FILE – Golden State Warriors guard Steph Curry in the second half of Game 3 of an NBA basketball first-round Western Conference playoff series Thursday, April 21, 2022, in Denver. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski, File) June’s NBA Finals should remind us of excellence, discipline and the way sports can lift the human spirit. Instead, Stephen Curry’s partnership with apparel company Li-Ning points in the other direction. It binds one of America’s most admired athletes to a Chinese company already under serious scrutiny for forced labor. Nobody can pretend the moral cost of doing business with Communist China is a mystery anymore.
What makes this so disappointing is that Curry is not simply a gifted player: He is a global figure whose public standing rests on more than championships. It rests on judgment, character and the sense that he takes serious things seriously. When a man like that signs a reported 10-year, $400 million deal with Li-Ning, he is not just changing brands. He is lending his good name to a company shadowed by one of the great human rights scandals of our time.
Sports at their best can do something rare. They can take fame, which is often fleeting and shallow, and turn it toward service. They can show that athletic greatness and moral witness do not have to live in separate worlds. That is why decisions like this matter. The larger the platform, the larger the responsibility.
Curry’s decision is so troubling because it places the honor attached to athletic excellence beside a system of coercion. The U.S. Department of Labor states that since 2016 the Chinese Communist Party has subjected Uyghurs and other mostly Muslim minorities in Xinjiang “to genocide, state-imposed forced labor, and crimes against humanity.” It describes labor transfers, surveillance, indoctrination and coercive factory work as part of a broad machinery of control.
These are not careless accusations. They are specific charges documented by the U.S. government and corroborated by international investigators.
That is also why Congress acted. The Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act established a rebuttable presumption that goods produced wholly or in part in Xinjiang, or by listed entities, are made with forced labor and barred from importation into the U.S. unless proven otherwise. We passed that law for a reason. Americans should not be compelled, by corporate indifference or market convenience, to underwrite these abuses abroad.
In Curry’s case, the warning lights were already flashing. Li-Ning merchandise was banned in the U.S. in 2022, and Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.) now plans to ask the Department of Homeland Security to examine Li-Ning imports after this deal. A company under that kind of cloud is not a neutral commercial partner — it is a test of whether wealth and fame still answer to any higher standard.
Too often in recent years, our cultural elites have shown a selective conscience. They are eloquent about justice when the target is familiar and the risk is low. They become cautious when the offender is the Chinese Communist Party and the market is large.
That is not courage. It is selling out and hiring a public relations firm to make it look noble.
The sports world has seen a better example. When the Women’s Tennis Association pulled events out of China over human rights concerns, it showed what institutional seriousness looks like. We have both called on the NBA and other leagues to show that same kind of resolve and warned that too many athletes, leagues and sponsors speak loudly about justice at home but fall silent when confronted with Beijing’s abuses.
The point is the same in every case: If sports institutions want to speak in the language of conscience, they must be willing to bear the cost when conscience demands it.
Every major athlete understands endorsement. Commerce is built on trust. When a star hands that trust to a company tied to Chinese forced labor, that trust is compromised. You cannot put your name on that kind of deal and pretend it does not say anything about what you are willing to tolerate.
The NBA deserves better than this backdrop. So do its fans. So do the people whose suffering is too often treated as incidental to the next global business deal. Basketball can still be a stage for greatness, but greatness demands a conscience if it is to last.
Ambassador Sam Brownback is former U.S. ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom and author of “China’s War on Faith.” Enes Kanter Freedom is a former NBA player, human rights activist, and New York Times bestselling author, who last played for the Boston Celtics.
Add as preferred source on Google Tags Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Communist China congress Department of Labor endorsements forced labor June's NBA Finals Li-Ning NBA NBA Finals professional athletes Rep. Chris Smith Stephen Curry Stephen Curry U.S. Department of Labor united states Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act uyghur muslims Uyghurs Xinjiang Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous RegionCopyright 2026 Nexstar Media Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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