Enes Kanter Freedom asked federal, state and local authorities to help keep him safe at Game 3 of the WNBA Finals in Atlanta on Wednesday night, then turned down the protection the Atlanta Dream and State Farm Arena put in place for him and was denied entry at the gate.
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About 30 minutes before the Dream tipped off against the Golden State Valkyries, the arena released a statement saying the former NBA center had contacted authorities, the WNBA, the Dream and arena officials with concerns about his personal safety. After consulting with the league, Dream ownership, arena leadership and security, officials directed him to watch the game from a private luxury suite with additional security. State police also assigned an officer to him at his request. Freedom had been expected to sit courtside.
He wanted the seat he paid for. In video Freedom posted from the entry gate, staff told him that if he came in, he had to agree to go to the suite. “I purchased tickets, right?” he asked. An Atlanta police officer told him he was free to go to the city of Atlanta streets. A State Farm Arena public relations official later said Freedom was offered the suite for his safety and rejected it.
Freedom also shared a recording of his phone call with the league’s director of security. When he was told the move was being made for the safety of fans as well as his own, he said, “I guess they’ll have to drag me.” He then went to social media and wrote, “Shame on @WNBA I guess they have to escort me out of the building,” and claimed he had been banned from his seats.
Freedom has said he received threats after announcing his plans to attend. No details about those threats have been made public.
The way he announced the trip shows why the arena wanted him off the floor. On Monday, Enes Kanter Freedom posted that he would be at the game to watch his “favorite player,” Valkyries player Gabby Williams. He pointed to an interview in which Williams said she has no problem with trans athletes playing on her team or against it, and claimed her words inspired him “to come out as a woman and officially declare for the WNBA Draft.”
That draft declaration sits at the center of his campaign against the league. Freedom and fellow former NBA player Royce White announced this summer that they identify as women and declared for the 2027 WNBA Draft. Freedom has used the declaration to argue that the league’s rules could let anyone who identifies as a woman compete. League sources told ESPN and Front Office Sports in August that neither man is eligible. No transgender woman has ever played in the WNBA, and the league’s collective bargaining agreement says only women are eligible to play without defining the term any further.
Wednesday was not the first time he was shown the exit. On Aug. 23, Freedom sat courtside at Wintrust Arena for the Chicago Sky’s game against the Indiana Fever wearing a black shirt that read “WOMAN noun. adult human female.” Late in the third quarter, Sky guard Natasha Cloud walked over and confronted him, and security escorted him out of the building. That night he posted that he had been kicked out of a WNBA game “for supporting WOMEN!” The Sky then banned him from Wintrust Arena, with owner Michael Alter saying Freedom had shown the team “he has the potential to be a threat.”
The Finals game was his first WNBA appearance since Chicago. For the second time this season, Enes Kanter Freedom did not make it through a game.
