If you get sports news in your personal social media algorithms, no doubt you’re already familiar and keeping tabs—or at least have encountered—the ongoing media circus surrounding transgender athletes in the Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA). It involves Indiana Fever shooting guard Sophie Cunningham and former NBA players Enes Kanter Freedom and Royce White.
Yes, it is every bit as stupid as it sounds. Not because transgender athletes are bad for the sport, but because it involves men trying to blow up an issue that doesn’t exist at all by creating one.
The gist of the issue
This is a whole story, so we must start from the start. Cunningham is already known as a bit of a transphobe after she retweeted content against transgender National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) swimmer Lia Thomas, whom you might know as the athlete in the center of the rise of American right-wing personality (and fellow swimmer) Riley Gaines.
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Fast forward to a profile by ESPN where she clarified her stance and essentially doubled down on her beliefs, stating that she only wanted to “protect young girls in a locker room, or young girls in sport who shouldn’t have to go against biological men.” The implications there, of course, are that transgender female athletes who would theoretically play on the highest level of the sport are still cisgender men in drag, without any form of therapy or transitioning. (More on that later.)
Cunningham’s beliefs have sparked rallies in support for her and against transgender athletes. Now, she has tried to disavow the statements she made, saying that she “wants to get back to basketball” in a comment made in a chaotic Aug. 2 game between the Fever and the Minnesota Lynx, where there were rallies held both for and against transgender athletes in not just the WNBA, but all sports.
The WNBPA (players’ association) has condemned all attacks on transgender athletes, saying that “hate, abuse, and demonization of any person or group of people, including transgender people, only fuel fear, division and harm.”
Now would be a good time to note that there are zero trans women athletes in the WNBA. Nor are there any trying to get in.
The grift of right-wing men
That was important to note because now, a couple of (former, it should be stressed) NBA players have chimed in needlessly. Last Aug. 8, Turkish player Freedom joined the conversation by saying that he was declaring for the WNBA Draft—the next of which is happening eight months away in April 2027.
For those who don’t know, Freedom became a political figure by speaking out against China’s human rights abuses against Uyghur Muslims, as well as the regime of Recep Tayyip Erdogan in his home Turkiye. He was cool—at first—but then started to skew right-wing as anti-China, pro-Israel, and anti-Palestine. He has also shared transphobic remarks back in 2023, hinting that he could “identify as a woman” and start dominating the WNBA.
He doubles back on these statements with his declaration for the WNBA Draft. “If simply declaring who you are is all that’s required, then I meet every single requirement necessary to compete in the WNBA,” he says. Then in a post on X last Aug. 8, he claims that he made his declaration for the draft official.
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Meanwhile, former Sacramento Kings player White has jumped in, doing the same thing as Freedom. White, a player troubled by mental health issues such as anxiety that left him with a fear of flying, played a grand total of three game minutes in his entire NBA career.
White has also made a name for himself as a far-right political figure, running for the US Senate in 2024 and acknowledging on his own X profile bio that he is everything morally terrible that you can be in 2026—a misogynist, homophobe, and transphobe, among others. And earlier this year, a judge issued a restraining order against him from his ex-wife and son, while his own grandfather has disowned him for being right-wing.
The real score on transgender athletes in the WNBA
Anyway, contrary to what Freedom has said, it isn’t as simple as putting on a wig and declaring that you identify as a woman.
While yes, there aren’t any rules or policy set by the WNBA yet on who qualifies as a woman and how trans woman basketball players (if any) will officially be allowed to play in the league, this likely isn’t going to work the way Freedom and White are hoping—which is to force the WNBA to finally define legal language that will lock out trans athletes.
The problem with their ridiculous stunts is that, again, the WNBA does not currently have the “problem” of honest-to-goodness trans women trying to join the league, which is why it has never needed to define these parameters. The last time it had an athlete that could be considered trans was Layshia Clarendon, who came out as trans nonbinary in 2020 and had top surgery in 2021, before retiring from the league in 2024.
If anything, the two men’s foolishness will more likely get the WNBA and Women’s National Basketball Player’s Association (WNBPA) to start hashing out scientific and medical thresholds that could get professional trans women basketball players, if any, into the league instead of out of it, especially given the stance of the WNBPA. This would avoid fraudsters like Freedom and White from joining, even if there was a WNBA team desperate enough to actually risk their reputation and draft them.
In short, if the WNBA does actually allow transgender players in the league under certain conditions, the two men’s transphobic stunts (in the name of “protecting women”) would spectacularly backfire.
The conversation about pro transgender athletes
See, the problem with transphobes is that their myopia makes them believe male athletes only transition to dominate women’s sports. And they won’t do it because they think all they have to do is put on a wig and take on she/her pronouns—but Freedom and White should totally commit to the bit and start transitioning.
Maybe then they might just finally find an ounce of empathy for what trans women have to go through.
But all of this is a net loss for the WNBA, going back to how Cunningham has doubled down—and to an extent, how the American sports media has also played up her comments and the men’s stunts to stir up a literal non-issue. While the conversation about pro transgender athletes does need to be had, it doesn’t need to be had now when there aren’t any.
It’s ruining the victory of the WNBA’s arrival as a legitimately popular professional sports league in the past couple of years. Hell, if you’re the conspiracy theorizing kind, you could even argue that this might be a low-key demolition job. If the commissioner doesn’t do anything about this and nip the issue in the bud, it’s poised to become the biggest shadow cast over the current season.
And that will be a major disservice to all the women—far more than any theoretical pro transgender athlete.
