“If you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything,” so wrote retired NBA player Dwyane Wade on Twitter in June 2020.
The tweet, coming out amid mass protests over the death of George Floyd, pictured the basketball player holding a pair of black shoes with the slogan painted over in capital letters: “enough is enough.”
The account that posted the message was Wade’s sneaker brand “Way of Wade,” which is owned by Li-Ning, a Chinese sports brand that has fallen under scrutiny for endorsing Beijing’s handling of Muslim minorities in Xinjiang, where the regime has waged a repressive campaign against Uyghurs that the United States has described as a genocide.
Aside from Wade, at least 17 players with the NBA currently hold endorsement deals with one of four major Chinese sports apparel companies with murky ties to forced labor in the region, according to ESPN.
When the United States and allies collectively imposed sanctions over Xinjiang last March, Li-Ning and the other sports apparel firms—Anta, Peak, and 361 Degrees—fiercely pushed back, reiterating their support for Xinjiang cotton, a commodity that researchers say is likely tainted with Uyhgur forced labor. The region supplies about 20 percent of the world’s cotton.
Concerns about Beijing’s treatment of Uyghurs prompted a U.S. decision to stage a diplomatic boycott of the Beijing Winter Olympics. In December, the United States also became the first country to pass a law banning all imports from the region over forced labor risks.
NBA Player Dwyane Wade attends a promotion event of Chinese sports brand Li Ning in Beijing, China, on July 3, 2013. (Feng Li/Getty Images)
For the Chinese brands, the show of loyalty nonetheless produced tangible results. Li-Ning’s shares surged after some nationalist fans found that the brand had for some time been explicitly highlighting the Xinjiang cotton origin on its product labels.
Wade signed a 10-year contract to represent Li-Ning in 2012 that was to bring him $10 million a year, producing a sub-brand “Way of Wade.” In 2018, he converted the agreement to a lifetime deal before his last NBA season. The player has not made public statements on China’s human rights concerns.
Since the mid-2000s, more than 50 NBA players have become endorsers for Chinese brands to cash in on the sport’s huge popularity in China, according to ESPN. The latest to join them was Washington Wizards main guard Spencer Dinwiddie, who officially signed a multi-year shoe deal to be the ambassador for 361 Degrees last month.
Spencer Dinwiddie #26 of the Washington Wizards dribbles and gestures during the third quarter against the Philadelphia 76ers at Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia, Penn., on Feb. 02, 2022. (Tim Nwachukwu/Getty Images)
‘Double Standards’
The NBA and its players have faced criticism of employing double standards by championing social justice causes domestically, while remaining silent on issues relating to China.
“Far too many members of America’s corporate and social elite are willing to repeat woke talking points while making money off of others’ enslavement. This is a disgusting double standard,” Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), who led the now-passed Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, told The Epoch Times in an email.
He hopes the law “will help put an end to this hypocrisy and force those doing business in our nation to remove any trace of Uyghur slave labor from their supply chains,” the senator added.
Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.), who had called on the 2022 Winter Olympics to be moved out of Beijing, urged athletes to “stop any endorsement with companies who support or remain silent to the egregious human rights abuses by the Chinese Communist Party towards ethnic and religious groups such as the Uyghurs.”
“Many look to these athletes as role models—it is time for them to stand up for what is right,” he told The Epoch Times. “They have the power and platform to speak out—no endorsement or amount of money is worth keeping silent.”
A Chinese couple play with a ball next to a display set up in the NBA flagship retail store in Beijing, China, on Oct. 9, 2019. (Kevin Frayer/Getty Images)
Yet silence is the path chosen by most in the NBA, according to Enes Kanter Freedom, the only player in the league who has taken a strong stance against the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), lambasting the regime on its abuses in Tibet, Xinjiang, and its forced organ harvesting of prisoners of conscience. Freedom said that his colleagues were “too scared to say anything” on China due to their commercial interests there.
“They know what’s going on, they know all the abuses done by CCP, but just because … they had these big endorsement deals or they have a lot of jersey sales or shoe sales in China, they are telling me they have to remain silent but they are supportive of me and praying for me,” he told a think tank forum in late January.
In 2019, several NBA stars reproached then-Houston Rockets’ general manager after he posted a tweet in support of Hong Kong pro-democracy protesters. While the tweet was soon deleted, it drew the wrath of Beijing, with all Chinese sponsors walking out of partnership deals with the league.
The NBA went into damage control and issued a swift apology over the “regrettable” tweet. While its English statement said “the values of the league support individuals’ educating themselves and sharing their views on matters important to them,” it also gave a more placating version on Chinese social media, saying the league was “extremely disappointed” for the tweet, which had “seriously hurt the feelings of Chinese sports fans.”
Agents for Wade and Dinwiddie and the league did not get back to The Epoch Times’ request for comment about the shoe endorsement.
‘Epidemic of Sellouts’
In January, Golden State Warriors co-owner also ignited an outcry for saying “nobody cares about what’s happening to the Uyghurs.”
While he cared about climate change and Black Lives Matter, the issue about Uyghurs—whom he described as “a segment of a class of people in another country”—is “below my line,” he said in a podcast. The unexpected outpouring of anger, though, forced him to recant the stance hours later.
“I think there’s an epidemic of sellouts,” former NBA player Royce White told The Epoch Times. “The corporatism and materialism of the West had rubbed off on its athletes and many of them see economic opportunity as independent from social responsibility. It’s wrong, it’s corrupt and it’s dangerous.”
(L-R) Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) speaks with former NBA player Enes Kanter Freedom at the U.S. Capitol, in Washington, on Feb. 17, 2022. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
Freedom is now without a team after being let go by the Houston Rockets last week following a trade with the Boston Celtics. He believes that his activism against the CCP may have cost his career.
“To be honest it is a lonely road, I’m talking about in a sports world,” he said on Feb. 17 in an awards ceremony in Capitol Hill recognizing his advocacy.
“You can talk about all the social justice, all the injustices happening all around the world. But when it comes to China, you cannot speak up. If you do, then you’d have to face the consequences,” he said. He also revealed that he had a two-week media ban following the Hong Kong tweet storm in 2019.
Freedom nonetheless added that he has “no regrets.”
After learning about the abuses, “if i didn’t speak up about all these issues that are happening over there, I wouldn’t be able to go to sleep, you know?”
