CHICAGO, ILLINOIS - AUGUST 23: Former basketball player Enes Kanter Freedom watches Sophie Cunningham #8 of the Indiana Fever courtside during the first half against the Chicago Sky at Wintrust Arena on August 23, 20...
Former NBA player Enes Kanter Freedom is just distraught that his antics — sitting courtside in an anti-trans shirt after proclaiming himself a woman to declare for the 2027 WNBA draft — are distracting from the play of the league’s athletes.
“Just focus on your game, let all the outside talk not distract you,” he told Fox News’ Laura Ingraham Monday, describing the text he sent Indiana Fever guard Sophie Cunningham after he got in a mid-game fight with the Chicago Sky’s Natasha Cloud on Sunday and was ejected from the game.
Cunningham’s anti-trans comments last month kicked off the current cycle of right-wing fixation on the WNBA.
Freedom was followed by someone filming for the America First Policy Institute — a Trump-aligned organization that is collaborating with Freedom, even selling merchandise based on the stunt — as soon as he entered the Chicago arena’s campus on Sunday. He’s been a mainstay on Fox News since he “declared” for the draft, and has stocked his own merch store mostly with variations of the t-shirt he was wearing featuring a faux dictionary definition of “woman.” AFPI, which counts current and former Trump administration officials among its founding members, promoted last night’s Fox News interview between Ingraham and Freedom on its social media feeds.
He then told Ingraham that he’s eager to attend all the Fever’s playoff games, though he said he doesn’t buy tickets under his own name so the team can’t keep him away.
In typical right-wing troll form, Freedom had trouble keeping his disdain for women’s sports out of his protestations that he strives only to protect and uplift female athletes.
“Oooh you know what, I’m gonna try to beat Will Chamberlain’s record, I might go something like over 100 points for sure,” he said when Ingraham asked how many points he’d score in his first WNBA game against the number one team.
That’d be quite a jump from his 11.2 point average over his NBA career.
He also parroted the right’s other favorite talking point, that white players Cunningham and Caitlin Clark — seemingly the only players the anti-trans protesters know — are “unsafe” in the mostly Black, mostly gay league.
Still, he had difficulty sticking to his own bit, stumbling over his words when Ingraham asked if he identifies as a trans woman.
“Sure, I identify as a woman, sure, yes, so I can play,” he said.
The unseriousness of the stunt is obvious, as is Freedom’s thirst for attention; he previously announced his intention to run for office in 2028 after House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) brought him as a guest to the 2024 State of the Union.
Even if he were to “participate” in the draft, the WNBA is not a no-cuts recreational league — a team would have to give him a contract.
“In the past 3 years the majority of states have made laws against trans youth sports participation, the NCAA has limited trans athletes, the IOC has eliminated them, and the Supreme Court has ruled against them at the youth level,” tweeted Brianna Turner, a forward for the Los Vegas Aces. “Yet here we are years later ‘fighting’ the same invisible demons.”
“Two groups many despise, trans women and wnba players, have received so much unnecessary vitriol the past month,” she added. “The only beneficiaries have been the grifters making a profit from the madness.”