Cathy Engelbert Addresses WNBA Eligibility Questions After 2 Former NBA Players Declare
· Yahoo Sports
Cathy Engelbert said the WNBA has no eligibility cases in front of it, telling The Associated Press in a Friday phone interview, hours after the league said she will retire as commissioner on Dec. 31.
The question has followed the league through the 2026 season. Two former NBA players have declared for the WNBA draft, and one of them is now suing the Chicago Sky in federal court over an ejection from a game last month.
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Engelbert said the online attacks on players are unacceptable and that she supports the league's initiatives to protect them.
"We have no current eligibility issues in the WNBA," Engelbert said, adding that "if we did, we would have a thoughtful policy discussion with the (players' association) and the players."
Under the collective bargaining agreement, only women are eligible to play. The document says nothing further about gender identity or sex assigned at birth, and the league has never had a transgender player.
Enes Kanter Freedom and Royce White declared for the draft this summer, saying they identify as women. The AP reported, citing a person familiar with the decision, that neither is eligible. Front Office Sports has reported that Freedom was ruled ineligible for the 2027 draft.
Freedom, 34, was removed from Wintrust Arena on Aug. 23 during the third quarter of the Sky's game against the Indiana Fever. He was sitting along the baseline in a black shirt reading "WOMAN noun. adult human female" when Sky guard Natasha Cloud walked toward him during a timeout and shouted at him. He stood, put his arms out, and stepped onto the court. Security intervened.
Sky owner Michael Alter banned Freedom from the arena two days later. Freedom filed suit Thursday in U.S. District Court in Illinois against the Sky's operating company, the Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority, and the city of Chicago, alleging his First Amendment rights were violated. Alter responded Friday with a statement calling the suit "meritless and frivolous."
Cloud first addressed the incident on Aug. 29 in New York, ahead of a game against the Liberty, and described Freedom as an "irrelevant person." Domestic violence, sexual assault, and food insecurity are the issues affecting women she said she would rather discuss.
The debate picked up in July after Fever guard Sophie Cunningham told ESPN the league should bar biological males from playing.
Engelbert has been commissioner since July 2019 and is the second-longest-serving leader in league history. She told the AP the league will run a succession process over her final four months and that she will stay on if no replacement is hired by the end of the year. Both internal and external candidates are under consideration.
Chicago's next home game is Sept. 17 against the Washington Mystics, once the World Cup break ends.