Enes Kanter is still a free agent, patiently waiting by the phone to hear from any of the league’s 30 teams. He last played in the NBA during the 2021–22 season with the Boston Celtics. His final game came on February 2, 2022, before he was traded to the Houston Rockets, who promptly waived him. Why? No one knows for sure, but Kanter believes it was because of his outspoken comments about the league and its relationship with China. For Enes, however, social activism is more important than millions of dollars, and he continues to speak out against any party he feels is acting irresponsibly toward humanity.

While speaking on the Sean Mike Kelly podcast, Enes Kanter revisited a 2021 moment that cost him $40 million and his career. “I wore Michael Jordan shoes, Concord, I mean this one of the famous ones, and we played against Charlotte and who owns Charlotte? Michael Jordan. So I put on his shoes ‘Made with Slave Labour,’” he recalled.

If your memory serves you right, that was also when he took to Instagram, directly calling out Nike co-founder Phil Knight to “visit these slave labor camps” in China, tagging none other than Michael Jordan and LeBron James in the post.

He remembered getting a call from his agent soon after the controversy, warning him about what could follow. “My agent called me and said, ‘Listen man, I work for you, not the NBA. But I’ll be honest — if you say another word, you’ll never dribble a basketball on this court again. You’re 30, you’ve got another five or six years left, which means you’re risking $30–40 million. If you’re ready for that, keep going. If not, stay quiet.’”

Kanter said he simply replied “okay,” hung up the phone, and never spoke to him again.

During that time, Kanter made headlines for wearing customized sneakers that read “Modern Day Slavery”, “No More Excuses,” and “Hypocrite Nike.” His message was clear: he was standing up for the Uyghur community in China.

As CNN reported back in 2021, the US State Department has suggested that since 2017, nearly 2 million Uyghurs and other minority groups have been held in detention camps across China’s Xinjiang region. That was the cue for Kanter. 

He flooded social media with posts using hashtags like #HypocriteNike and #EndUyghurForcedLabor, accusing Nike of turning a blind eye to issues in China while being vocal about injustices in America. Despite the backlash, Kanter never backed down. 

However, earlier that year, Nike had already stated that it had cut all ties with factories in China’s Xinjiang region, an area linked to reports of forced labor involving the Uyghur community.

“Nike is committed to ethical and responsible manufacturing and we uphold international labor standards,” the company said, adding that it does not source materials from the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) and has confirmed with its suppliers that no yarn or textiles from the region are being used.

But in 2020, reports published by the U.S. Congress, The Washington Post, and Australia’s Strategic Policy Institute suggested that Uyghur labor was being used at Qingdao Taekwang Shoes Co., a major Nike supplier said to produce around 8 million pairs of sneakers a year.

After those reports came out, Nike released another statement saying that once the issue surfaced in 2019, Taekwang stopped hiring workers from Xinjiang and that an independent audit confirmed no Uyghur laborers were currently employed at the facility or anywhere else in its supply chain in China.

For context, things got rocky back in 2019 between the NBA and China after former Houston Rockets GM Daryl Morey tweeted his support for the pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong.

The post sparked backlash from the Chinese government, which responded by pulling NBA games off air across the country, creating one of the league’s biggest international controversies.

Enter Enes Kanter. He believes his comments about China cost him his career. He’s been vocal about social activism for years and had spoken on several issues before, but one mention of China, he feels, landed him in the league’s bad books. That, according to him, is why he’s still a free agent today. But that doesn’t bother him. 

As he said, “It’s important, like, while we were comfortably playing basketball in America, making hundreds of millions of dollars, but on the other side of the world, man, people are losing their loved ones, losing their lives, and losing their homes, so we gotta do whatever we can to just be the voice of all those innocent people out there who don’t have a voice.”

Kanter vs. Jordan: Public activism or quiet impact?

Enes Kanter has once again taken aim at Michael Jordan, but this time the focus isn’t on the court—it’s off it. Comparing the two NBA legends in terms of their impact beyond basketball, Kanter didn’t hold back: “You know, I criticize LeBron a lot, but at least he talks about some of the problems that are happening in America, and he actually tried to do something, things that are bigger than basketball. He opened up a school or whatever. Jordan. Nothing. He doesn’t care about anything. The only thing he cares about is just making money and selling shoes. That’s it.”

And that’s not all. Earlier, Kanter also criticized Jordan for his lack of commitment with the community he represents, saying, “Not many people are talking about Michael Jordan. Michael Jordan hasn’t done anything, nothing, for the Black community in America besides just, you know, giving them money.”

But is that the whole story? Not really. Michael Jordan and the Jordan Brand have actually done a lot, even if it wasn’t always in the spotlight. Back in 2020, they pledged $100 million over ten years to organizations focused on racial equality, social justice, and education. This donation was the largest corporate response to George Floyd’s death.

Just last year, he and the Jordan Brand announced over $8 million in grants to 37 organizations through their Black Community Commitment. These funds go to programs supporting underprivileged communities and education access, meaning that while he may not make headlines for activism, his financial support is tangible and ongoing.