No Offseason Newsletter 🏀 | This is The Athletic’s women’s basketball newsletter. Sign up here to receive No Offseason directly in your inbox.Good morning! Coming up today:
Let’s go.Confrontation: Culture wars take the courtSunday night in Chicago, the culture war on trans inclusion in women’s sports made its way onto the court amid the Sky’s last regular-season game against the Indiana Fever.Former NBA player Enes Kanter Freedom was sitting courtside wearing a shirt that read: “WOMAN noun adult human female.” Late in the third quarter after Sky guard Natasha Cloud finished a driving layup at the rim, she turned and walked towards Freedom, pointing at him emphatically while yelling. In response, Freedom stood up with his arms outstretched and walked towards Cloud while exchanging words with her. He had to step over a row of photographers that were blocking his path to the court.Fever security got to Cloud before she could make her way off the court and closer to Freedom, who was subsequently removed by Wintrust Arena security. However, the damage was already done.Another great basketball game was turned into political fodder. The entire WNBA is becoming embroiled by the comments of one of its players, and the league office has mostly ceded the ground to outside actors. The questions facing the WNBA in this current moment range from how to get a handle on the explosive discourse that continues to consume the league to whether there is a need to clarify the competition rules.Earlier this month, Freedom and Royce White, who only appeared in three NBA games, announced their intentions to declare for the 2027 WNBA Draft as a means of pushing against the inclusion of trans women in women’s sports. Both are ineligible to compete in the WNBA, as stated in current CBA rules and confirmed by the league to The Athletic.The topic of trans women competing in the WNBA elevated into the headlines when Fever guard Sophie Cunningham shared her opposition to trans inclusion in women’s sports. Since then, small rallies have been a sideshow on the Fever’s schedule, popping up for road games in cities around the country. Most recently, there were two small rallies outside Barclays Center in New York before the Fever’s game against the Liberty, one for and the other against the inclusion of transgender women in sports.The Fever host the Sun on Friday in their final game before the FIBA World Cup break. But the divisiveness surrounding the WNBA doesn’t appear to be letting up any time soon.Closing Chapter: Ogwumike to retire after 15 seasonsWhen Nneka Ogwumike announced her retirement last week, two sentiments dominated the conversation.The first was gratitude for all that Ogwumike contributed on and off the court during her 15 seasons. Most notable, of course, was her impact on the historic CBA negotiations that lasted roughly 17 months but resulted in a roughly 367 percent salary increase for players.
