Enes Kanter Freedom Needs to Calm Down

Enes Kanter Freedom and Royce White need to calm down. Take a breath, step away for a moment, go sit in the car. Maybe throw some ice cubes into a bathtub.

With their latest round of WNBA publicity stunts to draw attention to the league’s seemingly hypocritical stance on transgender women (biological men) playing in the women’s professional basketball league, the pair is very near the edge of making this issue completely about themselves and their courtside antics. 

Freedom, wearing a black t-shirt that said “Woman, Noun; Adult Human Female,” was escorted out of a WNBA game last week after triggering Chicago Sky guard Natasha Cloud into a verbal confrontation. And this past Friday, Royce White, who joined Freedom in attempting to file paperwork for the next WNBA draft, sat courtside donning a long blonde wig, stating he was in his “feminine era.”

This all stems from a recent ESPN profile of Indiana Fever star enforcer Sophie Cunningham, who said in the interview, “I want to protect young girls in a locker room, or young girls in sport who shouldn't have to go against biological men.”

The gender theory issue, which has engulfed most of the political Left and the Democratic Party and continues to stump them, has taken center stage as it pertains to women’s and girls sports not only at the professional level, but the collegiate and high school level. 

Payton McNabb, a former high school volleyball player, attended this last State of the Union. McNabb suffered severe cranial and facial injuries when an opposing player, and biological male, spiked a volleyball off her head, causing a concussion, brain bleeding, and neck damage. 

The incident ended her sporting career.

McNabb is now a public advocate against biological boys and men competing, and using private spaces like locker rooms, against the will of many female players and parents. 

By now, millions are aware of Riley Gaines, the former NCAA swimmer who was forced to compete against former National Champion Lia Thomas, a biological man, as well as share facilities with him without warning or consent. Gaines testified about these incidents in front of a House committee hearing in June 2023. The University of Pennsylvania, facing legal action from the Department of Justice, has since stripped Thomas of his titles and set clear boundaries and definitions in accordance with Title IX on biological sexes — male and female.

This should be the path forward for the WNBA, an organization that can’t help stepping on its own… rake, time after time after time. Whether it’s policing player conduct committed against star player Caitlin Clark, PR problems around fan conduct, on court altercations, or struggle session press conferences. This shouldn’t be hard for the WNBA, but because the league is focused primarily more on its DEI guidelines, it finds itself at the center of a circus involving former NBA players, with Freedom in particular, who is never one to shy away from political skirmishes.

There’s a difference between spotlighting the circus and becoming a part of it, and Freedom is dangerously close to making a very serious and contentious debate, one that Team Reality is still winning, into a publicity clown show for which he is at the center of. Freedom and White, as is every normie sports fan, are right to point out the WNBA seems to be wavering on its own collective bargaining declarations on what defines a woman. I’m fine with Freedom filing legal paperwork for the WNBA, and I’m fine with the WNBA rejecting him, and I’m fine with Freedom possibly taking legal action against the WNBA for doing so. I suggested as much in a viral July 23 post that may or may not have been seen by Freedom or people around him and the catalyst for all of this.

But Freedom and White’s public actions and publicity scenes at WNBA games are taking focus off the women, the ones who are in real harm’s way, and putting it on their Fox News appearances and Instagram pages. We get it, the point is proven.

Recently, a woman named Kasey Thomason and her daughter, Annie (17), were asked by Atlanta Dream security to remove and replace the t-shirts they were wearing near courtside at a WNBA game. What were these intolerable offensive shirts in question? They simply had the letters “XX/XY” on them, the chromosomal make up of human biological females and males. The shirts are the brainchild of former gymnast and women’s rights advocate Jennifer Sey. Not wanting a confrontation, the mother and her daughter obliged. The story went national and the Atlanta Dream were forced to issue an apology.

These are the women who should be the face of confronting this issue. I understand what Freedom is trying to prove, but he has spiraled into an attempt to prove it the wrong way. Never interrupt the WNBA when it continues to make one disaster PR move after another as it pertains to its female athletes. The WNBA already has a fierce protector of girls in sports and a formidable spokesperson on the national level.

Her name is Sophie Cunningham, and she can handle herself.

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