by former Houston Rockets General Manager Daryl Morey posting a statement on Twitter, a social media outlet China has banned its citizens from using, in support of the 2019 pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong. The Morey incident cost the NBA “hundreds of millions” of dollars, commissioner Adam Silver estimated last year.
Kanter Freedom recalled the day that he wore shoes featuring the words “Free Tibet” in their design to the court, for a game between the Celtics and the New York Knicks.
Detail of the shoes worn by Enes Kanter #13 of the Boston Celtics with the wording “Free Tibet” during the first half against the New York Knicks at Madison Square Garden on October 20, 2021, in New York City. (Sarah Stier/Getty Images)
“They were really threatening to ban me from the NBA because of my shoes,” Kanter Freedom recalled. “It literally took China 24 minutes (1 quarter 12 minutes, 2nd quarter 12 minutes) to ban every Celtics game. The game went into overtime and we lost the game. I played 0 minutes that night after previously playing in every game before that.”
The former NBA player recalled that his agent called him and advised, “if you say another word about the Chinese government, then you never going to play basketball in this league. No team will sign you, and all the owners who look like they care about social justice in reality all care about money and business so you won’t be playing again.”
Kanter Freedom also narrated a conversation he had with commissioner Adam Silver, who allegedly denied that he was aware of China banning Celtics games from broadcast and urged Kanter to understand the NBA was “a business” and “it’s a different system in China.”
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver speaks to reporters before Game 1 of basketball’s NBA Finals between the Denver Nuggets and the Miami Heat on June 1, 2023, in Denver. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)
Kanter Freedom contrasted this treatment with how the NBA approached “social justice” issues in America.
“It was during the George Floyd protests that the NBA told every player that this is all about social justice, and that they are here to bring change. We are more than athletes. I respect everyone who peacefully protests,” Kanter Freedom told Congress. “During those times NBA put Black Lives Matter logos on the floor … every interview we were doing, the NBA was telling us to talk about social justice issues.”
“Adam Silver was the one telling all the players, ‘hey just go out there and speak,’” Kanter Freedom asserted.
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He expressed disappointment with the lack of support he received from fellow players, coaches, and others in the NBA with whom he had previously believed to enjoy close personal relationships.
“I played 11 years in the NBA, I had 100s of teammates and 100s of coaches, yet not one of them reached out to me or texted me to say good luck with whatever is coming next,” he said. “They were so scared that if I ever do an interview, that I would mention their name saying he texted me or he supported me.”
Kanter Freedom did name one person who called him in the NBA to urged him to continue challenging China: Daryl Morey.
“When we had a conversation after a couple of months regarding me talking about China, he said ‘Enes, don’t give up,’” Kanter Freedom recalled. “When I tweeted about Hong Kong, the NBA made me take my tweet down, they made me apologize, they made me put some statements out there which I didn’t wanna put. But you don’t give up and you keep going.’”
Hundreds of basketball fans gather in Wan Chai Southorn Playground to show support of the Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey on October 15, 2019, in Hong Kong (Lampson Yip/Getty Images)
Morey is currently president of basketball operations of the Philadelphia 76ers. While Chinese officials slowly began allowing NBA broadcasts after Morey left the Houston Rockets, the 76ers are believed to remain on the list of banned teams due to his presence.
Kanter Freedom described his biggest disappointment to be not with the NBA or fellow teammates, but the NBA Players Association – the union that would presumably protect a player’s right to free expression.
“I couldn’t believe how much they were pressuring me because I paid thousands of dollars to the players association every month to protect my rights against the NBA, but on this topic they were on NBA’s side,” he explained.
RELATED VIDEO — Enes Kanter on Activism: Human Rights “Way More Important than Any Deal that You Can Offer Me”:
The player urged Congress to act to contain China’s influence on corporations and investigation not just the NBA, but its most powerful sponsors, primarily Nike.
“Nike stands with Black Lives Matter in this country, they stand with [the] LGBTQ community, they stand with ‘No Asian Hate,’ Latino community, but everybody knows about the slave labor and sweatshops,” Kanter Freedom said. “They are one of the biggest companies that use slave labor, so we have to do whatever we can to put pressure on these companies.”
Kanter Freedom also named “Hollywood, big tech, Wall Street, academia” as industries with problematic relationship with communist China.