Two former NBA players who have never played a minute of professional women's basketball say they're eligible for the WNBA's 2027 draft. It's not a joke to them, exactly. It's a political stunt, timed to embarrass a league that has never had to define who counts as a woman.
A Loophole, Not a Policy
The WNBA's collective bargaining agreement says only women are eligible to play in the league, but it never defines what that means or addresses transgender athletes at all. No out transgender woman has ever played in the WNBA. That silence, not any actual crisis of trans participation, is what Freedom and White are working.
Freedom, a former Boston Celtics and New York Knicks center, posted a video declaring that after "reviewing the current eligibility guidelines," he was officially declaring himself a WNBA prospect. "If simply declaring who you are is all that's required, then I meet every single requirement necessary to compete in the WNBA," he said.
If simply declaring who you are is all that's required, then I meet every single requirement necessary to compete in the WNBA.
Enes Kanter Freedom
White, a former Houston Rockets forward, took a cruder approach. Speaking to Fox News, he claimed to be "transgender" and "sometimes identifying as a woman for purpose of basketball," language lifted straight from the talking point that cisgender men fake trans identity to dominate women's sports. He added that the WNBA "could come out and make a definitive statement about guys with a pair of balls playing in the Women's Association," and threatened a discrimination lawsuit if he isn't drafted.
Political Ambitions Behind the Provocation
Neither man is a neutral commentator. Freedom, who attended the 2024 presidential inauguration as a guest of House Speaker Mike Johnson, has said he intends to run for Congress in 2028. White is currently on the ballot in Minnesota's Republican Senate primary, hoping to challenge for the seat Sen. Tina Smith is vacating. He's also faced allegations of misappropriating campaign donations from a prior House run. For both men, a viral stunt aimed at the WNBA doubles as a fundraising and name-recognition play.
The League Moves Fast
The timing isn't random. The stunts landed weeks after Indiana Fever guard Sophie Cunningham publicly opposed trans participation in women's sports, a comment that drew backlash from players, coaches, and fans and put the league's silence on the issue under a spotlight it hadn't faced before.
The Women's National Basketball Players Association responded the same day Freedom and White made their declarations, stating that its members embrace "justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion" and that hate and demonization of any group, including transgender people, "only fuel fear, division, and harm."
We will continue to have hard conversations. But we will not be used as political pawns.
Women's National Basketball Players Association
Commissioner Cathy Engelbert wrote in a memo to teams that a task force of presidents and general managers would take up trans inclusion this week, promising the league would approach the topic "thoughtfully, respectfully, and in alignment with the longstanding values of our league," while acknowledging its complexity and planning listening sessions for team leaders.
Why It Matters
It's worth being honest about what's actually happening here. Freedom and White aren't trying to play basketball; they're trying to force a league into an awkward, headline-grabbing position by exploiting language nobody ever expected to be tested this way. Other major women's leagues, including the WTA and NWSL, have written explicit eligibility criteria. The WNBA hadn't, largely because the question never came up: no transgender woman has ever suited up in the league. That gap is real, and it's fair to say these stunts exposed it rather than invented it.
But exposing a gap and weaponizing it are different things. Freedom and White aren't advocating for clearer, fairer policy; they're using a mocking, degrading premise, that being a woman is something you can simply "declare" for a laugh, to score points with an audience that already believes trans people are lying about who they are. The WNBPA's statement got it right: this isn't a hard conversation being had in good faith. It's a pawn move, and the league now has to write a real policy under a spotlight it didn't ask for, against a backdrop of a Supreme Court ruling and new IOC restrictions that have made this kind of pressure campaign fashionable across sports.
Source: LGBTQ Nation
Cover photo: Engin Akyurt / Pexels
