Of late, Kanter has been on something of a crusade. Unwilling to remain silent like his bosses in pursuit of a grubby market share, Kanter has been blunt about the sins of Chinese leader Xi Jinping, whom he describes as a “brutal dictator,” and of the CCP, which, among other things, oppresses Tibet, relies upon slave-labor, and has imprisoned up to 2 million Uyghurs in concentration camps. Kanter argues that Americans should not ignore this. “Don’t forget,” he said this past week of consumer goods produced with coerced labor, “every time you put those shoes on your feet, or you put that T-shirt on your back, there are so many tears and so much oppression and so much blood behind it all.” In particular, he points to “Uyghur forced labor,” which he describes as “modern day slavery” that is “happening right now in China.”

On the hypocrisy of the American sports industry, Kanter is scorching. “Nike,” he pointed out recently, “remains vocal about injustice here in America, but when it comes to China, Nike remains silent.” Indeed it does. For that matter, so does the NBA’s commissioner, Adam Silver, who, when pressed, tends to utter euphemisms about China questions being “complicated” and to babble nervously about the need for “soft power” and “cultural exchange.” The same is true of Steve Kerr, the coach of the Golden State Warriors, who came under deserved fire last year for his unwillingness to remark upon reports that participants in the NBA’s Chinese training academies were physically beaten and deprived of education — a reticence that, when compared to his outspokenness decrying gun violence and racial injustice in the United States, struck many as peculiar.