I once saw Enes Kanter speak truth to power. Now he only punches down | Bryan Armen Graham

Nearly a decade after I watched him defy Erdoan at great personal cost, the ex-NBA player is using his hard-won freedom to turn transgender people into a punchline

Nine years ago, I watched Enes Kanter ask America to take him in. It was May 2017, inside the National Basketball Players Association's offices in midtown Manhattan. Kanter had just returned from a frightening detention at Bucharest airport, where Romanian border police told him Turkey had canceled his passport. He'd just turned 25, an NBA center with a green card and no country he could safely call home.

I'm open for adoption," he joked from the head of a table in a nondescript conference room, addressing a dozen reporters hastily summoned by his manager. Then he turned serious: My next move is to just become an American citizen."