Former NBA player Enes Kanter Freedom is demanding that Minnesota Lynx head coach Cheryl Reeve step down after she said the push to keep biological males out of women’s sports amounts to an effort to make transgender people “not exist.”
Reeve made the comment after the Lynx beat the Indiana Fever 86-66 at Target Center in Minneapolis on Thursday to close out the regular season. The game drew competing demonstrations outside the arena over transgender participation in women’s sports.
“I think that’s probably one of the more meaningful things that would mark the season for me,” Reeve said. “It’s that the transgender community is one that deserves our support, and what is happening in the name of some issues of transgender in sports — it’s really an attack on all transgender community. They don’t want transgender people to exist.”
Freedom, who played center in the NBA before becoming an outspoken activist, responded in a social media post Saturday.
“Minnesota Lynx head coach Cheryl Reeve should step down immediately. You can’t lead women’s basketball while refusing to stand up for women’s sports. Can someone, for the love of God, please explain to her that: Protecting women’s sports is not an attack on anyone’s existence, nor does it erase a community. Coach, if you truly mean what you just said, then put your hypocrisy aside and prove it by drafting me in the 2027 WNBA Draft,” Freedom wrote.
Reeve, a four-time WNBA champion coach, has raised the transgender issue repeatedly this season — at least four times in media availabilities, according to the coach’s public remarks. She previously wore a “Trans Kids Belong” shirt during a nationally televised game against Indiana on Aug. 2 and said the response to that gesture was among the most meaningful moments of her season.
“The amount of communication of people who were affected by something as simple as wearing a T-shirt in support of them and helping them be seen — with the platform that we have in professional sports, it was a small gesture by me,” Reeve said. “It’s something I believe in, obviously, wholeheartedly.”
“If I could have helped just one to feel differently about themselves, because for the transgender community this really is about life and death for them,” she continued. “The number of parents of transgender kids that I heard from and how it helped them and their families, it helped their child think differently about themselves and that there is someone in our position, like we have as a leader. To know that there are people out there that believe in them, that they belong.”
Reeve also spoke privately before the Aug. 2 game with Fever guard Sophie Cunningham, who has said she wants to protect girls from having to compete against or share locker rooms with biological males while insisting she does not hate transgender people.
“I think that I am here to extend love,” Cunningham said. “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.”
Freedom announced in August that he intends to enter the 2027 WNBA Draft under the name “Enisa Freedom” as a way of testing the league’s eligibility rules. The WNBA’s collective bargaining agreement states that “only players who are women are eligible to play in the WNBA” but does not publicly spell out a definition based on biological sex. He has insisted the campaign is not meant to mock anyone.
“I’m not here to mock, make fun of, or disrespect any group or anyone’s personal decisions,” Freedom wrote in an earlier statement. “What I’m trying to do is bigger than clicks or attention.”
Former NBA player Royce White also weighed in on Reeve’s comments, but with a satirical statement promoting his female alter ego, “Roysha,” calling the Lynx “a perfect home as the new transgender capital of America.”
The WNBA has said there are no immediate eligibility matters affecting the league and has condemned what it calls “bad-faith efforts” to demean or marginalize others. No transgender woman has ever played on a WNBA roster. Commissioner Cathy Engelbert has said the league will continue talks with team leaders and the players’ union while balancing competitive integrity, fairness and inclusion.
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