Getting Educated
“To whom much is given,” reads an ancient quotation of Jesus Christ, “much is required.”
Much has been given to LeBron James on the topic of human rights advocacy. In 2012, James and his Miami Heat teammates dressed themselves in hoodies before a February tip-off, far afield of the NBA’s game-time dress code, to protest the killing of a Black Florida teen by a vigilante town watchman. Four years later, LeBron, now re-employed by his Cleveland Cavaliers, crisscrossed the state of Ohio with Hillary Clinton in tow, asking the state’s voters to reject Donald Trump at the ballot box. Finally, alongside a mountain of political statements, contributions, and acts of activism, the King contributed millions of dollars to education in the region of his youth — Northeastern Ohio. James’ activism is so public, so pronounced, and so important that Jay Williams declared that the now-Laker forward’s willingness to speak out on social issues is the characteristic that moves him clear of Michael Jordan on the all-time hierarchy of great NBA players. (To be fair, Jay Williams has said that lots of things would move James clear of Michael Jordan, and it’s arguable that none of them have.)
Starting this fall, Enes Kanter Freedom of the Boston Celtics made it his business to dispute that claim: Since 2020, he explained, we’ve known that the Nike athletic wear corporation — with whom James has a lifetime contract worth $30 million a year — has been using actual, honest-to-God slave labor from a Muslim ethnic group called the Uyghurs to manufacture their shoes in Chinese factories. James, Freedom went on, refuses to comment on his business partners’ flagrant disregard for human rights in the region, not to mention LeBron’s criticism of Daryl Morey in 2019 when the latter tweeted his opposition to Communist China’s takeover of Hong Kong. (Morey managed the Houston Rockets at the time, and the Rockets had a huge fanbase in China due to their hiring of iconic center Yao Ming in 2000. When Xi Jinping’s government banned Rockets games from Chinese airwaves during the 2019–20 season, it was only a matter of time before Morey was fired; he was gone immediately after the end of the Rockets’ playoff run.)
Therefore, Kanter Freedom wore a pair of custom shoes when his Boston Celtics faced James’ Los Angeles Lakers early in the 2021–22 season, shoes that asked LeBron, sarcastically, if he’d educated himself about China’s misdeeds and called upon the King to acknowledge “Morals>Money.”
During a lull in the second quarter of that game, which took place in Boston, ESPN’s Doris Burke raised a question. Did Kanter Freedom, she mused aloud, go to LeBron, and ask him about “the China issue” before the shoes became an option? And why single out King James for criticism, when nearly 300 NBA players — well over half of the league’s talent pool — have deals with the same corporation that landed James in Kanter Freedom’s crosshairs? “I couldn’t help but wonder,” she finished, awkwardly beginning to slide a fist under her chin before she remembered she was wearing a headset. “I’m just saying.”
LeBron James’ uniqueness was an interesting line of questioning — not simply because James later accused Kanter Freedom of cynical attention-seeking, but because Kanter Freedom then proceeded to book appearances on everything from CNN’s dry newsroom shows to Tucker Carlson’s nightly alt-right panorama on Fox News, blasting James and the NBA alike for hypocrisy at every opportunity. They support Black Lives Matter, Kanter noted, and they support social justice at home. Why don’t those same values hold deserve a voice abroad?
Not that long ago, the public thought it was unremarkable that American athletes often eschewed politics. (“Republicans buy sneakers too,” spat Jordan, in apocrypha, when asked why he refused to publicly back Harvey Gantt, a Black man, in his crusade to replace the segregationist Jesse Helms in the US Senate.) It was an unnecessary burden, a distraction from the ethereal joys of athletic competition. For the vast ranks of semi-famous athletes, or not-at-all famous athletes, divisive political issues are still the vectors of leprosy, since a line of polemic is just as likely to alienate a bit player from half the country as it is to move the needle on their pet issue.
But things are different now, for these athletes in these times. Technology has brought the specifics of injustice in front of more people than ever before possible, meaning that masses of humanity can be horrified by atrocity in unprecedented ways that demand unprecedented responses. And they’ve responded, en masse, when it comes to issues of race, to the point that failure to join in a protest that ended a pro quarterback’s career barely five years ago is now a noteworthy act of contrarianism, much to Jonathan Isaac’s chagrin.
LeBron knows about the Uyghurs, just like he knew about Trayvon, and just like we know about George Floyd, and he talked about them. If he could talk about them, and the horrors they faced, it stands to reason: He has to talk about this. The floodgates are open. That’s Kanter Freedom’s paradigm, and he thinks LeBron a cynic for failing to follow his own convictions to their logical extent.
James, nicknamed Zhan Wang among the Chinese fans, looked at things through another lens entirely the night of that first meeting with Kanter Freedom’s Celtics. Why didn’t Enes come up to him before the game and voice his objections? “I saw him in the tunnel before the game,” James insisted. “He could have said whatever he had to say.” Why, James seemed to be asking, didn’t Kanter Freedom confront him when he had a shot — shoes and all? Was Enes Kanter Freedom a phony, a cynic, manipulating the public eye to train it on himself?
His appearances on cable news may very well tell a story of their own. Kanter, after all, has made a number of appearances on Fox News during this row, demurring on criticizing Carlson for saying that poor immigrants make “the country poorer, dirtier, and more divided.” Kanter himself is an immigrant, and he’s also nonwhite — the latter fact relevant only because Carlson waved off the rise of white supremacy as “not that big a problem” on another episode of his show. Lastly, Kanter is a Muslim, which calls into question his decision to appear on Fox News repeatedly, without a word as to its denizens’ well-documented thoughts on the faith of the prophet. (“Islam,” thundered guest Chadwick Moore on Carlson’s show in 2019, “is the most hateful, intolerant religion on earth.” Carlson issued no dissent; Xi may well have cracked a smile.)
Does this pattern of overlooking make Kanter Freedom a phony, a hypocrite to scale with his new mortal enemy? Or does it mean that’s he’s just one guy, woefully ill-equipped to balance the sins of the world on his tongue?
The Celtics and the Lakers actually play twice a year in the regular season, though the meetings are rarely this early. In their second meeting, on December 7, James physically approached the Celtics bench during a lull in the action. His head turned away from the camera, he asked Enes Kanter Freedom, multiple times, if the NBA’s second-most-active political commentator had anything to say to the face of its first. Another Celtic, Grant Williams, cut into the conversation before Kanter could open his mouth, basically telling the King to calm down and move on. James obliged, nodding his head with the enlightened contempt you’d only recognize if you broke decorum on the street.
Kanter wasn’t even looking at LeBron, or at the brief confrontation. He was staring, silently, into space.
It’s not clear whether the NBA will ever solve its justice dilemma. They’re a socially conscious league, after all, earning plaudits on the ways in which they managed the pandemic and navigated uprisings against police misconduct in yesteryear. Strange, then, for the same league to shake hands with a nation that oppresses billions, instead of the maximum of millions available stateside. But they, too, could insist that they’re only one organization, after all, no worse in their devil’s bargains than any other. Or, they could draw on the proverbs of Geoffrey Chaucer and Benjamin Franklin, flinging them in our faces when our objections come flying in: “People in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.”
Whether they’d be right, or just trying to sleep at night, is a judgement best issued from somewhere else.
