“What has the world come to”: 11-year NBA legend’s WNBA arena ban stirs the pot again amid trans athlete debate

Enes Kanter Freedom wanted a seat at the table in women's basketball. Instead, he got escorted out of one and banned from ever walking back through the doors.The former NBA center, who has said he now identifies as a woman for the purpose of entering the WNBA draft, was ejected from a Chicago Sky game on Sunday after a heated exchange with guard Natasha Cloud. Two days later, Sky owner Michael Alter made it official: Freedom is no longer welcome at Wintrust Arena.Enes Kanter Freedom faces first WNBA arena banAlter said the club would only reconsider "if he's able to prove to us he's able to abide by our rules." That single line drew the hardest boundary of the whole saga: not a suspension, not a warning, but an outright ban from the building.The trouble started late in the third quarter of Sunday's loss to the Indiana Fever. Freedom was sitting baseline in a shirt reading "WOMAN noun. adult human female."Cloud, fresh off a bucket and a chest bump with teammate Aicha Coulibaly, walked straight at him, yelling and pointing. Freedom stood, held his arms out, and stepped onto the court before security and several Sky players moved between them. Nobody threw a punch. Security still walked him out.On his way through the lobby, Freedom spun around, held his shirt out toward the crowd, and talked to a group of police officers before he left the building. He later posted on social media that he'd been "kicked out of a WNBA game for supporting WOMEN."The league itself had reportedly planned to let the incident pass without punishment, since Freedom never actually stepped onto the playing surface. Alter clearly saw it differently. Freedom and fellow former NBA player Royce White have both declared for the WNBA draft on the same grounds, though a person familiar with the league's thinking told the AP that neither is considered eligible. The WNBA's collective bargaining agreement restricts the league to women but stops short of defining gender identity or sex assigned at birth, which is exactly the loophole both men say they're testing.Chicago Sky arena ban sparks intense reactionSocial media did what social media does. One fan summed up the mood with a simple "What has the world come to 😂."Others leaned into mockery: "Now he can go back to begging the boys at the rec center to choose him for a pickup game." A few pushed back on the framing entirely, insisting "she wasn't the one who started it" and demanding people "let her play."Stephen A. Smith responds to Enes Kanter Freedom's campaignStephen A. Smith weighed in with his usual mix of sympathy and scolding. He credited Freedom's history of standing up to the Turkish government but said stepping toward Cloud was "excessive," adding that the WNBA players themselves "don't deserve" to be caught in the middle of a fight that belongs with the league, not the roster.“It was a classless thing for him to do because it's not the ladies that are playing don't have anything to do with this. The league does. It's collective bargaining agreement may be the case. The liberal tilt that it has might be a cause or a cause effect to some degree. I get all of that,” Smith shared.He added, “But the actual ladies that are involved, they have nothing to do with this and they don't deserve to be agitated the way he clearly was willing to do in attendance at the game.”Freedom hasn't backed off. If anything, the ban gives him one more grievance to fold into a draft campaign that was already built on confrontation. Whether the WNBA rules him eligible or not, Wintrust Arena is now off limits either way.Get the latest Sports News and Live updates. Download the TOI app.