Two retired male basketball players have declared themselves eligible for the WNBA's 2027 draft, in a stunt aimed at mocking the league's lack of explicit transgender eligibility rules.
The stunt, explained
Enes Kanter Freedom, who spent 11 seasons in the NBA before retiring in 2022, kicked things off on 7 August with a post declaring himself a "WNBA prospect." He argued that if "simply declaring who you are is all that's required," he met every requirement to compete, and said his team had "carefully examined" the league's eligibility framework before he formally entered his name for the 2027 draft.
Royce White, a former NBA player who retired in 2018 and has since run twice for Congress and once for the U.S. Senate as a Republican, followed the same day. He told Fox News he was transgender and identified as a woman "sometimes" for the purposes of professional basketball, and later posted a photo of himself in a wig, joking about his "feminine era glow up."
What the WNBA's rules actually say
The stunt leans on a real gap. Per the Associated Press, the WNBA's current collective bargaining agreement states that "only players who are women are eligible" to play in the league, but it stops there: it never defines "woman" and contains no separate criteria for transgender athletes. That silence isn't a hidden loophole so much as an unresolved policy question the league hasn't yet answered publicly.
If simply declaring who you are is all that's required, then I meet every single requirement necessary to compete in WNBA.
Enes Kanter Freedom
WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert has reportedly told teams a task force of presidents and general managers will take up the question, framing it as part of
Cover photo: Erik Drost, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
