Last Tuesday, October 19, the activity in the National Basketball Association or NBA returned for its 2021-2022 season with news that for now takes place off the court but that could not stop seriously affecting the development of the North American league. .
This is because the center of the Boston Celtics, the second most winning team in NBA history behind the Lakers, Enes Kanter, posted a video on their social networks pointing at the figure of the President of the People’s Republic of China, Xi Jinping.
Kanter, a native of the Republic of Turkey, is shown looking at the camera wearing a shirt of the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan spiritual leader, stating that “under the brutal rule of China, the rights and freedoms of the people of Tibet are non-existent.”
–
“They are not allowed to study or learn their language and culture freely. Nor can they travel or access information without restrictions. They cannot even pray in freedom ”, comments Kanter in 2021 marked by 70 years since the region was militarily occupied by the Asian giant.
This historic event, which the Communist Party claims as an episode of “peaceful liberation”, was commemorated by Xi Jinping on his visit to Tibetan territory last July.
But after this first post, Kanter insisted on his complaint, stating that Xi Jinping was a brutal dictator, that more than 150 Tibetans were burned alive for criticizing Beijing, denouncing the massacre of the Muslim people in Xinjiang and showing some sneakers described as “freedom shoes” or slippers. freedom.
Now strikingly Kanter, who had played preseason games and who usually adds several minutes to the Celtics team, has not played again after these messages.
–
Endless reactions were added to his messages: First, The Celtics’ official Weibo page, sort of like Chinese Twitter, was filled with users asking the team to punish Kanter and offer a public apology.
A few minutes later, Chinese broadcast of Celtics vs. Knicks game was removed by video streaming site Tencent, also marking from this medium that they were not going to broadcast the next Celtics games although without setting a specific date.
For his part, the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman said Kanter was “trying to get attention.”
While the NBA at the moment did not pronounce publicly and it will be necessary to see if it does because, on the one hand, we are talking about the most progressive league on political and social issues in the United States but not when it comes to China, its most important international market.
–
In addition, Kanter continues to send messages. In the last hours the basketball player posted a new video in which he summons Nike owner Phil Knight: “How about I book plane tickets for us and we fly to China together? We can try to visit these SLAVE work camps and you can see it with your own eyes, “said the Turk, also enchanted by Lakers star Lebron James.
This is because just as it is not the first time that Kanter has targeted an international leader, in fact in January 2019, the Istanbul Prosecutor’s Office requested his extradition after his comments against Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, it is not the first time that China is offended.
In that same 2019 but this time in October, the public television of the Asian country stopped broadcasting the NBA preseason games after the general director of the Houston Rockets, Daryl Morey, published a tweet in support of Hong Kong, a territory that at that time was developing protests with greater intensity than ever.
That led, curiously, to figures like LeBron James publicly saying that we all need to learn more about the Communist Party on issues like Hong Kong and that in this case the general director of the Rockets spoke from ignorance.
And apparently this laxity could answer to that The NBA has spent years and billions of dollars invested in China, helping build courts, initially releasing broadcast rights for free, and bringing its stars to preseason or exhibition games.
China accounted for the NBA for at least 10% of revenue in 2019 and the country is expected to contribute even more over the next decade, perhaps reaching 20% of revenue by 2030.
Therefore, on the outside, it will be necessary to know what happens with Kanter and fundamentally the possibility of coexisting between the numbers of a giant business and the freedom of expression for some players in the most progressive league in the United States.
–
