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The Guardian - US
The Guardian - US
Sport
Bryan Armen Graham

I once saw Enes Kanter speak truth to power. Now he only punches down

Enes Kanter Recep Tayyip Erdoğan WNBA NBA Transgender Donald Trump Natasha Cloud United States AFPI Chicago Sky
Ex-NBA player Enes Kanter Freedom and Natasha Cloud of the Chicago Sky yell at one another during the second half of Sunday’s game between the Indiana Fever and Chicago Sky.
Ex-NBA player Enes Kanter Freedom and Natasha Cloud of the Chicago Sky yell at one another during the second half of Sunday’s game between the Indiana Fever and Chicago Sky. Photograph: Michael Reaves/Getty Images

Nine years ago, I watched Enes Kanter ask America to take him in. It was May 2017, inside the National Basketball Players Association’s offices in midtown Manhattan. Kanter had just returned from a frightening detention at Bucharest airport, where Romanian border police told him Turkey had canceled his passport. He’d just turned 25, an NBA center with a green card and no country he could safely call home.

“I’m open for adoption,” he joked from the head of a table in a nondescript conference room, addressing a dozen reporters hastily summoned by his manager. Then he turned serious: “My next move is to just become an American citizen.”

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