By Amy Tennery
NEW YORK, Aug 24 (Reuters) – Two former NBA players who sought to enter the 2027 WNBA draft are not eligible to participate in the women’s basketball league, according to sources around the league on Monday.
Enes Kanter Freedom, who played in the National Basketball Association for over a decade from 2011, and Royce White, who spent one season in the NBA, had each announced their intention to play in the league, claiming to be transgender women.
Reached for comment on Monday, Kanter Freedom responded on a separate issue regarding a spat between himself and Chicago Sky player Natasha Cloud that saw him ejected from his seat at a game on Sunday.
Reuters was not immediately able to reach White.
The sources described the move as an effort to sow division within the WNBA and court attention, amid a nationwide firestorm over U.S. President Donald Trump’s repeated efforts to ban transgender women from women’s sports.
There are no active, openly transgender players in the WNBA, which does not currently have a specific, publicly available policy on transgender participation. The league is in ongoing conversations with stakeholders on the issue.
Comments made by Indiana Fever guard Sophie Cunningham in an ESPN interview last month lit the fuse for controversy, with the former second-round pick telling the broadcaster: “I want to protect young girls in a locker room, or young girls in sport who shouldn’t have to go against biological men.”
The remarks prompted outcry from some longstanding fans of the league, who skew more politically liberal, while others rallied to Cunningham’s side, with demonstrations in her support popping up outside Fever games.
The players’ union, the WNBPA, released a statement this month declaring they would not be used as “political pawns”.
“Hate, abuse, and demonization of any person or group of people, including transgender people, only fuel fear, division, and harm,” they said.
Kanter Freedom said on social media on Sunday that he was ejected from a game between Chicago Sky and the Fever after getting into a verbal spat with 2022 assists leader Cloud.
Kanter Freedom said in an emailed reply to Reuters that he was supporting Cunningham when Cloud began “yapping and cursing” at him.
(Reporting by Amy Tennery in New York; Editing by Ken Ferris)
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