The Enes Kanter Freedom-Colin Kaepernick similarities — and differences

Freedom has become something of a cause celebre on the right, with his comments about China earning him invitations from Republicans and groups like the Conservative Political Action Conference — and with all of it overlapping with what could be the end of his career, at just 29 years old.

But just how similar are the two situations? It’s worth looking at the particulars — both the circumstances surrounding their exits and how they performed in the lead up to them.

The exits of both Kaepernick and Freedom (he recently changed his last name from Kanter after becoming a U.S. citizen) came relatively shortly after they began speaking out on hot-button issues for their respective leagues.

Freedom has been outspoken on human rights before, particularly in his home country of Turkey. But at the beginning of the current season, he became more focused on China, whose market has become an increasingly important one for the NBA — a situation that had already touched off controversy in recent years.

On the NBA’s trade deadline day last week, Freedom was dealt from the Boston Celtics to the Houston Rockets and promptly cut by Houston. (The Rockets happen to be a big team in China, given that former NBA star Yao Ming played for them. The team also provided the scene for the 2019 controversy, when the Rockets’ general manager briefly tweeted in support of Hong Kong’s independence.)

The salary implications of both are worth noting.

Kaepernick was a highly paid NFL quarterback, earning $14.5 million per year, but he had begun the 2016 season as a backup. The 49ers made clear they didn’t want to pay him that much, and the two sides reached an agreement for Kaepernick to become a free agent rather than get cut.

Freedom was once paid handsomely as well — even more than Kaepernick at his peak, in fact. But in his late 20s, he had seen a decline in both stats and playing time, and he signed with the Celtics this past offseason for the veteran’s minimum of $2.7 million. Despite the relatively small salary Freedom was getting, Houston opted not to keep him on.

One thing you’ll notice is that both of these players were not in the primes of their careers. But there are gradations to that.

Kaepernick had led the 49ers to the Super Bowl as recently as the 2012 season and also the conference championship game the following year. Comparing him to other quarterbacks is somewhat difficult, in that he never put up huge passing stats but was more of a running threat than most. But his numbers had clearly been on the decline. His passer rating declined every year between his Super Bowl season (98.3) and the year before he was named a backup (78.5), when it was near the bottom of the league. He stats improved when he regained the starting job in 2016, but he quarterbacked the team to just a 1-10 record in his 11 starts.

Freedom is also somewhat difficult to pin down statistically, in that he has put up good numbers — at least offensively, and at least when he plays. He earned his big contract in 2015, for four years and $70 million, after scoring 18.7 points per game and pulling down 11 rebounds per game in a partial season with the Oklahoma City Thunder, and averaging 15.5 points for the full season. He has struggled to match those numbers since then, but even as he has generally been a backup in recent years, Freedom has often put up good offensive numbers when he’s been on the court. Last season, he was eighth in the league in rebounds per 48 minutes and 20th in player efficiency rating.

In no season has his playing time been as cut, though, as it was this season. Following his China criticisms, he played in just two of the team’s first 13 games, leading him to tweet, “Keep limiting me on the court, I will expose you off the court.” He has played more since then, but has still averaged just 11.7 minutes per game for the Celtics in the games he has played, scoring 4.6 points and pulling in 3.7 rebounds. After Freedom’s November tweet, Celtics coach Ime Udoka dismissed the idea that it was because of Freedom’s activism and spotlighted what others had before: defense — and particularly the slow-footed Freedom’s inability to switch quickly in a particular brand of defense that requires a lot of it.

Freedom’s playing time this year isn’t hugely different from a separate stint he had with the Celtics two seasons ago, when he averaged 17 minutes per game — what was then his lowest number since his second year in the league.

Another key similarity between the two is in how they leaned into the idea that they might be blackballed. When Kaepernick began his protests during the anthem in the 2016 preseason, he said, “If they take football away, my endorsements from me, I know that I stood up for what is right.” Washington Post columnist Josh Rogin wrote a potentially prescient piece in December that said Freedom “could lose his career as a consequence — perhaps as soon as next week, when the Celtics will be able to trade or waive him.” In the piece, Freedom was quoted as saying, “I don’t know how long I’m going to be in the league, but I’m going to expose these horrible people as much as I can.”

That quote spotlights another key difference: Freedom has made clear he’s talking about the same people who run and fund the NBA — rather than merely talking about something that could turn off fans who happen to disagree with his protest. He has clashed with LeBron James, Nike and plenty of others. It also remains to be seen whether he’ll catch on with another team, given it has only been a few days, but we probably shouldn’t hold our collective breath.