Can men handle the mainstream success of the WNBA?
The middle-school energy they’re bringing to Sky games lately has me wondering.
I thought about that during the game Friday against the Valkyries when a barrage of sex toys landed on the court.
I thought about it again Sunday, when Enes Kanter Freedom showed up to the game against the Fever. The former NBA player recently mocked the league and the queer community by claiming to be a woman and declaring for the 2027 WNBA Draft.
By Monday, the league reportedly had declared him ineligible. But Sunday, he was still playing the part of a WNBA prospect.
At halftime, I found him posing for pictures next to the women’s bathroom. As I stared up at all 6 feet, 10 inches of him, I thought: Is there anything more gay than going to a women’s basketball game and having your handler photograph you next to the women’s bathroom?
It wasn’t an original thought. That was Natasha Cloud’s message to the dildo-throwers Friday: Bringing a sex toy to a women’s basketball game was about the gayest thing they could do. Stop attacking marginalized groups, she told them, and admit you’re one of us.
Even though I thought it was genuinely funny, hearing her call the offenders gay made me tense.
Suddenly, I was back in middle school, calling people gay as an insult, even though deep down I knew it was cruel, even though deep down I knew I was one of them.
Cloud’s joke, I think, was exposing that exact dynamic: We hide to protect ourselves from other people, only for the hiding to hurt us even more.
Still, I remembered how easy it was to adopt their logic.
I sensed that insulting Kanter Freedom or making him the butt of a joke would cut me off from the reality of the situation.
Who is Enes, and what is he doing here?
Who am I, and what am I doing here?
Those felt like necessary questions. But it was halftime, and although I had made good progress on my game story, this was Sky-Fever in Sophie Cunningham’s WNBA. You have to stay ready for anything.
So I walked behind Kanter Freedom back to my seat and wished for simplicity. I wanted him to disappear into the crowd, so I wouldn’t have to give him another thought.
That didn’t happen.
Cloud hit a huge layup, then turned, screamed and pointed at Kanter Freedom in his courtside seat. He stepped forward and spread his arms wide.
He was doing what he had come to do: Make himself a martyr for “protecting women’s sports.” Give talking heads another chance to call the WNBA messy, unserious and unworthy.
After the game, Sky coach Tyler Marsh made his familiar plea for people to focus on the good in the league, on the players playing. Then he addressed Kanter Freedom directly.
“If you come to a game, you should probably come to enjoy the basketball,” Marsh said. “It seems pretty simple to me.”
A few days earlier, Marsh and I had talked about why he left the NBA coaching ranks for the WNBA, even after “a hundred people” told him not to.
He found more purpose here, he said, in a league with a shared sense of fighting for something. He wished the fight weren’t necessary. But it was, and it created a sense of belonging.
Something clicked.
No wonder queer players such as Sydney Colson and Theresa Plaisance call him their favorite person. No wonder Cloud respects Marsh so much, often praising his steadiness and emotional control.
“When you talk about men, we love when they can regulate their emotions,” she had told the Sun-Times earlier that week.
Maybe because of Cloud, Marsh or Kanter Freedom, I spent the next day with this question:
What is a good man?
Is it a coach such as Marsh, drawn to the league by its collective struggle? Is it an NBA player such as Kevin Durant, who invests in relationships with young WNBA stars?
Maybe. Still, it didn’t seem that simple.
And then, because I was no longer writing a game story, because I finally had a moment to be queer and expansive and make room for complexity:
What is a man, anyway?