For most of my life, basketball has been at the center of everything I do.I played 11 seasons in the NBA.I competed against some of the greatest athletes in the world.
I know what it takes to reach the highest level of the game—the years of training, the sacrifices, the injuries.But I didn’t become the player I was in front of thousands of people under the bright lights of an NBA arena.I became that player in the hours no one saw.FORMER NBA FIRST ROUND PICK ENES KANTER FREEDOM DECLARES FOR 2027 WNBA DRAFTIt happened in empty gyms, one practice at a time.One more shot.
One more drill.One more day of showing up and doing the work.
The moments that eventually looked big to everyone else were built on thousands of small ones that hardly anyone noticed.I’ve come to believe courage works the same way.We tend to notice courage in the big moments—the speech, the protest, the public stand, the moment someone refuses to back down.But courage is usually built long before anyone is watching.Turkish-American former basketball player and human rights activist Enes Kanter Freedom is seen prior to a game between the Indiana Fever and the Chicago Sky at Wintrust Arena in Chicago, Ill., on Aug.
23, 2026.(IMAGN IMAGES via Reuters Connect)It is built every time you decide that fear will not make your decisions for you.I learned that lesson long before I understood how important it would become in my life.ERDOGAN'S TURKEY CRACKS DOWN ON LGBT COMMUNITY IN NAME OF PRESERVING FAMILY VALUESI grew up in Turkey.
When I was a boy, some kids in my neighborhood once handed me an American flag and a lighter and told me to burn it.I spent most of my life competing at the highest levels of basketball.I know what athletes sacrifice for a chance to compete.I didn't understand why I was supposed to hate a country I had never seen or people I had never met.
So I went home and asked my mother what I should do.She gave me advice I have never forgotten: "Don't hate anyone before you meet the...