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Explaining Enes Kanter’s airport detention and why it’s so serious

Oklahoma City Thunder center Enes Kanter says he's being detained at an airport in Romania because his Turkish passport has been revoked.

"I'm being held at Romanian airport by Police," the Thunder big man tweeted along with a video on Saturday (which happened to be his birthday).

If that's true — and there's next to no reason to believe it is not — Kanter is in a gravely serious situation. It's a situation from which the Thunder, the NBA, and the U.S. State Department might not be able to extricate him.

We're working off of Kanter's word, but it's clear that his predicament is not a clerical error.