SALT LAKE CITY — LeBron James has long championed social justice causes in the United States. He led a 2012 demonstration with his Miami Heat teammates in memory of Trayvon Martin. He spoke up regarding 2017’s “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. And he’s supported Black Lives Matter and college athletes’ rights to their name, image and likeness.
Enes Kanter, a former Utah Jazz forward and current member of the Boston Celtics, has also championed reform in his home country. Kanter is Turkish and has opposed the Turkish government, using his status as one of the country’s most recognized athletes to scold President Recep Tayyip Erdogan over his government’s purge of dissenters from public life; its strangulation of a free press; and, most recently, its military’s invasion of northern Syria, which was followed by multiple reports of atrocities committed by the Turkish military against the Kurds.
But this week, an avalanche of criticism was hurled at James for his refusal to speak out, as he and the NBA have became ensnared in a cross-continental conflict about the Chinese government’s power.
As reactions (or non-reactions) from prominent players and coaches have trickled into American consciousness, the “wokest” league in sports has tumbled onto an international stage, accidentally grabbed a microphone and is standing under a scalding spotlight at the intersection of principle and profit.
Kanter, meanwhile — despite avoiding direct comment on the China situation — has been widely presented as a human rights crusader, as opposed to an advocate loyal to convenience and currency over cause.
The basketball triad of James, Kanter and the NBA’s relationship with China have formed a crucible of questions over sports’ role in diplomacy, athletes’ obligations to promote their beliefs and the ethics of doing business with an authoritarian regime.
What set off the NBA’s issues with China?
With one seven-word tweet — “Fight For Freedom Stand With Hong Kong” — Houston Rockets General Manager Daryl Morey unleashed a cascade of questions about the socially conscious NBA’s precarious relationship with China.
Morey quickly deleted the tweet and walked back his support for Hong Kong. The Chinese Consulate of Houston said in a statement that it was “deeply shocked” by Morey’s remarks and urged the Rockets to “take immediate concrete measures to eliminate the adverse impact.”
But the damage was done.
The Chinese Basketball Association has since severed its relationship with the Rockets, which likely means no more preseason games against Chinese teams (Houston opened its 2019 preseason against the Shanghai Sharks). The Rockets’ games also won’t be broadcast in China for now. And the team — very popular in China thanks to Chinese star Yao Ming, who played for the Rockets from 2002 to 2011 — is also losing sponsorship dollars.
What was happening with the NBA before this situation?
The NBA has developed a reputation for being the league where players are free to speak up — a contrast with the NFL, where Colin Kaepernick hasn’t played since the 2016 season. In 2018, New York Times national editor Marc Lacey dubbed the NBA “the wokest professional sports league.”
“I didn’t know we were given that designation,” NBA Commissioner Adam Silver responded. “But I understand the sentiment and we’re proud of that.”
Other prominent examples are Golden State Warriors coach Steve Kerr and San Antonio Spurs coach Gregg Popovich, both regular critics of President Donald Trump.
The league has also worked for the past decade-plus on expanding its business presence in China.
“The NBA’s global aspirations rely heavily on China,” Washington Post NBA reporter Ben Golliver wrote recently, “with Silver regularly referring to the country, and its population of 1.4 billion, as a top priority.”
What was happening with China and Hong Kong?
Protests against the Chinese government have raged in Hong Kong since June, with participants originally fearing a proposal that would have allowed extradition to the mainland. That proposal has since been withdrawn, but protests have continued over China’s encroaching role in Hong Kong’s governance.
The protesters have seen reports of Chinese authorities arbitrarily detaining and surveilling around a million citizens in western China — most of them Muslim Uighurs — in internment camps to “prevent terrorism thoughts from happening,” the director of one of the centers told NBC News. And the protesters want to ensure such abuses never reach their semiautonomous land.
Hong Kong — a “special administrative region” in southern China about the size of New York City — was a British territory until 1997, when it became part of China. Hong Kong maintains its own legal and judicial systems under the philosophy of “one country, two systems” enshrined in “The Basic Law” — the agreement with mainland China that allows Hong Kong to operate with relative autonomy outside of defense and foreign policy. The Basic Law, though, will expire in 2047 — 50 years after it went into effect — and what happens to Hong Kong then is unclear.
With the extradition bill axed, protesters have pivoted to four additional demands, all intended to limit future overreach from Beijing. On Oct. 1, violence erupted as police shot one protester in the chest with a live round, per the BBC, and protesters sparred with police using makeshift weapons.
What did LeBron James and Enes Kanter say?
Following a week of anticipation about what he’d say after returning from a trip to China, James addressed reporters after a preseason game in Los Angeles Monday night. He called the tweet that detonated the controversy “misinformed.”
When the semitruck of criticism smacked him shortly thereafter, he took to Twitter to clarify. He didn’t mean Morey was misinformed about Hong Kong’s struggle, he explained. Only that Morey, by tweeting those seven words, failed to recognize how his timing would affect James and his Lakers teammates as they traveled through China. He added that he wasn’t going to discuss the substance of Hong Kong’s struggle, leaving that conversation to “others.”
