Lady Ballers Is Proof That Conservatives Love Making Up Anti-Trans Scenarios in the WNBA

Retired professional basketball players Enes Kanter Freedom and Royce White recently announced that they plan to identify as women — at least within the sport of basketball — in order to enter the WNBA draft. After people criticized the pair for pulling an obvious publicity stunt to stoke transphobic sentiment, White doubled down.The retired basketball player — D-League, mind you — posted a picture of himself wearing a long blonde wig to X on August 9, writing, “It came y’all... My 1st wig! Tomorrow I test it on the court. This is my feminine era glow up, did I slay? If y‘all don't ‘yassss queen’ you're transphobic. I really don’t understand all the hatred, I just want to play some hoops with my fellow ladies.”It came y'all... My 1st wig! Tomorrow I test it on the court. This is my feminine era glow up, did I slay? If y'all don't "yassss queen" you're transphobic. I really don't understand all the hatred, I just want to play some hoops with my fellow ladies. 💅🏽Royce White for U.S.… pic.twitter.com/I98XCP6TFh— Royce White 🇺🇸 (@Highway_30) August 9, 2026 If it wasn’t clownish enough on its own, the strategy isn’t even original.In fact, as many online have observed, it’s pulled directly from the plot of conservative outlet The Daily Wire’s 2023 original film Lady Ballers, a “sports comedy” — and we’d put multiple sets of scare quotes around “comedy” if we could — about a group of men who pretend to be trans in order to dominate in women’s sports and “trigger” supporters of trans rights. Aside from having a deeply transphobic premise, it was also widely received as entirely unfunny. Pick a struggle!The film was originally planned as a documentary, though the Daily Wire had to pivot after no women’s sports leagues agreed to participate, according to the creators Indeed, as much as conservatives love to blow dog whistles about hypothetical men pretending to be trans in order to dominate women’s sports,