Satou Sabally is the best German basketball player. The Berlin native has been playing in the WNBA for the Dallas Wings since 2020, where she was most recently elected to the All-Star team. She also plays in China for the Jinan-Shandong club and appeared for the German national team in November for the first time since 2019 in the friendly against Italy.
TIME ONLINE: Ms. Sabally, you once said that you wanted to be seen as an activist. How much are you an athlete and how much are you an activist? Can it even be separated?
Satou Sabally: You can separate that. I am an athlete and I am also an activist. Sport is my mouthpiece. I have the opportunity to work for good. But I’m not a politician. I cannot bring our divided society together. It is the task of politics to create cohesion and not to further polarize. To create a space in which people can express themselves without being directly confronted with hatred. A survey has just shown that racism against blacks has increased significantly in Germany. It was clear to me that racism was there, but the fact that we seemed to come first in Europe made me sad.
