Let me ask you something. When was the last time you thought about Enes Kanter Freedom or Royce White? I’ll wait. Can’t remember? Neither can I. One got run out of the league for being more interested in Twitter than rebounding, and the other never could stay on a roster long enough to matter. And now these two have figured out a new way to get their names back in lights: announce they’re entering the 2027 WNBA Draft because they “identify as women” now.
White actually went on Fox News and said, with a straight face, that he “sometimes identifies as a woman for purposes of professional basketball.” Sometimes. Sometimes! Like it’s a jacket he puts on when there’s a camera around. You don’t need a sociology degree from Harvard to see what this is. Two guys who couldn’t cut it in the men’s game want to suit up against women and call it a point about fairness. It’s not a point. It’s a publicity stunt by two men who haven’t been relevant since the Obama administration.
And here’s where I really start asking questions. Who benefits from this circus? Because it sure isn’t women’s basketball. The WNBA players just put out a statement through their union saying they “will not be used as political pawns.” Good for them. They’re out there grinding through a season and now they’ve got two washed-up dudes turning their league into a punchline. The WNBPA’s statement talked about “justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion,” and I’ll be honest with you, that’s the kind of corporate word salad that makes regular people’s eyes glaze over. But the core of what they said is right: they’re not props for somebody else’s culture war.
Erik Drost (CC BY 2.0) via Wikimedia CommonsBecause that’s exactly what’s happening. Sophie Cunningham, who plays for the Fever, said she wants to protect young girls in locker rooms from biological men. The Department of Education slapped her photo up online. President Trump used her comments. J.D. Vance went on Laura Ingraham’s show and told her to keep talking. Megan Rapinoe fired back on her podcast. Stefanie Dolson showed up to a game in a “trans rights are human rights” shirt. Everybody’s got a take. Everybody’s got a microphone. And nobody’s got an answer for the actual question sitting in front of all of us.
Here’s what I see with my own eyes. You’ve got two failed NBA players treating transgender identity like a Halloween costume they can try on for clicks. You’ve got politicians on both sides scrambling to use women’s sports as a battering ram. You’ve got a WNBA collective bargaining agreement that says only “women” are eligible but never bothers to define what that means, which is the kind of sloppy drafting that would get you fired in any other workplace in America. And you’ve got real people, actual human beings who just want to play the sport they love, caught in the middle of a three-ring freak show.
The number of transgender athletes competing at an elite level is tiny. Vanishingly small. You could fit them in a minivan. But you wouldn’t know that from watching the news, where it’s presented as some sweeping crisis requiring immediate legislative action. It’s not a crisis. It’s a distraction. Gas prices too high? Can’t afford groceries? Still paying rent that climbed 40 percent in five years? Don’t worry about that. Look over here at the two NBA clowns pretending to be women.
Lorie Shaull (CC BY-SA 4.0) via Wikimedia CommonsFreedom and White don’t care about women’s sports. They don’t care about fairness. They care about attention, and they found the easiest target in America to get it. A small, vulnerable community that already deals with more grief before breakfast than most of us handle in a year. Real brave, fellas.
The WNBA players see through it. The rest of us should too. Two men who couldn’t hack it in their own league don’t get to turn somebody else’s into a joke. And the politicians cheering them on from both sides don’t get to pretend they’re defending anyone but themselves.