“Sometimes you have to think through things that you say that may cause harm not only for yourself,” James added, “but for the majority of people. And I think that’s a prime example of that.”
James left it unclear whether the “harm” he referred to meant potential physical danger he and his teammates could encounter since they were in China at the time of the tweet, potential financial distress or potentially depriving China’s citizens of basketball. He did say the tweet impacted not just the league, but “all of us in America” and people in China, too.
Kanter didn’t call out James by name, but it’s impossible to read his tweets — including a standalone vomit emoji — that appeared shortly after James’ comments any other way.
The difference between James and Kanter is what they have at stake. As The Undefeated’s Jerry Bembry wrote in early 2018, James believes he’s not jeopardizing his business interests when he speaks out about American political issues.
“And that ability,” Bembry added, “to balance business and social activism — without fear or repercussions — resonates with players in the league who respect how he’s responded to critics.”
In America, speaking out has arguably helped his brand; in China, he could lose hundreds of millions of fans — for both himself and the NBA — by the slightest indication of government criticism.
Kanter’s list of losses suffered due to his criticism of Turkey, meanwhile, extend well beyond his financial interests.
Kanter’s history of activism
Kanter’s ties to what would eventually become Turkish government opposition started in childhood. He attended a Hizmet school — an offshoot of a movement led by Fethullah Gulen, whom Rudy Giuliani reportedly pushed Trump to turn over to Turkey recently. There was nothing unusual about it at the time; Hizmet schools numbered near a thousand worldwide with 300 in Turkey, according to The Ringer, even though the movement’s opponents dismiss it as cult-like. Gulen, per the New York Times, “promotes a moderate, pro-Western brand of Sunni Islam that appeals to many well-educated and professional Turks.”
Gulen fled Turkey for Pennsylvania in 1999, but he remained an influential figure. And in 2013, a corruption scandal that threatened to undo then-Prime Minister Erdogan’s government was largely viewed as a conflict between followers of Erdogan and followers of Gulen.
The connection strengthened during the failed Turkish coup attempt of July 2016. During a FaceTime interview on CNN, Erdogan declared, “Turkey will not be run from a house in Pennsylvania.”
Kanter has criticized Erdogan and the Turkish government since, calling Erdogan “the Hitler of our century” and labeling him #DictatorErdogan and #TurkishDictator on Twitter. Unlike most American NBA players, who have little to fear from the American government, Kanter had plenty to lose by calling out Erdogan.
In 2017, a Turkish judge issued an arrest warrant for Kanter under the belief that Kanter was a member of a terrorist organization bent on ousting Erdogan.
As Kanter himself detailed in a post on The Players’ Tribune, he believes the Turkish government sent Indonesian authorities to pursue him when he visited the country in 2017 as a result of the warrant. He fled in the middle of the night to Singapore — the first flight out of Indonesia — and traveled to Romania. When he arrived, he was told the Turkish government had canceled his passport and revoked his citizenship. As he said in the title of his Tribune piece, “They can take away your country, just like that.”
He hasn’t spoken to his family in years; they disowned him. His father even submitted a public, handwritten letter to Turkish media that read in part, “I apologize to our president and the Turkish people for having such a son.”
His basketball games and social media presence are blocked in Turkey, much like Rockets games are now blocked in China. He’s refused to play NBA games in England and Canada for fear of assassination. And his planned children’s basketball camp at the Islamic Center of Long Island was canceled in July because, Kanter said, the Turkish Consulate of New York City “sent their goons” to threaten the mosque. The consulate dismissed his accusations as “lies, lies, lies,” per the Washington Post, and called Kanter a “member of a cult.”
Kanter also receives near-daily death threats. Yet, he continues to speak, and the NBA continues to let him. To be clear, Kanter’s situation is, of course, very different from James’. China is home to some 500 million basketball fans; Turkey’s entire population is under 80 million. The NBA and any team Kanter represents stand to lose few economic interests if they lose Turkey. China, meanwhile, has a fan base larger than the entire U.S. population, and James offering opposition to the Chinese government would ripple through the entire league.
Regardless, Kanter’s willingness to speak up has created a contrast to the NBA’s near-silence on China since Morey’s tweet. Following Trump’s decision on Oct. 6 to pull American troops from northern Syria near the Turkish border, thus clearing a path for a Turkish invasion, Kanter has once more lashed out at Erdogan.
“I tried to tell you ALL,” he tweeted on Oct. 9.
He also recently authored an op-ed in the Boston Globe titled “I will not be silenced over Turkey,” tweeted about the “Turkish Kangaroo Court” delaying his father’s trial and wore shoes inscribed with “FREEDOM.” He was also recently harassed outside a Massachusetts mosque.
