Two topics today, that have nothing to do with each other. First this crazy story of two men, (there will be more), former NBA professional basketball players, announcing that they plan to enter the 2027 WNBA draft, the woman’s professional league. They are Enes Kanter Freedom and Royce White.
White seems a troubled man with a 50-year restraining order against him from his ex-wife and children. He is an erratic politician who happens to be a Republican candidate in Minnesota’s August 11th Senate primary. He announced that he has recently decided he is transgender and identifies as a woman for purposes of professional basketball. “I do the little things…whatever the coach needs me to do, whatever the girls need me to do,” White told Fox News and other outlets.
The other former NBA player, Kanter Freedom posted his scheme of playing in the WNBA to X saying he’s “not here to mock anyone,” but wants rules on gender applied equally. “If simply declaring who you are is all that’s required then I meet every single requirement necessary to compete in the WNBA.”
As the nation struggles with the debate on who exactly can play girls sports, we had to expect some wise guy would try to game the system. That’s what this stunt feels like. Neither man as far as I know previously announced that they were trans, but they went for the publicity jugular perhaps to ridicule the sincere struggles some athletes are having about gender identity.
The issue has been reignited by Indiana Fever guard Sophie Cunningham voicing opposition to transgender women participating in WNBA basketball. Her position seems totally reasonable.
If possible, (and it is often impossible), a compromise in sports regarding toilets and locker rooms may be accommodated. Out of the locker room and onto the court, full stop. It is scientifically unfair for biological men and boys to compete against biological girls. Sophie Cunningham is right. Once out of say junior high school, biological men are bigger, faster, stronger. Those are facts of life. That is not bias, that is science. These former NBA players trying to elbow into the WNBA really should be exposed for the opportunists and attention seekers they are. The WNBA’s collective bargaining agreement states unequivocally that “only players who are women are eligible to play in the WNBA.” Enough said.
On an entirely more pleasant note, back in Cleveland after our wonderful summer sojourn on Long Island, I was at a coffee shop with some workout buddies when a woman and her daughter approached. She told me she was a special education teacher in the process of grading her students finals. As part of the curriculum, she told me she showed the Willowbrook expose of 1972 to her students and wanted me to know how important it was to teachers in her field. As the topic has always done, her anecdote set my head spinning with all the harsh and joyful memories. The mom and daughter looked at me as did my buddies at the table as tears swelled in my eyes.