Enes Kanter Freedom is insisting that reports suggesting the WNBA will make him ineligible to play in the league are “fake news.”
On Monday, several outlets reported that the ex-NBA center would not be allowed into the league’s draft — with one source telling Front Office Sports that the WNBA is “not going to give oxygen to efforts designed to mock the league or use this topic to demean and marginalize others.”
But Freedom told The Post’s Stefan Bondy that nobody from the league had informed him of any ineligibility.
“I haven’t heard anything from the WNBA officials yet,” he said. “Fake News!”
Freedom and Royce White, a 2012 first-round pick by the NBA’s Rockets, declared themselves women and eligible for the WNBA draft amid the ongoing debate surrounding transgender athletes being allowed to compete in girls’ and women’s sports.
A league source described Freedom and White’s declarations as “simply publicity stunts” to FOS.
The WNBA has become the battleground in a culture war ignited when Fever player Sophie Cunningham told ESPN in an interview published in July she wants “to protect young girls in a locker room, or young girls in sport who shouldn’t have to go against biological men.”
Freedom was ejected from Wintrust Arena on Sunday night after getting into a verbal altercation with Sky star Natasha Cloud during a game against the Fever.
Freedom wore a shirt to the game that read, “WOMAN noun. adult human female.”
The ex-NBA player claimed to several media outlets that Cloud had shouted at him, “[Cunningham] is not going to sleep with you.”
In an interview with Laura Ingraham on Fox News, he repeated the claim, to the bewilderment of the host, who asked, “Are you trying to sleep with Sophie Cunningham?”
Freedom denied that he was.
“Definitely not, definitely not. I’m going to make this very clear, definitely not,” he said on the program.
