Prominent China’s slave labor critic Enes Kanter Freedom opened up to OutKick about various topics, including the reason why the sports media is ignoring the NBA’s business relationship with communist China.
Bobby Burack: How much has the sports media contributed to the faux social justice branding of the NBA? ESPN hosts like Bomani Jones and Stephen A. Smith routinely call America racist but will never challenge the NBA to speak out for profiting from the CCP.
Enes Kanter Freedom: I remember the first time I started to talk about the problems in China that not one person in sports media took it. They buried it. Only the political media talked about it. I was very confused. Why wouldn’t the sports media acknowledge what’s going on in China?
Then I talked to one of my teammates who said that the NBA runs the sports media. So, of course, none of the sports media journalists or hosts talk about China because the NBA runs ESPN, ABC and TNT, the league partners.
Sports journalists won’t make the NBA mad because they want access to locker rooms. That’s why the sports media pushed so hard for vaccines, the NBA was pushing for vaccines for all their players. The sports media is just following the NBA’s wishes.
The NBA is always going to protect the league and diminish any player who hurts the league’s bottom line by speaking out. The media is protecting the NBA.
Enes Kanter Freedom – an outspoken human rights activist – was traded by the Boston Celtics to Houston Rockets at the trading deadline. The Rockets waived him on Feb. 14.
The free-agent NBA big man has played 11 seasons for 5 teams, including the Boston Celtics and Utah Jazz. He has averaged 11.2 points and 7.8 rebounds in 748 regular-season games.