Many observers have contrasted Kanter’s approach to Turkey with James’ approach to China, including Garry Kasparov, the former world chess champion and current chairman of the Human Rights Foundation.
“Good to see there’s at least one NBA player who puts human rights first: @EnesKanter!” he tweeted. “As for the rest, if you’re going to claim ignorance or “stick to sports,” that is your right. But if you open your mouth to defend a brutal regime, be prepared to defend those views, if you can.”
Kanter hasn’t commented on the China situation directly, but his tweet about how the NBA has stood with him for “freedom and democracy” is about as close as any player has come to doing so, aside from James and Harden.
How did the NBA respond to the China situation?
The NBA issued a statement in the immediate aftermath. “We recognize that the views expressed by Houston Rockets General Manager Daryl Morey have deeply offended many of our friends and fans in China,” it read in part, “which is regrettable.”
Rockets owner Tilman Fertitta took to Twitter to distance himself from his employee, noting that Morey does “NOT” speak for the Rockets, and the team is “NOT” a political organization. Star Rockets forward James Harden also addressed the situation — at least at first.
”We apologize. You know, we love China. We love playing there,” Harden said, per ESPN.
Later, when asked by CNN reporter Christina Macfarlane whether he and teammate Russell Westbrook would reconsider speaking out about American politics in the wake of the China scandal, a Rockets public relations staffer told Macfarlane that the team was only answering “basketball questions.” The NBA apologized for the team’s error.
Silver also issued a new statement, this time assuring Americans that the NBA will not regulate players’ and coaches’ rights to expression. However, it focused on the power of basketball — rather than the foundational importance of free speech — as a “unifying force” that brings people together.
“It is inevitable that people around the world — including from America and China — will have different viewpoints over different issues. It is not the role of the NBA to adjudicate those differences,” it read. “However, the NBA will not put itself in a position of regulating what players, employees and team owners say or will not say on these issues. We simply could not operate that way.”
Chinese state media, per the Associated Press, said the country was “strongly dissatisfied” with Silver’s remarks. “We believe that any remarks that challenge national sovereignty and social stability,” the official statement read, “are not within the scope of freedom of speech.”
American political figures from Ted Cruz to Beto O’Rourke have also weighed in, finding common ground in lambasting James’ and the league’s response.
Lasting questions and potential consequences of the basketball triad
The NBA’s relationship with China began in 1979, when the then-Washington Bullets (now Wizards) embarked on an overseas trip for a pair of exhibition games in Beijing and Shanghai. But the league’s real expansion into the Chinese market has happened during the past 10 years.
The NBA has become, according to the South China Morning Post’s Andrew McNicol, China’s most popular sports league. In 2017, he wrote of the NBA’s 2010 decision to create an account on Chinese social media app Weibo, “it probably never dreamt it would be so successful.”
McNicol reported that the NBA’s Weibo account featured 33 million followers at the time — 4.5 million more followers than the NBA’s Twitter account has today. His story also mentioned the NBA’s youth development efforts in China, its $500 million partnership with Chinese streaming service Tencent and its dominance in the Chinese marketplace among professional sports leagues: McNicol cited a report from Shanghai-based sports marketing agency Mailman claiming the NBA was seven times more discussed in China in 2017 than the top three European soccer leagues combined.
All that is to say, the NBA has invested heavily in building its brand in China, and angering the Chinese government would likely have steep consequences.
In the short term, the Rockets will feel the crunch most of anyone involved with the basketball triad. Per New York Times NBA insider Marc Stein, Houston could lose up to $25 million this season. But if the controversy escalates in the coming days, the NBA would stand to lose a substantial market. Roughy 500 million basketball fans reside in China, and USA Today placed a “conservative estimate” of the league’s China profits at $500 million.
Therein lies the central question of this entanglement: What matters more for an American company like the NBA — the opportunity for economic growth, or the promotion of freedom of expression and other democratic ideals? The two aren’t always mutually exclusive, but in this case, they are. And while Silver supported free speech generally, he tiptoed around addressing China’s abuses for the sake of preserving the NBA’s business interests and development of the game in an authoritarian state.
As the Atlantic’s Derek Thompson asked, “Are we okay with that?”
Are we OK with Apple removing an app used by Hong Kong protesters after a flogging from Chinese state media? Are we OK with pro-democracy protesters burning James jerseys as a symbol of his appeasement of a brutal regime? Are we OK with people across the world calling out what they view as American hypocrisy?
And what about James, the man who last year quoted Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s famed teaching that “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere”?
He took a different approach Tuesday.
“There’s issues all over the world, and I think the best thing we can do is if we feel passionate, talk about it; if you don’t have a lot of knowledge about it or you don’t quite understand it, I don’t think you shouldn’t talk about it,” he said. “It just puts you in a tough position.”
His clarification once again contrasted Kanter, who tweeted around the same time that standing for freedom and democracy is worth sacrificing “EVERYTHING!!!”