While most basketball fans understand league legend Lebron James has a lot of power, one former NBA star recently went as far as calling him a dictator inside the most popular basketball league in the world.
Lebron James will go down as one of the greatest players ever to compete in the NBA. His career is not yet done but he already owns several all-time records including the most points ever scored. The four-time champion also owns four MVP awards and has been an All-Star every single year of his career except his rookie campaign.
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With such uncanny success also comes a lot of leverage and influence on the franchises he’s played for. James’ power during stints in Cleveland, Miami, and now Los Angeles has been fodder for NBA stories for years. And while the results his teams has had is hard to question, many around the sport believe his influence has hurt the teams he was on more than it helped.
One player you can put in that category is 11-year NBA veteran Enes Kanter Freedom, formerly Enes Kanter. During a recent conversation with Outkick the former Boston Celtics and Utah Jazz player took some major shots at the league legend and claimed he knows a dictator when he sees one.
“No other player wants to go play with LeBron,” Freedom said. “You had so many other free agents . . . No one wanted to go play with him, because they know that it’s all about LeBron. They’re gonna get zero clout . . . When the Lakers’ season fails, LeBron tries to find a player to blame, and he blames the whole season on Russell Westbrook [in 2022-23], so he is not a good teammate.
“Obviously, he runs the media, and he tries to control this narrative, but when you actually know and have a conversation inside of the NBA and its players, nobody wants to play with him . . . When I see a dictator, I know it – LeBron is literally like the dictator of the NBA. He controls the media, he controls his narrative, if you go against his agenda, you get traded, everybody knows it.”
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Freedom has not played in the league since the 2021-22 season after he took a public stance about the league’s expansion into China despite various human rights allegations against the country’s government. His family also moved from Turkey to Switzerland as a child do to oppressive regimes in his family’s homeland.
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