Enes Kanter Freedom praised the WNBA’s players after Saturday’s Game 7, then immediately turned back to the eligibility fight that has shadowed his campaign. After the Golden State Valkyries beat the Atlanta Dream 68-63 at Chase Center in San Francisco, he called the league’s athletes hardworking and talented, but said he wanted better leadership and warned that he could still show up at the 2027 WNBA Draft.
The timing matters because the game was not just any championship clincher. Golden State won its first title in just its second season, and Gabby Williams led the way with 30 points in the first Game 7 in WNBA Finals history. Freedom’s remarks put his long-running push back in front of the league at the moment its biggest stage had just produced a historic result.
Freedom did not stop at praise. He said, “I just wish they had better leadership, because the conversation should be about their incredible performances on the court, not controversies off it. My hope is that next year we can finally have some peace and let basketball be the focus again.” He added, “But if not, I’ll see you ladies at the 2027 WNBA Draft. Rules are rules!”
That line keeps the dispute alive even as the championship spotlight shifts away. Freedom announced his draft bid in August and said he identifies as a woman, but the WNBA has already deemed him ineligible. Cathy Engelbert said on Oct. 16 that “only women are eligible to play in the WNBA” and identified Freedom as a man, after a September inquiry led by Marlin Stutzman. The league’s 2026 collective bargaining agreement says only players who are women are eligible, but it does not set out a separate eligibility policy for transgender women.
That missing language is the fault line Freedom keeps pressing. He has said he would end his campaign if the league explicitly restricted eligibility to biological women, while Gabby Williams said in May, “I would welcome a trans athlete on my team or against my team, anytime.” Freedom later pointed to Williams’s comments as the reason he launched the bid, which has made his latest remarks less a reaction to the title game than a reminder that the argument is still unfinished.
For now, the WNBA has a champion, a first-time title run and a player who turned a basketball celebration back into a rulebook fight. Whether that ends with a change in language, or with Freedom trying to force the issue at the 2027 WNBA Draft, is the question that still hangs over the league.
