The WNBA is in Transition
The Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) was founded in 1996 as the female counterpart to the men’s National Basketball Association (NBA).
The WNBA was and remains NBA-subsidized, “with the goal to provide the platform and space for women athletes to compete at the highest level” – presumably meaning “the highest level for women.”
However, the woke WNBA commissioner doesn’t know what the “W” stands for.
More on that later…
The WNBA has been attention-starved for most of its 30-year history. In fact, it’s likely that most Americans – both biological genders – have never watched a minute of a WNBA game.
But many have seen videos of the on-court violence that has brought the WNBA public notoriety.
Caitlin Clark, former collegiate scoring record holder and top overall 2024 draft pick, made her professional debut before a sellout crowd in her team’s first 2024 preseason game.
Suddenly, the WNBA began getting the attention it insisted it always deserved, but, sadly, the wrong player was attracting it. Caitlin Clark is…gasp…straight and white!
Furthermore, Clark is out of step with the majority-black WNBA’s victimhood mentality, so opposing players victimized her. The lack of effort to correct or prevent it signaled the league’s tacit approval of the brutal, often race-based treatment Clark received.
In 2025, Clark’s on-court abuse took an interesting turn when her teammate, attractive, statuesque Sophie Cunningham, another straight, white player, became known as Clark’s “enforcer” after knocking down an opponent who had poked her finger in Clark’s eye.
Today, Clark and Cunningham are almost solely responsible for attracting more fans to a once nearly moribund league. Attendance and player salaries have gone up. Games are televised. The two are arguably the most popular players in the WNBA, but not among the other players or even WNBA brass, all of whom should be, but, clearly, are not grateful for the league’s “Golden Geese.”
Recently, things heated up when Sophie Cunningham had the audacity to allow objective scientific truth to inform her publicly-expressed support for “protecting” women’s sports from biological males. The angry left simply couldn’t permit an opinion that ran counter to their narrative. Nonetheless, after the woke mob came for her, Cunningham doubled down.
LGBTQ+ wokesters will regret confronting Cunningham. The national attention created by their attacks on an opinion held by a huge majority of Americans inspired some entertaining responses.
TV/radio host Clay Travis, who had already offered the defending WNBA champion Las Vegas Aces a million dollars if they could beat a state high school boys championship team of his choosing, upped his offer to ten million, then offered the WNBA another ten million for a WNBA franchise on which he would play only transgender players: “The most inclusive team in WNBA history.”
Travis: “[A]s primary owner of that franchise…I will pledge that 100 percent of my team will be trans, …men pretending to be women. Our entire coaching staff will be trans. We will not lose a single game. There will probably be some games where we will…not give up a single point.”
Then former NBA players Royce White (6’ 8”) and Enes Kanter Freedom (6’ 10”) entered the chat. Citing the league’s (intentionally?) ambiguous “guidelines,” White and Freedom professed to be women, and declared for the next WNBA draft.
Freedom: “Based on the current [WNBA] guidelines, I can and am officially declaring my eligibility for the upcoming WNBA draft in April 2027.” And: “I look forward to the #WNBA honoring its stated principles. See you at training camp.”
WNBA Commissioner Catherine Engelbert called a league conference to address the issue, citing the league’s “values” of “fair competition.”
The first order of business should have been to decide what, precisely, a woman is, but no…
Engelbert: “We recognize that this is a complex and nuanced topic.”
It is neither. Ask anyone who paid attention in middle school biology class.
Meeting attendees merely agreed to meet again – and again – while attacking “hate and vitriol,” “bigots” and “bad faith efforts” to “demean or marginalize others.”
(Play-by-play announcer: “Engelbert feints right, goes left…she sets…she shoots! AIR BALL!)
For the record, slandering as “haters” and “bigots” the people who oppose allowing biological men to compete against women is just another step in the left’s descent into cultural madness.
Ironically, the WNBA’s “woke” lunacy could ultimately sink the league – and the entire militant transgender movement.
Contact columnist Jerry Shenk at jshenk2010@gmail.com
https://www.pottsmerc.com/2026/08/16/jerry-shenk-the-wnba-is-in-transition/
