NBA player Enes Kanter attacks Xi Jinping on social media before wearing ‘Free Tibet’ shoes during game

Enes Kanter publishes social media posts attacking ‘brutal dictator’ Xi Jinping before wearing shoes designed by dissident cartoonist Badiucao
Practising Muslim say he can no longer ‘stay silent’ over Tibet

NBA (National Basketball Association)

Patrick Blennerhassett

Published: 2:01pm, 21 Oct 2021

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Boston Celtics player Enes Kanter slammed Chinese President Xi Jinping on social media before wearing shoes emblazoned with the slogan “Free Tibet” during his team’s NBA game against the New York Knicks at Madison Square Garden on Wednesday night.

The shoes were made by Shanghai-born, Australia-based dissident cartoonist Badiucao, who had a show in Hong Kong cancelled in 2018, and were worn by Kanter while he was on the bench during the season-opening game in New York.

“My message to the Chinese government is free Tibet,” he said in a video posted on his various social media accounts. “Tibet belongs to Tibetans, I am here to add my voice and speak out against what is happening in Tibet under the Chinese government’s brutal rule.”

Kanter called Xi a “brutal dictator” in the video’s accompanying caption and criticised the Chinese government’s actions in Tibet before saying he could no longer “stay silent” on the issue.

In the video, Kanter wore a T-shirt featuring the 14th Dalai Lama, who many Tibetans regard as their spiritual leader.

Before the start of the 2018 season, the NBA relaxed its policy on shoes that players wear on the court, allowing them to wear trainers of any colour. Currently the only restrictions apply to third-party logos, which have to be preapproved by the league before they can be worn.

Boston Celtics centre Enes Kanter (left) during a preseason game before the 2020-21 NBA season. Photo: USA Today

There is no public policy from the NBA on what shoes players can wear on the bench, and many have worn shirts with messages and slogans in the past, including LeBron James, who wore a shirt that featured the phrase “I can’t breathe” during a prematch warm-up in 2014, in relation to the death of American Eric Garner, who died while being arrested by a New York City policeman, who put him in a prohibited chokehold.

The NBA has not commented on the social media posts or the shoes.

NBA still missing from Chinese TV screens as new seasons tips off

In October 2019, then Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey sparked a row between the NBA and the Chinese government after he tweeted – and then quickly deleted – his support for Hong Kong’s protest movement. Morey, who is now the president of basketball operations with the Philadelphia 76ers, did not comment on the issue until well over a year later when he backed his decision to publish the tweet.

Neither of the season-opening NBA games were shown on Chinese state television on Wednesday and the NBA has largely remained absent from scheduling since the end of the 2018-19 season. CCTV has not listed any games in its schedule for the coming week, which will make it eight months since it last showed any NBA games.

Kanter, who is a practising Muslim of Turkish heritage, is no stranger to controversy. In 2020 he publicly supported a letter the Council on American-Islamic Relations sent to the NBA asking it to cease its China operations.

In January 2019 he skipped his team’s trip to England to play against the Washington Wizards in the NBA London Game because of fear of reprisals for his opposition to Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Kanter has been outspoken critic of Erdogan, who has been accused of human rights violations in Turkey.

Earlier in 2018 Kanter called the NBA “scared little rats” after he was left off a promotional graphic that featured the best Turkish basketball talent. The image, which was posted on the NBA’s Instagram account, showed three other Turkish players.

Kanter was in Hong Kong in 2017 as part of a goodwill tour of Asia where he was travelling the region as part of the Enes Kanter Light Foundation, his charity which focuses on children’s education and well-being.