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.
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It 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.
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.
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I 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 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 them.”
It was a small moment.
But small moments have a way of shaping a life.
Years later, I came to the United States to play basketball. I remember hearing one of my teammates openly criticize the president of the United States. I was shocked. I thought he was crazy.
Where I came from, criticizing the person in power could carry severe consequences. Here, my teammate laughed and explained something that Americans grow up knowing: This is America. You are allowed to disagree with your government. You are allowed to criticize your leaders. You are allowed to speak.
That freedom fascinated me. But eventually, it would still wind up costing me a lot.
As my basketball career grew, so did my platform. And I began using it to speak about human rights abuses in Turkey and to criticize President Recep Tayyip ErdoÄŸan’s government. Of course I could have stayed quiet, and that would have been much easier and safer. It was a small moment, but I knew it could have an impact. So I spoke.
And it was then that I saw the power of one person speaking up. The Turkish government revoked my passport. Arrest warrants were issued for me. My father was imprisoned. My family suffered because of my decisions. I narrowly escaped attempts to detain me abroad. Eventually, the Turkish government placed a $500,000 bounty on my head.
Speaking up cost me and those I loved enormously. But once you understand what it means to be free, silence comes with a cost of its own.
Later, I began speaking out about the Chinese Communist Party and its treatment of Uyghurs, Tibetans, Hong Kongers, and others. I wore shoes onto NBA courts carrying messages the Chinese government did not want displayed.
Again, I knew there could be consequences.
Again, I spoke anyway.
Again, there was a cost.
That’s why, when I finally became an American citizen, I chose a new last name: Freedom.
I didn’t choose it because freedom is an abstract idea to me. I chose it because I know what life looks like when it disappears.
Freedom is the ability to ask a question powerful people would rather not answer. It is the right to challenge institutions. It is the right to say something unpopular without surrendering your dignity or your voice.
Freedom comes with costs too. This country has seen the cost at which freedom was obtained. And we still see the cost of keeping it. But freedom only survives when we accept that cost and continue to exercise it.
That lesson has stayed with me far beyond basketball, Turkey, or China. Because once you have decided that some principles are worth defending despite enormous consequences, you cannot suddenly decide that other difficult questions are better left alone because people might criticize you.
That is why I am speaking now about women’s sports.
I spent most of my life competing at the highest levels of basketball. I know what athletes sacrifice for a chance to compete. I know what it means to dedicate years of your life to becoming a fraction of a second faster, a little stronger, a little better.
And I believe women and girls deserve to know that the opportunities they are working toward will be protected.
At the heart of this debate is a biological reality: Men and women are different, and those differences matter in competitive sports.
Saying that has become controversial, but I don’t believe it should be.
Every person deserves dignity and respect. That principle matters deeply to me. I have spent years speaking for people around the world whose basic human dignity has been denied.
But respecting every human being does not require us to pretend that biological differences do not exist.
We should be capable of doing both.
We can treat people with compassion and still ask difficult questions. We can disagree without hatred. We can protect the dignity of every individual while protecting fair competition for female athletes.
And we should be able to have that conversation openly, because I have learned something over the years about controversial issues: The moment people become afraid to ask the question is often the moment when asking it matters most.
Female athletes should not have to worry that defending their own sports will cost them teammates, endorsements, playing time, or their reputations. Coaches shouldn’t have to whisper what they believe behind closed doors. Parents shouldn’t be afraid to ask whether the rules governing their daughters’ competitions are fair.
Whatever our disagreements, those conversations should be possible in a free country.
I know what it feels like when they aren’t. There is a reason I carry the word “Freedom” everywhere I go.
Freedom isn’t just something written into a constitution or celebrated once a year. It is something we practice. We practice it when the crowd is cheering. We practice it when people are criticizing us. And perhaps most importantly, we practice it when standing alone would be easier than speaking up.
Somewhere today, a little girl is standing in an empty gym working on her jump shot. She’s putting in one more practice. One more drill. One more shot.
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Nobody is watching. But those quiet hours could someday become something extraordinary. I know, because mine did.
She deserves the freedom to chase that dream. She deserves a fair opportunity to see how far her work can take her. And she deserves adults who are willing to have difficult conversations today about how we protect that opportunity tomorrow.
Big change rarely begins with a big moment. It begins when someone decides to speak. Then someone else does. And someone else.
Until one day, the thing that once required courage simply becomes common sense.
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