Former NBA center Enes Kanter Freedom has spent the past several months waging a very public war against the WNBA, declaring himself eligible for the 2027 WNBA Draft in an effort to force the league to address transgender athletes. But apparently, that was only the beginning of his public push.
During a new podcast appearance, Kanter Freedom said that his next target is the NBA, claiming that he plans to “expose their hypocrisy” over the league’s relationship with China and that he has recordings of a conversation with commissioner Adam Silver.
Kanter Freedom vs. the WNBA
Kanter Freedom and fellow former NBA player Royce White have said that they identify as women and plan to enter the 2027 WNBA Draft, a stunt aimed at getting the league to explicitly limit eligibility to biological females. The move has drawn plenty of attention, including from President Donald Trump.
Earlier this month, WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert responded to an inquiry from a group of Republican members of Congress, writing that “only women are eligible to play in the WNBA” and that “the individuals you cite in your letter are both men.”
To make matters worse for Kanter Freedom, he was removed from Game 3 of the WNBA Finals in Atlanta last week after refusing to sit in a private suite that the Dream had arranged for him.
‘That’s the hypocrisy’
Speaking on Sage Steele’s podcast, Kanter Freedom made it clear that he isn’t done going after professional basketball leagues, and his next topic is the NBA, not the WNBA.
“People think what I’m doing with WNBA is a lot. Wait till what I’m going to do with NBA,” Kanter Freedom said, in a clip shared by Steele.
When asked what he planned to do, Kanter Freedom replied, “I’m just going to expose their hypocrisy.”
Kanter Freedom then pointed back to the “Free Tibet” shoes that he wore during the Boston Celtics’ season opener against the New York Knicks in October 2021, a moment that reportedly led to Chinese streaming service Tencent pulling Celtics games, according to Yahoo Sports’ Ben Rohrbach.
“I wore Free Tibet shoes. 2 minutes before the game, 2 gentlemen from the NBA came to me and said, take your shoes off. I turned around, I’m like, ‘I’m not going to take them off. Even if I get fined, I’m not going to do it.’ They said, ‘Buddy, we’re not talking about getting fined, we’re talking about getting banned,'” Kanter Freedom said.
“I called Adam Silver. I have all the recordings. You cannot talk about China or blah, blah, right? He even admitted and said, ‘Listen, it’s a different system over there. At the end, we are a business,'” he added.
Kanter Freedom went on to claim that an NBA owner once told him that he would be “cut from the league” if he said a word about China.
“If they criticize America, if they talk about the things that are happening in this country, they’re okay with it. They’re for it. But when it comes to China, they’re like, ‘No, no, no, no, no. Yeah. You can’t say a word.’ That’s the hypocrisy,” Kanter Freedom said.
Kanter Freedom was traded to the Houston Rockets and waived in February 2022, just months after his Free Tibet protest, and he hasn’t played in the NBA since. Whether he actually releases any recordings remains to be seen, but clearly, he’s not going away anytime soon.
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