By Ryan Foley, Christian Post Reporter Tuesday, August 25, 2026
Former NBA player Enes Kanter Freedom and Natasha Cloud #9 of the Chicago Sky yell at one another during the second half between the Chicago Sky and the Indiana Fever at Wintrust Arena on August 23, 2026 in Chicago, Illinois. | Michael Reaves/Getty Images
Former NBA center Enes Kanter Freedom was ejected from a WNBA game after a confrontation with a player while wearing a shirt displaying the definition of the word “woman.”
Kanter Freedom, who played more than a decade in the NBA, posted several times on X on Sunday during a game in Chicago between the Indiana Fever and the Chicago Sky as the league continues to face scrutiny over its position on trans-identified males in women’s sports.
In the first post, he shared video of protesters confronting him outside the arena. The footage, captioned “We are getting attacked before the @WNBA game in Chicago,” showed fans making obscene gestures and shouting at him as Chicago police officers surrounded him.
In another post, Kanter Freedom shared an image of the shirt he wore to the game. It identifies “woman” as a “noun” meaning “adult human female.”
“Careful what you wish for, @WNBA,” he wrote alongside a photo of himself wearing the shirt in the stands. Declaring that “Freedom of speech never looked this good,” Kanter Freedom expressed bewilderment that the stance reflected on his shirt was “somehow controversial.”
A third post showed him standing joyfully in the shirt, with the caption “It’s halftime and I need to use the restroom.” He remained for much of the game but said on X Sunday night that he was eventually ejected.
“I just got kicked out of a @WNBA game for supporting WOMEN!” Kanter Freedom wrote in an X post. “Let that sink in, AMERICA.”
In an interview with Fox News, Kanter Freedom said his ejection followed a confrontation with Sky guard Natasha Cloud.
“It was towards the end of the third quarter,” he recalled. “[Indiana Fever guard] Sophie Cunningham shot a three and I put my hands up to celebrate.”
“A couple possessions later, Natasha came back and started screaming and yelling and said, ‘She’s not going to sleep with you,’” Kanter Freedom added. “I was like, ‘I am not trying to sleep with her, I’m just here to protect women and support her.’ And then obviously after that, she started yapping, and she started to walk towards me, and literally I just got up, and then I was like, ‘I’m just here to protect women and that’s all.’ Right? And then she started to yell; she started to use some very heavy language; she started to actually cuss.”
A security guard then told him, “You need to leave,” Kanter Freedom said. When he asked why, the guard repeated, “You just need to leave.”
In a postgame press conference, Sky head coach Tyler Marsh defended Cloud as “someone that protects our team and protects people that need to be protected.”
League sources told TMZ that it doesn’t plan to ban Kanter Freedom from attending games because he didn’t step onto the court and didn’t do anything egregious.
The confrontation comes shortly after Kanter Freedom responded to the WNBA’s decision not to explicitly bar trans-identified males from the league by announcing that he intends to enter next spring’s draft.
“If simply declaring who you are is all that’s required, then I meet every single requirement necessary to compete in the WNBA,” he wrote on X.
The WNBA’s collective bargaining agreement states that “only players who are women are eligible to play in the WNBA.” The league dismissed the draft vows by Kanter Freedom and fellow former NBA player Royce White as “bad-faith efforts.”
The league’s policy has drawn renewed attention since Cunningham reaffirmed in a recent interview with ESPN that female athletes should not have to compete against trans-identified males.
“I got a lot of negative feedback about me hating trans. And I’m like, ‘I never once said that,’” Cunningham told the outlet.
“I think that I am here to extend love. But I also think with that love is truth, being honest. And I want to protect young girls in a locker room, or young girls in sport who shouldn’t have to go against biological men,” she said.
Since Cunningham made those comments, activism on both sides of the issue has become common at WNBA games. The league previously faced criticism after security officials told a mother and daughter at a game between the Fever and the Atlanta Dream to cover their XX-XY shirts, threatening ejection if they refused. XX-XY Athletics is an apparel company that opposes the participation of trans-identified males in women’s sports.
The WNBA and the Atlanta Dream later apologized. The Dream said the team “believes in creating a safe and inclusive environment for everyone” and acknowledged that WNBA security’s actions “fell short of that standard.” The WNBA said the incident “should not have happened.”
Ryan Foley is a reporter for The Christian Post. He can be reached at: ryan.foley@christianpost.com