Culture war dopamine, that euphoric feeling that follows making an outrageous statement on the controversy du jour, is clearly a dangerous drug. Addicts are known to swap logic and reason for Fox News appearances. They become nonsensical, lend credence to the absurd and eventually stage full-blown clown shows.
Take Enes Kanter Freedom and Royce White, two 30-something former NBA players who recently declared themselves eligible for the 2027 Women’s National Basketball Association draft.
Citing the current WNBA guidelines, which state “Only players who are women are eligible to play in the WNBA” (and don’t explicitly exclude transgender women players in their collective bargaining agreement), Freedom and White have capitalized on the recent anti-trans comments made by Indiana Fever role player-provocateur Sophie Cunningham. Her anti-trans statements, which she claims are motivated by her desire to “protect young girls,” have led to small protests on both sides of the issue.
Freedom and White have capitalized on the recent anti-trans comments made by Indiana Fever role player-provocateur Sophie Cunningham.
These aren’t merely political stunts mocking the league and the women who play in it, but malicious attempts to demean a marginalized population in the apparent hope that a NewsNation or Fox News producer will call for an interview so these budding hot-takers can be given some attention on what is a non-issue.
For the record, no openly transgender athlete has ever competed in the WNBA or any of the nation’s other women’s professional sports leagues. State bans on transgender athletes in women’s sports have been held up by the U.S. Supreme Court. The Olympics now clearly forbids transgender athletes in female events. And the number of trans athletes nationwide is infinitesimal — the NCAA reported that there were fewer than 10 competing among 500,000-plus student athletes in all divisions less than two years ago. So whether it’s unfair for trans women to compete in women’s professional sports barely warrants a conversation, let alone a debate.
But Freedom and White, obviously attention-starved culture soldiers, have been all over right-wing media to troll the WNBA in cringey appearances that border on bigotry and misogyny.
Sporting an orange WNBA sweatshirt with a crossed-out Nike logo and with a WNBA baseball cap beside him, Freedom sat upright in a TV studio and said, in a slickly produced video, he would be “unstoppable” as a transgender woman.
“I’m a woman,” White began in a separate video. “I identify as sometimes identifying as a woman for purposes of basketball, professional basketball.” Get it? The joke is supposed to be that a man might pretend to be transgender just to dominate a women’s sport.
Hilarious, no, that a self-proclaimed activist like Freedom, and White, a Republican candidate running in Tuesday’s primary for Minnesota’s open Senate seat (he lost to incumbent Sen. Amy Klobuchar by more than 15 points in 2024), crap on WNBA players and the trans community for MAGA applause?
Grifters getting their 15 minutes is usually a nonstory. Yet there are mitigating factors here. For one, the WNBA, in the middle of one of its best and most enthralling regular seasons, has become a prism for many of the country’s culture wars. There’s sexuality (almost 45% of the league’s all-stars are openly gay). There’s race (Caitlin Clark, a pony-tailed straight, white woman has become uber popular in a league that has always been more than 70% Black). And now there’s gender warfare.
The inspiring backstories of Freedom and White make their declarations even more puzzling and disturbing.
Freedom was a guest on a hoops-and-life podcast I did about seven years ago. He was thoughtful and compassionate. A native of Turkey, he spoke out against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s dangerous authoritarianism and antisemitic remarks. While playing for Boston, his final NBA team, Turkey declared Freedom “an enemy of the state,” and his family had to disavow his statements to stop being harassed. The Turkish government threatened to arrest him when the Celtics crossed the border into Canada for a Christmas Day game in 2018 against Toronto. The athlete has spoken out about China and other nations for their human rights abuses. He added “Freedom” to his last name when he became a U.S. citizen in 2021.
The inspiring backstories of Freedom and White make their declarations even more puzzling and disturbing.
White was one of the five most talented players in the 2012 NBA draft, but he wasn’t drafted until the middle of the first round because he disclosed that he had a severe anxiety disorder triggered by a fear of flying. He only played three NBA games, but even so, he became a courageous spokesman for players facing mental health issues.
For two men who once spoke for the voiceless to now use their platforms to demean others is flat-out depressing. Freedom was once a genuinely insightful human being. But today, he’s addicted to that culture war dopamine.
Memo to troll-factory America: There is no trans debate, at least not as it involves professional or amateur sports. Nearly 80% of the population, according to a 2025 New York Times/ Ipsos poll, doesn’t want transgender women and girls who transition after puberty competing in girls’ and women’s sports at any level. What we ought to be talking about is the cruelty and dehumanization of trans children trying to figure out who they are and where they belong in their family and social structures.
We live in dangerous times, as straight adults desperate for media attention not only make a mockery of women’s sports but take positions that invalidate the existence of transgender people of all ages.
Basketball is a game, but the way these two basketball players are helping whip up hostility against trans people is not.
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