The worst people you know have taken the fear-mongering over transgender athletes and the WNBA all the way to its most illogical conclusion.
To be clear, there has never been a transgender athlete in the WNBA. Ever. There are no transgender athletes competing in the NWSL or other major women’s pro sports leagues in the United States either. There is now a very clear Olympic ban on transgender athletes competing in female competitions. The Supreme Court has upheld state bans. And the NCAA reported in 2024 that there were fewer than ten trans athletes competing across the entirety of college athletics.
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However, Sophie Cunningham’s comments on trans athletes were a bat signal for the anti-trans machine to kick into overdrive. The last couple of weeks have been an incredibly predictable culture wars saga with Riley Gaines showing up for photo ops, Fox News suddenly finding an interest in the WNBA against the wishes of their own hosts, and the entire facade being used as an opportunity for hateful rhetoric to flourish.
But the absurdity was taken to a whole new level on Friday when NBA veteran turned political opportunist Enes Kanter “declared” himself eligible for the 2027 WNBA Draft. He was followed by Minnesota Senate candidate and all-around weird dude Royce White, who did likewise.
This, of course, is stupid. It’s nothing more than an idiotic stunt designed to get 15 minutes of attention for their grift and bring increased abuse and mockery to the real transgender community.
But leave it to Chris Broussard to take the bait.
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The FS1 star and First Things First panelist reacted to the week’s events in a bizarre social media post, saying that if the WNBA wasn’t careful, women’s professional basketball would turn into the G League.
It’s not Broussard’s first time stepping into these waters. When he was at ESPN in 2013, he very controversially took it upon himself to declare that the late Jason Collins was not a Christian after he publicly came out as gay. He then left ESPN for FS1 in 2016 and, to his credit, has reinvented himself and found a home at First Things First. Along with Kevin Wildes and Nick Wright, the trio has built the show into the channel’s flagship studio program.
But this is so far out of bounds for a mainstream sports talk show host that it calls into question Broussard’s fitness for the role. And in case you thought he was alone, CBS college basketball analyst Bruce Pearl unsurprisingly is falling into the same category. But given who Bruce Pearl has shown himself to be in recent years, that’s not a surprise either.
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If Chris Broussard is willing to go as far as to suggest that the WNBA will soon be overrun by fringe NBA players and rejects who suddenly declare themselves transgender athletes, then he, like many others, is simply detached from reality.
As Jemele Hill has observed, there really is no actual transgender athlete debate in the real world. The “protect women’s sports” crowd has largely won. There are strict rules around competition at almost every level. And no adult male athlete has actually undergone the very personal and serious decision of transitioning genders simply for sporting reasons. To be perfectly clear, this has never happened in the WNBA in thirty years of competition.
But Chris Broussard is blasting out to his 1.3 million followers that dozens of male basketball players are en masse going to become transgender and stage a hostile takeover of the WNBA?He might as well have tweeted that an army of talking dolphins are going to take over the NFL. That’s the likelihood of events that we are talking about here.
What Chris Broussard and Bruce Pearl don’t realize is that this is not a game. 40% of transgender adults in the United States have attempted suicide. Suggesting that the transgender community is suddenly having secret meetings around the country to decide how best to conquer the WNBA is pure insanity. And it is a disgrace considering the actual lives transgender individuals are trying to live far away from this spotlight.
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What Enes Kanter and Royce White are trying to do is something that nobody in their right mind is actually entertaining outside the fringiest of the fringe far-right feedback loop. It’s petty, it’s spiteful, it’s malicious, and it’s deranged. And anyone willing to engage in this hateful farce is living a sad existence.
The post Chris Broussard irrationally fears WNBA may turn into G League appeared first on Awful Announcing.
