I have never watched a WNBA game. Not one. Somehow that hasn't stopped me from following what's happening to the league lately, because you don't need to watch an actual game to notice something has gone wrong. I suspect a lot of the people currently filling column inches about the league have the same relationship with the sport as I do. They haven't watched a full game either.
That's because the WNBA hasn't been making headlines for its basketball. It's been making headlines for two things that have nothing to do with the sport itself, and both are entirely the league's own doing.
The first is a string of hard fouls and dirty hits landing on Indiana Fever star Caitlin Clark, and now her teammate Sophie Cunningham, fouls that referees have either failed to call or called wrong. The second is the fact that the WNBA has voluntarily placed itself in the crosshairs of the trans sports debate.
Both are self-inflicted wounds.
We all know that the WNBA exists because men and women are different. If women were eligible to play in the WNBA, I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that there’d be no women on the rosters. Separate men’s and women’s sports exist for a reason, which is why, when the WNBA launched in 1996, there was no confusion about who it was for and why there’s a separate league for women in the first place. A separate women's league is an admission that biological differences matter in professional basketball. Whether the league wants to say so in 2026 or not, that’s why it exists.
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Now the WNBA is stuck deciding whether biological males can play in the league founded specifically to give women their own professional basketball league where they compete on a level playing field. The decision, whenever it comes, will either undermine the reason the WNBA exists or enrage the woke activists.
The league isn’t handling the situation well at all.
Multiple reports indicate that the WNBA has ruled former NBA players Enes Kanter Freedom and Royce White ineligible to play in the women's league. Both men publicly declared themselves women this month and announced plans to enter the WNBA draft. For years, the woke left has insisted that self-declaration of gender identity is indisputable. We’ve seen that as the standard for years. Self-declaration is exactly what has let men into women's gym locker rooms, exposing themselves to women and young girls, all in the name of inclusivity. To the left, a woman is whoever identifies as a woman, and self-declaration can’t be questioned.
Tell that to Enes Kanter Freedom and Royce White.
The WNBA wants to be seen as inclusive, whatever that means, yet the Kanter Freedom and White situation has proven that despite all the public statements about inclusivity, it really does know what a woman is.
I have no doubt most of the women playing in the WNBA just want to play basketball and get recognized for their skills and abilities on the court. For them, it's a shame their league has spent this season proving it forgot why it exists in the first place.
