Former NBA center Enes Kanter Freedom says he is now receiving death threats once every hour after declaring himself a woman in order to expose the WNBAs transgender policies and announcing his intention to play in the league.
Speaking on Fox News Outnumbered, Freedom pushed back against critics who claim his move is a publicity stunt. According to WND, he told host Harris Faulkner, I want to make this very clear because a lot of the WNBA players are coming out and saying I do this for attention. He then described the nature of the threats flooding his social media: Let me tell you something. My DMs (direct messages on X) are full of pictures and videos of the moment that Charlie Kirk got shot. Theyre saying that I am next very soon.
This is unacceptable, and Im getting death threats once every hour because of simply following the WNBA rules, Freedom added, underscoring that he is merely applying the leagues own gender policies to highlight their consequences. He went on to blast league leadership, declaring, The commissioner of the WNBA Cuckoo Cathy (Engelbert), I call her stepped down because she couldnt take the pressure. But I just hope whoever the next commissioner is makes the right decision and add the word biological in their collective bargaining, or I am playing in 2027.
Faulkner, clearly taken aback, emphasized the seriousness of the situation on air. Well, that was a shocker, she responded. You really dropped something on us there. Thats a real threat. She then tied the threats to the recent national trauma surrounding political violence, saying, Thats very concerning, and considering the one-year observance from all of us is this week with Charlie Kirks assassination. I know youre taking that seriously.
The Fox News host closed the segment with a plea for national sanity and safety. I pray for you and for this country. We cannot become worse than we already are at this moment. For Freedom, the latest wave of intimidation is part of a long pattern of threats he has faced for challenging authoritarianism abroad and woke orthodoxy at home.
This is not the first time the 34-year-old has been targeted for his outspoken views. The Switzerland-born former Turkish national has previously revealed that he received gruesome decapitation threats allegedly tied to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Fascist Erdogan using his goons to keep sending me Death Threats, Freedom posted on X in July 2020. This is ONLY some of the thousands of Death Threats I get every day.
He vowed then, as now, not to back down in the face of intimidation. I will NOT stop until every innocent soul in Turkish prisons is set free, he wrote, directly addressing the strongman leader. Im in your head you tyrant @RTErdogan ?? RENT FREE. His willingness to confront both foreign dictators and domestic cultural elites has made him a rare figure in professional sports, where many athletes avoid controversy or align reflexively with progressive causes.
Freedom has recently escalated his campaign to defend womens sports and expose what he sees as the ideological capture of the WNBA. As WorldNetDaily reported Sunday, he even offered to take over leadership of the league after current commissioner Cathy Engelbert announced she will step down at the end of the 2026 season. In a post on X, he declared, MAKE @WNBA FEMALE AGAIN. Commissioner Freedom Has a Nice Ring to It.
He argued that Engelberts departure is a tacit admission that the leagues current direction is unsustainable. While the reported retirement of #WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert is a win for women and an admission that the leagues rules must change, her retirement does not solve the systemic issues which must be addressed in order to protect womens sports, he wrote. If the WNBA is unable to define what a woman is, then I, Enes Kanter Freedom, would be more than happy to step in as commissioner and lead this league back to greatness and restore fairness for all women.
Freedom promised to bring traditional, reality-based standards back to the womens game. Ill bring common sense. Ill bring fairness. And yes, Ill bring a dictionary. His comments reflect a broader conservative concern that womens sports are being undermined by gender ideology that refuses to recognize biological differences between men and women.
His activism has also moved into the legal arena. Last week, as WorldNetDaily noted, Freedom announced he had filed a federal lawsuit against the WNBAs Chicago Sky franchise and the city of Chicago after he was ejected from a game against the Indiana Fever for wearing a T-shirt bearing the dictionary definition of a woman as an adult human . SEE YOU IN COURT!!! Just filed a federal complaint. Im taking legal action over my ejection from the @chicagosky game while peacefully exercising my First Amendment rights, he explained.
He stressed that his protest was peaceful and rooted in basic biological truth, not hostility. My T-shirt did what the whole @WNBA apparently couldnt: define a woman. No threats. No violence. Just biology. And somehow, that required a security escort. You dont have to agree with my speech but you dont get to silence me for it. I will not be intimidated. I will not be silenced. I will continue to stand for women and defend free speech.
As the threats mount and the legal battle unfolds, Freedoms stance highlights a stark divide in American culture over gender, free expression, and the integrity of womens sports. His critics accuse him of provocation, but his supporters see a former NBA player willing to risk his safety and career to defend biological reality, womens rights, and the First Amendment against both corporate cowardice and progressive intolerance.
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