a former nba player told a wnba coach to quit over trans people. she won coach of the year the next morning. be so for real.

Cheryl Reeve at a Minnesota Lynx press conference. Photo: Lorie Shaull, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

via the Lynx press conference as posted by Andrew Dukowitz, OutKick, the Associated Press, Yahoo Sports and the AP's WNBA awards.

Timing is a gift, and this weekend the gift went to Cheryl Reeve.

On Thursday night, after her Minnesota Lynx closed the regular season with an 86-66 win over the Indiana Fever, Reeve was asked what had mattered to her this year. Her answer is on video, posted by Andrew Dukowitz: "I think that's probably one of the more meaningful things that would mark the season for me. It's that the transgender community is one that deserves our support." OutKick's transcript has her going on to say that what is happening in the name of trans people in sports is "really an attack on all transgender community," and then: "They don't want transgender people to exist." OutKick also notes she wore a Trans Kids Belong shirt on a national broadcast earlier this season.

what enes asked for

Saturday morning, Enes Kanter Freedom, a 6-foot-10 former NBA center, posted this to 6,700-plus likes and counting:

Enes Kanter FREEDOM @EnesFreedomMinnesota 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.6,713 likes

Two small problems with the draft part. The first is that Freedom already tried. He and fellow ex-NBA player Royce White declared for the 2027 WNBA Draft this summer after saying they identified as women, a stunt aimed at the league's eligibility rules. On Aug. 24, a person familiar with the decision told the AP that neither man is eligible, and league sources told Yahoo Sports the same, with one calling the declarations "simply publicity stunts" that the league "won't give oxygen to." So the dare is a request to be drafted into a league whose own people, per two separate newsrooms, have already said no.

The second is that Reeve does not appear to be in the market for a 34-year-old center whose last viral WNBA moment, per the AP, was being escorted out of a Sky game in Chicago in August.

how sunday went

On Sunday the Associated Press released its WNBA awards, voted by a national media panel. A'ja Wilson took Player of the Year for a third straight season. And Coach of the Year went to Cheryl Reeve, the AP reports, her third, after 2020 and 2024, for taking the Lynx to the No. 1 playoff seed while Napheesa Collier missed the first half of the season recovering from surgery on both ankles.

Freedom asked her to step down. A national panel of sportswriters voted her up instead. Only one of those was a real ballot.