Beginning in 2021, HRF reached out privately to the NBA Commissioner Adam Silver to express concerns about the league’s partnership with Rwanda’s dictator Paul Kagame for the launch of the NBA’s Basketball Africa League. The NBA repeatedly dismissed concerns raised by HRF about Kagame’s regime’s appalling record of gross human rights violations, war crimes and crimes against humanity and its ongoing regional warmongering. HRF went to the press and in July 2024, ESPN published an extensive investigation and a documentary. This marked the first time that a major Western outlet had called Kagame a “dictator” in a headline. The ESPN report subsequently spurred two US senators to press the NBA for answers about its relationship with the Rwandan dictatorship. HRF’s campaign gave mainstream visibility to the NBA playing ball with a dictator.