Los Angeles Lakers star LeBron James said he "won't give his energy" to the sneakers Boston Celtics forward Enes Kanter wore for their game on Friday night.
Kanter took to Twitter on Thursday to call out James for not standing up against Nike and its alleged use of forced labour when manufacturing its shoes in China.
Money over Morals for the “King”
Sad & disgusting how these athletes pretend they care about social justice
They really do “shut up & dribble” when Big Boss says so
Did you educate yourself about the slave labor that made your shoes or is that not part of your research? pic.twitter.com/YUA8rGYeoZ
— Enes Kanter (@EnesKanter) November 18, 2021
"I don't really give too many people my energy. And he's definitely not someone I will give my energy to. Trying to use my name to create an opportunity for himself," James told reporters after the game. "Definitely won't comment too much on that, if any, and that will be where I lay at that.
"He's always kind of had a word or two to say in my direction, and as men, really, if you had an issue with somebody you'd really come up to them. And he had his opportunity tonight. I saw him in the hallway and he walked right by me."
Kanter has been critical of China on social media saying that the country's leader, Xi Jinping, was a “brutal dictator" because of his government's repressive policies in Tibet. It led to Celtics games being pulled from being streamed on Chinese internet altogether.
A native of Turkey, Kanter has been an outspoken critic of the country's president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, so much so that Turkish prosecutors have sought his arrest and his Turkish passport was revoked.
In 2019, then-Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey tweeted his support for Hong Kong pro-democracy protesters, sparking what would amount to a blackout on Tencent and state television provider CCTV for the league in the world's most populous nation.
Games were eventually returned to Tencent's lineup but not CCTV, with the exception of two games during the 2020 NBA Finals. Tencent has not resumed streaming games for the Philadelphia 76ers, Morey's new team, however.
The NBA has estimated that the strained relationship with the Chinese and lost broadcast rights meant the league missed out on about $400 million in revenue during the 2019-20 season alone.
-- Information from the Associated Press and Reuters were used in this story.
