Martina Navratilova, the tennis legend turned outspoken critic of transgender athletes, spent her weekend amplifying a conspiracy theory with no basis in fact: that the WNBA is secretly hiding a transgender player from the public.
How the rumor spread
On Sunday night, Navratilova quoted a post from New York comedian MJ Murphy, who wrote, "We cannot and do not know if the WNBA has any biological males playing." Navratilova responded, "Exactly. And that's on purpose, most likely..." When another user suggested there's "one per rumor," meaning a trans woman playing in the league, Navratilova wrote back, "Point is nobody knows."
The theory appears to trace back to Yankees minority owner Patrick Bet-David, and it gained traction after two former NBA players, Royce White and Enes Kanter Freedom, announced on August 7 that they intended to declare for the WNBA draft, hoping to exploit vague language in the league's eligibility rules stating that "only players who are women" may compete. The WNBA ruled both men ineligible on August 13.
Point is nobody knows.
Martina Navratilova
A policy vacuum, not a cover-up
The uncomfortable truth is that the WNBA's collective bargaining agreement never defines "woman," and contains no explicit language on gender identity, sex assigned at birth, or intersex athletes. That silence is exactly what let White and Kanter Freedom stage their stunt, and it's the gap conspiracy theorists are now exploiting. A task force of team presidents and general managers has discussed the issue but hasn't produced eligibility rules; the league has only said, "There are no immediate eligibility matters affecting the WNBA and we strongly denounce the bad-faith efforts to use these topics to demean or marginalize others."
No transgender woman has ever played in the WNBA. The overwhelming majority of drafted players come out of the NCAA, which banned trans women from women's sports in February 2025 after pressure from a Trump administration executive order. Twenty-seven states now bar trans athletes from competing on teams matching their gender identity, according to the Movement Advancement Project, further shrinking any recruitment pipeline that could theoretically produce a trans WNBA player.
A league already divided
This isn't happening in a vacuum. Indiana Fever guard Sophie Cunningham told ESPN in July that she wanted to "protect young girls who shouldn't have to go against biological men," comments that drew both backlash and a wave of right-wing support, including fans wearing anti-trans shirts outside Fever games. Chicago Sky's Natasha Cloud pushed back publicly in support of trans inclusion, exposing a real split among players on a league that has spent decades building its identity as an LGBTQ-friendly space.
MQ's Take
Navratilova has been on this path a long time. She called trans inclusion "insane" and "cheating" in a 2019 op-ed, and in 2021 co-founded the Women's Sports Policy Working Group to push restrictions on trans athletes. What's happening now is different only in scale: a rumor with zero supporting evidence, laundered through a comedian's tweet and a minority owner's post, is being treated as a legitimate question rather than what it actually is. "Nobody knows" isn't a gotcha; it's an admission that there's nothing to know. The WNBA's real failure here isn't hiding a player, it's leaving its rulebook vague enough that bad-faith actors, from failed draft stunts to viral conspiracy posts, keep finding room to operate in the gap.
Cover photo: Andrew Campbell, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
