The NBA Shuns Freedom

The NBA Shuns Freedom
Commentary by Sanford D. Horn
February 14, 2022

Just when it looked as though the National Basketball Association couldn’t sink any lower, it dug deep reaching depths lower than a gopher’s basement. In an attempt to silence perhaps the most outspoken player in the league - Enes Kanter Freedom, playing in his 11th NBA season, the Boston Celtics traded Freedom Thursday February 10 to the Houston Rockets, who immediately dropped him from their roster.

Kanter, who on Monday November 29, 2021 became an official American citizen and legally changed his name to Enes Kanter Freedom, called upon the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to pull the 2022 Winter Games from Beijing because their human rights abuses do not warrant hosting a game of Chinese Checkers, let alone the honor of hosting the Olympic games. “The Chinese Communist Party does not represent the Olympic values - excellence, respect, friendship, and they are a brutal dictatorship. They engage in censorship, they don’t respect human rights, and they hide the truth. There’s a genocide happening. All the gold medals in the world aren’t worth selling your morals, values, and principles to the Chinese Communist Party,” said Freedom.

Long before Freedom called for the ongoing Winter Olympic Games to be pulled from China, as a Celtics center he often publicly criticized the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) for their human rights violations, which resulted in the Chinese state television pulling all Celtics games from their airwaves. While the loss of those games on Chinese television did not personally financially impact Freedom, executives from the NBA asked, no, demanded that he no longer speak out against the CCP.

But Freedom, a native of Turkey with family still living there under threat, would not be deterred. (Turkey invalidated Freedom’s passport, raided his family’s home, and arrested his father.) He pulled no punches in his declarative statements about the evils of the CCP and the deleterious impact on millions of its own people. Human rights abuses such as, but not limited to,  imprisoning more than a million minority Uyghurs and Khazakhs in concentration camps in the Xinjiang Region in Northwest China, forced abortions, executions, torture, forced labor - slavery, mass sterilization, sexual abuse - rape, clamping down on rights heretofore enjoyed by Hong Kong, saber rattling toward Taiwan, a still unfree Tibet, and Covid-19. Even the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC compared the CCP government’s atrocities towards it own people to the persecution and slaughter of six million Jewish people during World War II.

The ultimate goals of the CCP are to control the world via the assimilation or eradication of America/Americans, the annexation of neighboring countries, as well as the occupation of Europe. The dastardly deeds in the Xinjiang Region are merely the opening salvo. Roughly half of the 25 million person population there are Muslim - the Uyghurs being the largest representation. Mass detentions into reeducation camps are designed to quell alleged terrorism and separation, according to the CCP. For three-quarters of a century the people of Xinjiang have fought for their own autonomy, their own state. Initially quashed by totalitarian dictator Mao Zedong in 1949, the abuses continue to this day with upwards of 1,200 concentration camps.

For the most part, the world, led by the United States, has all but turned a blind eye to the strife and unconscionable treatment experienced by the people of the Xinjiang Region. “I was ashamed of myself for the last nine to 10 years,” said Freedom. “This is bigger than basketball,” said the center who rotated his shoes worn on the basketball court - a pair with the flag of Taiwan, one saying “Free Tibet,” another adorned with “Hypocrite Nike,” and the big one, “stop genocide, torture, rape, slave labor, free China.” Freedom’s controversial basketball shoes - at least according to the league - were the cause of consternation earlier this season at Madison Square Garden prior to a game against the New York Knicks. NBA officials “begging me” to take off the shoes. “If I’m not breaking any rules, I’m not taking the shoes off - go tell your boss - I don’t care if I get fined,” said Freedom.

“It’s time to wake up and speak up. Someone has to do it. So many athletes, actors, singers out there - they’re scared - they care too much about their money. They care too much about their endorsement deals. They care too much about what the teams they play for are going to say. It should be morals and principles over money. People’s lives depend on this. This is so important - especially with athletes - so many out there that idolize us - if we don’t stand up against this dictatorship, who will?” Freedom added, as he called out LeBron James specifically, for his Nike-China ties. Freedom also said it is shameful that such influential American-born celebrities are quick to criticize the United States.

While the players in the NBA and WNBA - great and small alike - are parading around sanctimoniously in their BLM garb (probably made in China), they are either willfully obtuse or simply stupid and heartless regarding the overwhelmingly torturous circumstances besieging the Uyghurs and countless scores of others in China.

One week prior to his citizenship becoming official, Freedom penned an editorial appearing in The Wall Street Journal on November 22, 2021 wherein he called for the Olympics to be pulled out of Beijing for the sake of tennis player Peng Shuai. In a text on November 2 Shuai levied allegations of sexual assault against former Chinese Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli. Subsequent to that text, it disappeared from the internet by no action of Shuai’s, followed by rumors of her disappearance from the public eye. Shuai is a former world number one tennis player in doubles competition as well as winner of two major titles and a three-time Olympian.

Consequently, the Women’s Tennis Association pulled all of its future tournaments from China. That decision will “cost women’s tennis hundreds of millions of dollars in future revenue” according to WTA Chief Executive Steve Simon. Freedom applauded the actions taken by the WTA, called on other major sports leagues to do likewise

“Look how they treat their own tennis player. We’re going to send our own athletes there? Unacceptable. Shame on other Muslims for not speaking out,” said Freedom. Shuai eventually made what were clearly staged public appearances. “She may be alive, but she’s not free,” Freedom said of Shuai.

Freedom is at ease with his new nation’s constitution, as is evidenced above, using his First Amendment rights rather liberally. “This is the greatest country in the world. There are 27 amendments, and my First Amendment is my greatest amendment - freedom of speech,” he said. “It’s disgusting to me that on the one hand they say they are a social justice organization, yet when it comes to this, they remain silent and follow the big bucks, scared to say anything because of the money,” said Freedom of the NBA and its players.

Ironically, or coincidentally, on October 4, 2019, Daryl Morey, then General Manager of the Rockets, the team that just waived Freedom, found himself in hot water for a simple Tweet supporting freedom in Hong Kong. Several days later, Morey said he never intended his Tweet to cause any offense, but much to the chagrin of the Chinese, did not apologize. As a punishment against the NBA, the CCP canceled its entire season’s broadcasts of the NBA in China. On November 1, 2020 Morey left the Rockets. Currently Morey is president of basketball operations with the Philadelphia 76ers.

The NBA is a slave to the Chinese Communist Party. Gutless and cowardly. Quite frankly, so too is the entirety of the United States. After all, it’s damn near impossible to avoid purchasing Chinese-made products anywhere and everywhere people shop.

“This is bigger than me and it is too important. If this is a reason my career ends, so be it,” said a rather prophetic Freedom around the time his American citizenship became official. Basketball or no basketball, there is no doubt Enes Kanter Freedom will continue to speak up and speak out. And isn’t that what the United States of America is all about? Pray it remains so.

Sanford D. Horn is a writer and educator living in Westfield, IN.