conduct<\/em> go to jail.<\/p>\nhis teammates laughed at him. “They were explaining to me freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of expression, freedom of protest.”<\/p>\n
That inspired him.<\/p>\n
When the Turkish president shut down the press, Kanter decided, “I’m going to say something about it.”<\/p>\n
He tweeted, wrote op-eds, and gave interviews.<\/p>\n
Turkey’s authoritarian rulers retaliated. They imprisoned their father. “They wanted to set an example. This is what happens when you oppose the Turkish government.”<\/p>\n
The NBA supported his protest. “[NBA commissioner] Adam Silver texted me twice and said, “Whatever you need, we’re here for you. Keep doing what you’re doing.”<\/p>\nNBA commissioner Adam Silver, who had backed Kanter’s criticism of Turkey, seemed to change tone when China was targeted. <\/figcaption>Jeff Chu\/AP<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\nHowever, he criticized China. a bit. He wrote “Free Tibet” on his basketball shoes.<\/p>\n\n\t<\/aside>\n“There are no rules for that,” he says. Other players put “Black Lives Matter” and “I Can’t Breathe” on their shoes.criticizing America recommended<\/em> by the NBA.<\/p>\nBut the “Free Tibet” on the shoes was overkill. A Celtics official told him to take them off.<\/p>\n
he refused. “I wasn’t going to take them off because it’s literally free speech.”<\/p>\n
In fact, it doesn’t. Free speech in America applies to government. The NBA can legally censor employees who could cost money. They cantered just that. he couldn’t play<\/p>\n
It’s clear what the NBA was afraid of. China TV banned coverage of the Celtics game minutes after Kanter tweeted a picture of the shoe. Just temporarily.<\/p>\n
The Celtics traded Kanter to the Houston Rockets. The Rockets fired him. He has not received offers from other teams. “He could have played six more years,” he says.<\/p>\n
he doesn’t<\/p>\n
some sports organizations protect<\/em> Their athletes who oppose China’s oppressive rules. When tennis player Peng Shuai went missing for days after accusing a senior Chinese government official of sexually assaulting her, the Women’s Tennis Association said it would support her, even if it cost her money.<\/p>\nThe NBA doesn’t.<\/p>\n
They were able to stand up for the right of one player to speak out and peacefully criticize cruelty.The NBA reportedly gets 10% of its revenue from China. The NBA makes billions. Can’t they take 10% risk?<\/p>\nEnes Kantor Freedom obtained US citizenship in late 2021 and then legally changed his name to include “Freedom” in the name.<\/figcaption>back grid<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n
\n
\n \t\t\tKeep up with today’s most important news\t\t<\/h3>\n
\n
\t\t\tStay up to date with the Evening Update.\t\t<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
NBA games are very popular in China. Chinese leaders have probably resumed television coverage. It is not in their interest to permanently ban NBA games.<\/p>\n
“There were more people watching NBA games in China last year than there were people in the United States,” Kanter said. “I don’t think China will ban all NBA games.”<\/p>\n
But no one in the NBA endorsed him. No one in management. no teammates. “For 10 years I talk about Turkey. I didn’t get a single phone call. One day I talked about China. Me and my manager were getting calls every hour.”<\/p>\n
\u201cHypocrisy hurts me the most. [the NBA is] The first organization said, “This is wrong. This is what should happen, blah, blah, blah.”<\/p>\n
But silence the victims of torture.<\/p>\n
Kanter has now changed its name to ‘Freedom’. Officially changed. His real name is Enes Freedom. \u201cI did it because I believe that next to air, water, and food, the most important thing is freedom. Any way to fire an American citizen will kill me.”<\/p>\n
Enes Freedom has lost a lot, but he’s glad he spoke up.<\/p>\n
“If God gave you a gift, you can repay by standing by people,” he says. “That means a lot to people who don’t have a voice. If you don’t speak up about some of the issues that are happening, you are part of the problem.”<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
[ad_2]Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"[ad_1] Teenage basketball star Enes Kanter was shocked when his teammates criticized President Barack Obama on Facebook. “Hey, what are you doing?” he cried. He<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5188,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":[],"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5187","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nba","two-columns"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/atswins.ai\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/enes-kanter-comp-1.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/atswins.ai\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5187","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/atswins.ai\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/atswins.ai\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atswins.ai\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atswins.ai\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5187"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/atswins.ai\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5187\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atswins.ai\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5188"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/atswins.ai\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5187"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atswins.ai\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5187"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atswins.ai\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5187"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}