Royce White: My pronouns are pay/me.
Enes Kanter & Royce White are two ex-NBA big-men who have recently retired and are now declaring themselves eligible for the 2027 WNBA draft. This is because the WNBA hasn’t defined a woman in its CBA. With no genetic (XX/XY) testing, baseline hormone levels for testosterone, etc, it is impossible for the WNBA to define a woman scientifically or legally, therefore opening the door for men who claim they are women to compete in the WNBA. This is the tangled DEI web the WNBA weaves, which has now trapped them.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll repeat it again: I completely support these two strong women in what they are doing, which is challenging the WNBA to define a woman in its rules. Once they do, these stunts will end. This is a hilarious & beautifully conceived idea that nails the WNBA right where they live. Sports fans have been waiting for this, and are enjoying it thoroughly, but important points do need to be understood to maintain a proper focus on this matter.
Enes Kanter is backed by the America First Policy Institute, a Trump supported think tank. It is a more polished campaign than Royce White’s because it has stronger political backing. The Bruce Pearl interview with Enes Kanter a few days back was terrific, from both a production & content standpoint, talking about potentially playing with Caitlin Clark and getting excited about WNBA basketball,,, Hilarious.
Enes Kanter is a vocal human rights activist with a Western right-wing lean. This made things difficult for him at times in the NBA, but his claim that he was blackballed due to politics is thin at best. He was too old & too slow, particularly defensively, when no NBA offered him a contract in 2022-23. Enes Kanter has been exiled from Türkiye, as he is an acolyte of a political opponent of president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, which is a serious problem in Türkiye. The failed US-led coup attempt against Erdoğan in July 2016, led to harsh reprisals for the party Enes Kanter supports. Enes Kanter’s family, still living in Türkiye, has been forced to disown him by Erdoğan. This makes Enes Kanter a complex & murky figure in international politics.
Royce White is also a Republican, who badly lost his primary bid for US senate in Minnesota last Tuesday. Royce White’s interviews wearing a girls wig may have cost him/her some primary votes, but now he/she says he/she wants to run for US president in 2028 based on the support for his/her WNBA stunt. The WNBA has given a platform to these political charlatans because they themselves are so near-sighted & incompetent.
These aren’t political geniuses here, these are former professional basketball players, and yet they are orders of magnitude smarter than the people who run the WNBA. The right-wing has seized this issue by the throat and the DEI Democrats wouldn’t have it any other way. The Democrats (conservative & liberal) orchestrated this nonsense, knowing it would eventually blow-up in the faces of the liberal supporters who actually thought they believed this nonsense. What they thought they had was political & popular support for this nonsense, which they were told to spout to the media & fans. They didn’t. The WNBA has been used as a political pawn of identity politics, and it’s turned the league into a joke. No sports fans take the WNBA seriously anymore. We tried, but it’s just impossible with all the DEI political drama.
This is the road the WNBA decided to take a long time ago. When Trump retook the White House in January 2025, DEI funding was cut across the board, meaning the WNBA started to take on an ever-increasing role in DEI propaganda dissemination. The Trump administration froze grants, closed agency DEI offices, and placed hundreds of equity workers on administrative leave. Today, the BLM & MeToo campaigns are dead, with little-to-no popular support for their revival. The WNBA brings all that back, and they’re on every network but Fox. Netflix is running a documentary on Sue Bird, while NBC, CBS, ABC, ESPN, Ion, USA & Amazon Prime broadcast WNBA games in 2026. The WNBA is DEI in 2026.
To answer the question in the title, Enes Kanter & Royce White are minor right-wing political figures who seized upon a great opportunity that was presented to them. They deserve credit for their innovation, bravery & sense-of-humor in standing up to the tyranny, bigotry & hypocrisy of the WNBA. On other other hand, they are charlatans pulling a political stunt in service of the far right. People want this to be black or white, when it’s really many shades of gray.
