Enes Kanter reached an agreement to sign with the Portland Trail Blazers Wednesday, filling the Blazers’ final roster spot and solidifying the team’s lineup for the rest of the regular season and the playoffs. President of Basketball Operations Neil Olshey has already stated that Kanter was signed to become the backup center to Jusuf Nurkic and will bring averages of 14 points and 10.5 rebounds a game to Rip City. The Blazers hope his presence will make Portland a “deeper” and “better” team heading into the postseason.

While Kanter is certainly well-known for his on-court talents of scoring inside and wrestling down rebounds as a veteran big man, he also has quite a persona off the court. Here’s a look at what makes Enes Kanter an interesting addition to both the Trail Blazers’ lineup and the city of Portland:

1. Kanter is simply a fun guy, a great quote and an easy player to like when he’s on your team. He is active on social media and often happy to interact with fans both on his Twitter and Instagram accounts. But he can be a charming figure with the media as well. Take for example his infamous Knicks media day press conference in which he told reporters in attendance that his “nipples get hard when he thinks about making the playoffs" with the Knicks, which immediately drew laughs and made the rounds in news headlines across the country.

2. With the addition of Kanter, a devout Muslim, the Trail Blazers now have three Muslim players on the roster in Kanter, Jusuf Nurkic and Al-Farouq Aminu. During Ramadan, Kanter doesn’t stop his training despite the fact that he has to fast up to 17 hours a day for an entire month. During his time with the Knicks, team officials made an extra effort to help Kanter feel at home, creating a private room for him to pray in and also making sure that halal food was always available to him so that he could regularly eat alongside his teammates.

“I have to pray five times a day, so the Knicks gave me a special room at the practice facility and at Madison Square Garden,” Kanter said. “We have to eat halal food, so they ordered me special food. It means a lot. This is not a Muslim country. But when you see a team do a respectful thing like that, it shows me how respectful people are in America.”

3. As a player, Kanter is as passionate as they come in how he plays the game. Whether it’s defending his teammates, or mixing it up with other team’s stars, he simply doesn’t back down. He is well-known for getting under the skin of opponents and put that on display last season when he got in the face of LeBron James:

Before that, back when Kanter was with the Thunder, he gave Kevin Durant an earful about his decision to leave Oklahoma City and move to Golden State during a game. Kanter had some words for Durant from the bench that clearly unnerved the All-Star forward as the two jawed at each other for quite some time:

And just a couple of weeks ago, before the Knicks decided to part ways with Kanter, the big man was held out of the lineup for four games despite being healthy and able to contribute as New York wanted to put an emphasis on playing and developing their younger players. But Kanter had endeared himself to a large part of the Knicks fanbase. In his first game back in the lineup with fans chanting his name, Kanter checked into the game to a loud applause and immediately kissed the Knicks logo at midcourt as a sign of his love for the city and his gratitude for the support he received from the fans.

4. This isn’t the first time that Kanter has “signed” with Portland. Back in the summer of 2015, Neil Olshey extended a 4-year, $70 million offer sheet to Kanter who was then a member of the Oklahoma City Thunder. He signed it. But as a restricted free agent, the Thunder had the right to match that offer sheet in order to retain Kanter and they did just that. So with this short-term signing, it looks like Neil Olshey finally got the player he was after.

5. Kanter is from Turkey and has made international headlines over the past couple years for being a prominent and outspoken critic of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. For that, he has paid a steep price. As a follower of a U.S.-based Turkish cleric Fethullah Gulen, who the Turkish government accuses of masterminding a failed military coup in 2016, Kanter has become a political target. While Gulen has denied the allegation, thousands of people suspected of ties to his network have been arrested or fired in Turkey. Last year, while traveling in Romania, Kanter was held in an airport by police after the Turkish government revoked his passport. Turkey has also put in an extradition request and requested an Interpol red notice, or international arrest warrant for Kanter saying the center belongs to a terrorist organization. Kanter believes this was done as retaliation for his political views and no longer travels internationally. His father, a professor, was arrested and charged with “being a member of a terror group" as well and later sentenced to 15 years in prison. Kanter also missed a New York Knicks game played in London just a few weeks ago amid concerns for his own safety, saying he felt he could be targeted for assassination by Turkish government operatives. Kanter claims he still receives death threats on a daily basis.

In case you want to learn more on this, Jordan Ritter Conn of The Ringer does a great job with this story on Kanter diving into the background of Blazers’ new center as a person, his religious beliefs and the current relationship with his family as a result of the political unrest in Turkey.