Enes Kanter Freedom was ejected from Sunday night’s Indiana Fever and Chicago Sky game at Wintrust Arena after Sky guard Natasha Cloud confronted him from the court.
Video:
He was seated along the baseline in a black shirt reading “WOMAN noun. adult human female.” Late in the third quarter, with 1:22 left, Cloud scored inside and the Fever called timeout. Cloud then turned toward Kanter, yelling and pointing, and had to be held back by teammate DiJonai Carrington and Fever security. Kanter stood up, spread his arms to display the shirt in full, and took a step onto the court. Security and several Sky players got between them.
He was escorted off the baseline to loud boos. On the way out he puffed the shirt out so cameras could read it, then pantomimed a talking mouth with his hand at the crowd, feeding off the noise. He spoke briefly with arena personnel and WNBA officials, had a conversation with police in the lobby, and left.
Kanter is 34. He last played in an NBA game in February 2022, when Houston waived him after a trade from Boston. He has not played professionally since. On Sunday he bought a seat on the floor of a women’s basketball game to wear a shirt at the women playing in it.
The shirt was the whole point. That slogan, woman defined as adult human female, has been the standard placard of anti transgender campaigning for years. Wearing it to a WNBA game, on the baseline, where cameras and players cannot avoid it, is not a private opinion. It is a delivery mechanism. He knew exactly what would happen, and when it happened he performed for the boos rather than leaving quietly.
Here is the part that gets lost in every version of this story.
No known transgender woman has ever played in the WNBA. Not one, in the league’s entire history. Two nonbinary players have appeared in the league, Layshia Clarendon and AD Durr, and both were female at birth. The NCAA, which is the league’s primary talent pipeline, already bars transgender women from competing. There is no player, no roster spot, no game, no controversy on any court anywhere in the league.
The panic is about something that has not happened.
What did happen is a six week old media cycle. In July, Fever guard Sophie Cunningham told ESPN she supports barring transgender women and girls from women’s sports. OutKick, the Fox News owned sports outlet, then pressed a French transgender basketball player into saying she would like to play in the WNBA, which gave the story fuel. On August 7, Kanter posted that if simply declaring who you are is all that is required, he meets every requirement, and declared himself eligible for the 2027 draft. Royce White, who played three NBA games more than a decade ago, followed within hours and said he would be unstoppable. Kanter later claimed he had recruited eight more men to do the same.
He also said the quiet part clearly, laying out that G League players make $45,000 while top WNBA players make $1.4 million, framing the whole thing as money left on the table. Neither man has ever said anything about being transgender. Both said openly they are testing the language of the league’s contract.
That language is real. The 2026 collective bargaining agreement, signed in March, says only players who are women are eligible to play in the WNBA, and never defines the word. The terms transgender and gender identity appear nowhere in a document that defines dozens of other terms. A league task force of team presidents and general managers met about it and adopted nothing, saying there are no immediate eligibility matters affecting the league and that it strongly denounces bad faith efforts to use the topic to demean or marginalize others.
Not everyone in the league sees it the same way. Gabby Williams said she would welcome a trans athlete on her team or against her team anytime. JD Vance called Cunningham’s position courageous on Fox News. There have been rallies at Fever games on both sides.
Cloud has been through this before with him. In 2022 she posted that America was trash in many ways and oppresses marginalized groups, and Kanter went on Fox News to call athletes like her uneducated about freedom in other countries. Earlier this week she called the men who have been throwing sex toys onto WNBA courts weak.
On Sunday she saw him on her baseline in that shirt and did not let it slide. He got what he came for. So did the crowd.
