Enes Kanter accuses ‘spineless’ Nets owner Joe Tsai of being a Chinese government ‘puppet’

Bryan Ke
·2 min read
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Outspoken NBA player Enes Kanter continued his public fight against the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the alleged use of forced Uyghur labor by calling out Brooklyn Nets owner Joe Tsai.

“Spineless”: Kanter called out the Taiwanese-born Canadian citizen before the Nets and Celtics game on Wednesday, in which Kanter’s team lost 123-104. The Turkish American basketball player called the Nets owner “spineless" in his tweet.



  • “The owner of @brooklynNets @joetsai1999 is a coward & puppet of the Chinese gov’t,” he wrote. “Being anti-CCP does NOT mean being anti-Asian. It’s possible to #StopAsianHate & to stand up against the CCP. Human rights are not ‘western’ values, they are UNIVERSAL values.”

  • Neither Tsai, Alibaba's executive vice chairman nor the Nets have responded to Kanter’s tweet against the only Chinese basketball team owner in the NBA. Tsai is the second Asian person to own a team in the league, with Indian American businessman Vivek Ranadivé of the Sacramento Kings being the first.


Other details: Tsai’s call-out comes around a week after Kanter took shots at Los Angeles Lakers star LeBron James and retired legendary NBA star Michael Jordan. The Celtics player also called for a boycott of the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing in early November.

  • Kanter has been very active on social media in the past few months. He has openly criticized the CCP and issues regarding Tibet and Taiwan. He has also criticized China’s treatment of the most persecuted ethnic minority in China, the Uyghurs.

  • President Tsai Ing-wen recently thanked Kanter for standing with Taiwan on the issue of its freedom.


Featured Image via @EnesKanter (left), RISE (CC BY 2.0) (right)

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