Just before his opening game against the New York Knicks earlier this season, then-Boston Celtics center Enes Kanter Freedom claims he was told to remove the words “Free Tibet” from his size 16 sneakers. The shoes were custom-made by a Chinese political artist who has spent his career raising awareness about the human-rights abuses committed by the Chinese Communist Party.
If the story is true, Freedom has good reason to be upset, as the NBA had previously stated its support for players speaking out on social justice issues. Freedom would grow even more vocal about the Chinese government’s crimes throughout the season, and even criticized Los Angeles Lakers superstar LeBron James for his silence on the issue—due to his and the NBA’s financial relationship with China.
Freedom’s protest against China is righteous—the U.S. State Department estimates that the Chinese government has detained and imprisoned more than one million Uyghurs, a majority-Muslim ethnic group, in Xinjiang province. But his stand is being co-opted by American conservatives who see him as a juicy T-bone steak worthy of a 1940s Tom & Jerry episode. Conservatives badly want Freedom to be their own Colin Kaepernick—a free speech protest martyr.
ADVERTISEMENT
Right-leaning commentators saw a series of events and then spun them to suit their own narrative. These were: Freedom’s inclusion on the roster of speakers for the upcoming Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC); the Celtics dealing him away to the Houston Rockets at the NBA’s trade deadline; then the Rockets waiving him (and his expiring contract) off their roster.
After years bashing Kaepernick for his on-field protests, conservatives see Freedom as a culture war hero they can get behind—an America-loving immigrant supposedly silenced by the “woke” NBA that’s cowed by the CCP.
While it’s true that the NBA’s relationship with the Chinese dictatorship is all kinds of problematic, to view Freedom’s recent unemployment as being solely about his political activism betrays a lack of basketball knowledge. In reality, he’s just kinda washed up.
Enes Kanter Freedom—who changed his last name to “Freedom” after passing his U.S. citizenship test in January—is only 29 years old, but his value in the NBA has been in steady decline all season.
Freedom’s main area of concern for front offices was his defense (or lack of it). The man is simply a defensive liability. He struggles to defend the pick-and-roll, which is something I learned how to do on my middle school basketball team. Granted, it’s infinitely harder in the NBA, but a player’s worth as a defender—especially one with Freedom’s style of play—does rely on his ability to be at least better than average. (If you spend too much time playing video games like I do, you may have noticed his overall defensive rating of 39/100 on 2K Games’ NBA 2K22).
Offensively, Freedom is solid on the glass, but in a league where pretty much everyone his size can be a productive scorer, he doesn’t really stand out. That’s why in recent weeks, the Celtics mostly only deployed Freedom during garbage-time minutes at the tail end of games.
However, conservatives will have you believe his level of play is beside the point. His unceremonious exit from the league can only be explained by a conspiracy to silence an anti-CCP activist.
Ben Shapiro tweeted that Freedom was “run out of the NBA for the sin of saying out loud that the league is doing China's propaganda work.”
Marc A. Thiessen, a former Bush speechwriter and a Fox News contributor, wrote in the Washington Post that Freedom’s skill had nothing to do with his being waived by the Rockets, absurdly using Freedom’s whopping seven points scored in his last game to back up his argument.
Nevermind that Freedom remained active on an NBA roster during his months-long run as a frequent Fox News guest where he regularly criticized China and the NBA. The right wants you to think that Enes Kanter Freedom’s criticisms of China cost him his job…a job that he maintained for months while doing the very thing conservatives say he wasn’t allowed to do.
“But Manny,” you ask, “you were a staunch defender of Colin Kaepernick when his opinions made it harder for him to get a job in the NFL. What’s the difference here?”
While Kaepernick was also riding the bench when he first went public with his protests, it was conceivable for him to perform adequately enough to be a starter on a team elsewhere in the NFL. Any number of squads were absolutely suffering at the quarterback position, and at the time of Kaepernick’s first protest, he was just a few years removed from leading the San Francisco 49ers to a Super Bowl appearance. Some NFL players went public, arguing that he still had the skill level to be successful.
Freedom, on the other hand, currently swims in a pool of NBA talent that has made him more or less redundant.
The quarterback position in the NFL is unlike any other position in team sports, in that the player is the sole distributor of the team’s offense. That is to say, speaking strictly about the skills needed to excel in their given positions, it’s a lot easier to replace Freedom than it was to replace Kaepernick. The idea that Freedom was pushed out of the NBA solely because of his outspokenness just doesn't square with a sober accounting of his productivity this season.
It would be easy for conservatives to call out liberals for supporting Kaepernick while keeping mum about Freedom, but even they don’t want you to liken the two athletes’ causes. Will Cain, a co-host of the weekend edition of Fox & Friends, told his co-hosts that the two athletes’ protests are different because Kaepernick was “wrong” about police brutality.
Ultimately, it’s a little early to say Freedom’s been blackballed by the league, as there’s a decent chance he’ll eventually sign with another team. But conservatives saw their chance to inject their own politics (and culture war victim mentality) into sports—something they’ve previously claimed to despise when athletes are demonstrating in support of social justice issues.
