Enes Kanter Wore A Spongebob Shirt To Honor Late Creator Stephen Hillenburg


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It seems equally hard to believe that SpongeBob Squarepants has been on the air for more than 19 years, and equally hard to imagine that its creator has died. But Stephen Hillenburg, who created SpongeBob and put it on the air with Nickelodeon in 1999, died on Tuesday after a battle with ALS.

Hillenburg’s death at age 57 was a surprise to now-generations of kids who grew up laughing along with an animated sponge who lived in a pineapple. It was an absurd concept that contained plenty of depth and humanity, and also a lot of weird humor. Those who mourned Hillenburg’s loss on Tuesday spread far beyond the children the show was mostly intended for.

Hillenburg left as showrunner after three seasons and the SpongeBob movie was completed, but he was synonymous with the show and served as an advisor over the years. New York Knicks forward Enes Kanter knew that, paying tribute to Hillenburg by wearing a SpongeBob shirt before the Knicks’ game in Detroit against the Pistons.

The sad emojis actually work pretty well here, especially given how happy SpongeBob looks on the garment. It’s a character that’s given such joy over the years, but a lot of cartoon fans could only be sad seeing it today.

Kanter’s public comments about things in the NBA have become noteworthy because, well, they’ve gotten him death threats and arrest warrants from his home country. But the juxtaposition of his rhetoric about a dictatorship in Turkey and the creator of a cartoon shows more about Kanter and the variety of his interests as a basketball player than anything, and perhaps how transcendent Hillenburg’s character has been in the decades since it debuted as a children’s cartoon.

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