Disclosure: I like Enes Kanter & Royce White better when they identify as women. This stunt really makes you consider things you haven’t considered before, and that’s one. Enes Kanter & Royce White both identify as transgender women for the sole purpose of playing in the WNBA. It’s not a creepy locker room invasion motive, or anything like that, which is what makes it hilarious.
Of course, the WNBA players don’t want Enes Kanter & Royce White in their locker rooms, but what can they do after Gabby Williams, Cheryl Reeve, and the rest of the WNBA– except Sophie Cunningham– invited them in? It’s about fairness and a right to work. Their profession is basketball, and the WNBA is just an opportunity to apply their trade and get paid. Equal opportunity employment is the law, and since there are no criteria that exclude Enes Kanter & Royce White from playing in the WNBA, they are insisting on their legal right to play in the WNBA in 2027.
Obviously Enes Kanter & Royce White aren’t smart enough to handle the WNBA all by themselves, and that’s where the political backing is so crucial. The far right is guiding these two on how to play it straight with the media, which keeps their stunts within the realm of legitimacy. It’s a very fine line Enes Kanter & Royce White are having to maintain, and the political muscle behind their campaigns is what’s keeping these two on message & in the news.
The far right is trying to benefit from this, but as I’ve explained earlier, this is a populist issue, meaning 95+% of people agree on this. A small political elite, who probably don’t believe this nonsense themselves, are pushing this trans agenda as a political wedge & stalking horse. The final political result will be a disgrace for the Democrats, particularly the liberal faction, with a small bump for the far right. The masses who are discontent with both parties need to understand this rigged game as a falsely-framed debate. Those who are abandoning the Democrats over nonsense like this, aren’t turning to the far right, they are turning to the socialist left. You aren’t allowed to discuss that fact in the corporate media.
If you aren’t a right-wing bigot, and you also reject DEI, then the only place to turn politically is to the left. This is the real crisis with the WNBA now. It has lost the left-leaning masses, including some LGBTQ proponents, by taking a philistine position on an issue that makes the far-right look rational. It’s the ‘educated liberals’ who are supposed to make the ‘bigoted far-right’ look irrational, that’s their elitist claim, yet it’s the other way around on transgender DEI.
After understanding all these political nuances & complexities surrounding Enes Kanter & Royce White, I still recommend supporting them in their stunts that are calling out the WNBA on their DEI garbage. This league which fawns over its ‘inclusiveness & diversity’ has treated Enes Kanter & Royce White with barely restrained hostility & hateful bigotry. The WNBA doesn’t attempt to understand them, or fairly respond to their points-of-view, they simply reject & ignore them. It’s what they do to anyone who doesn’t agree 100% with their agenda.
Unfortunately for the WNBA, they can’t stick their heads in the sand much longer, as this stunt is gaining traction in the sports world. Online articles & social media commentary are through the roof with support for Enes Kanter & Royce White. The old cliché says you can’t buy this kind of publicity, but maybe you can. You just need the right friends, which Enes Kanter & Royce White have.
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Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has extensively weaponized “bad-faith” framing against her leftist opponents. As AOC has shifted her rhetoric away from liberalism and towards more moderate Democratic policies, she has frequently attacked the left over what she views as “counterproductive purity testing”, calling them “bad faith actors” and “privileged”. Notice how similar AOC’s language is to that used by the WNBA to discredit Enes Kanter & Royce White.
The “purity testing” AOC is referring to is the solidifying of ideological alignment through serious debate within a political party. This is a healthy process in politics when done earnestly, as it binds & strengthens the political organization so it can better withstand outside attacks and attempts to split the party. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez considers this process ‘counterproductive’ because it allows no room for political maneuvering through the compromising of orthodox party principles– particularly socialist principles.
In other words, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is an opportunist with no serious political principles. AOC prefers to remain flexible in her political ideology, just as the WNBA prefers to remain flexible on defining a woman. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has repeatedly slandered principled socialists as “bad faith actors” for pointing this out. That’s why real socialists label AOC as fake left. The WNBA brands Enes Kanter & Royce White as “bad faith actors” for similar reasons. What AOC & the WNBA do is nothing more than playbook, reactionary politics.
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