Stephen A. Smith recently posed the ridiculous scenario of NBA players transitioning to the WNBA, but even he probably didn\u2019t think Enes Kanter would be desperate enough for attention to accept the challenge.<\/p>\n
After recently declaring his eligibility for the 2027 WNBA Draft, Kanter sat courtside during Sunday\u2019s Chicago Sky game against the Indiana Fever wearing a shirt that read \u201cWoman\u201d on it<\/a>. Kanter caught the attention of Sky guard Natasha Cloud, with the former NBA center proceeding to engage by stepping toward the court before being escorted out of the building by security.<\/p>\n \ufeff<\/p>\n \u201cWhat Enes Kanter did, although he had every right to do it, and although it\u2019s clearly to bring attention to the unfairness of not specifically defining what a woman is in a collective bargaining agreement and as a result, somebody who is transgender can wake up and say, \u2018I\u2019m a female and I want to participate in the NBA\u2019 according to the language of the law, you could actually get away with it, and that needs to be clarified,\u201d Smith said on his YouTube show.<\/p>\n Right-wing media has celebrated Kanter in recent weeks as the WNBA finds itself at the center of the transgender athlete conversation in the wake of widespread reaction to comments made by Indiana\u2019s Sophie Cunningham, who told ESPN she wants to \u201cprotect young girls\u201d in sports \u201cagainst biological men.\u201d Smith forecast Kanter\u2019s antics several weeks ago on his SiriusXM Radio show, defending Cunningham by noting he doesn\u2019t want to see NBA players transition to the WNBA<\/a>.<\/p>\n But Kanter\u2019s faux quest to play professional women\u2019s basketball isn\u2019t meant to bring attention to the WNBA\u2019s collective bargaining agreement, it\u2019s meant to bring attention to himself. And while Smith believes Kanter has a point, he also believes the former NBA player has gone about making that point the wrong way.<\/p>\n \u201cEnes Kanter was very wrong,\u201d Smith admitted. \u201cIt was a classless thing for him to do. Because the ladies that are playing don\u2019t have anything to do with this. The league does, it\u2019s collective bargaining agreement may\u2026but the actual ladies that are involved, have nothing to do with this and they don\u2019t deserve to be agitated the way he was clearly willing to do at the game. It wasn\u2019t just about him standing. He was just about to step to her. You got no business doing that. That was excessive.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cEnes Kanter, I believe went too far by showing up in attendance with that shirt on,\u201d Smith continued. \u201cShow some class, bro. That\u2019s not the ladies that\u2019s doing this\u2026Enes Kanter was wrong for being in attendance for that game and being antagonistic to those ladies. They don\u2019t deserve that. There\u2019s other ways he could have made his message felt. But he\u2019s not wrong for illustrating that men don\u2019t need to be competing in women\u2019s sports.\u201d<\/p>\n Kanter is wrong for attempting to make men competing in professional women\u2019s basketball out to be a legitimate issue facing the WNBA, when in reality, it\u2019s not. His illegitimate attempt at declaring for the WNBA Draft doesn\u2019t change the fact that no transgender athlete has attempted to join a WNBA team. This is not an issue the WNBA is facing; it\u2019s an issue conservative media is fabricating.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Stephen A. Smith recently posed the ridiculous scenario of NBA players transitioning to the WNBA, but even he…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":872961,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[629],"tags":[49,48,71219,82,35518,630],"class_list":["post-872960","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wnba","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-enes-kanter","tag-sports","tag-stephen-a-smith","tag-wnba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/872960","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=872960"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/872960\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/872961"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=872960"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=872960"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=872960"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}