Enes Kanter made national headlines at Sunday’s Fever-Sky game at Wintrust Arena in Chicago when he got into a verbal altercation with Chicago guard Natasha Cloud.
He claims he was present to “protect women and support Sophie Cunningham” as Cloud allegedly yelled expletives at him while he stood baseline with his arms spread out.
While many on the conservative side are hailing Kanter as a hero of sorts for standing firm on not wanting transgender athletes to enter the WNBA, analyst Ryen Russillo believes otherwise.
Ryen Russillo Doesn’t Want Enes Kanter to Take Center Stage in the Trans Athlete Controversy
“Enes Kanter is just looking for attention,” wrote Russillo on X. He released a video from the ‘Ryen Russillo Show’ and said,
“Say, you’re a Sophie Cunningham fan. I don’t think you should be an Enes Kanter fan or a Royce White fan.”
Both of the aforementioned former NBA players have declared for the 2027 WNBA Draft.
However, a recent report, citing an anonymous source, stated that they would not be eligible for the draft.
Enes Kanter is just looking for attention pic.twitter.com/C0WvId185U
— The Ryen Russillo Show (@TheRyenRussillo) August 24, 2026
Concrete reasoning for this has not yet been provided to the public in an official statement.
“This is about attention for them,” Russillo continued. “For Kanter to show up to a WNBA game, get into it with a player on the court — maybe I’m a little old school, but the fact that the player is a woman and he’s gonna stand up on the baseline and then get thrown out.”
“I’m just telling you to the right: You thinking Kanter is ‘your guy’ now? Pick a different guy. That’s as simple as I can make the message. He’s not you hero on this. He loves what happened this weekend. He loves that everyone’s talking about him today because that’s his goal.”
Sandwiched between his summary of what transpired on Sunday night and his take on Kanter wanting attention was Russillo’s refusal to add fuel to the fire by giving his take on the trans-eligibility debate.
“Those of us that have done this long enough go ‘What’s the [expletive] point?’”
Russillo isn’t the only media personnel to take shots at Kanter for trying to make this sensitive situation seemingly about himself.
Charlamagne Tha God had his ‘Donkey of the Day’ segment on the Breakfast Club and chose the 11-year NBA veteran. This came after what happened at the Sky-Fever game.
“He says he’s doing all of this because he wants to protect women. How did protecting women become making yourself the main character in women’s spaces? If you have to manufacture the crisis you’re warning everybody about, you’re not raising awareness to a problem, you actually are the problem.”
Charlamagne tha God on Enes Kanter: “He says he’s doing all of this because he wants to protect women. How did protecting women become making yourself the main character in women’s spaces? If you have to manufacture the crisis you’re warning everybody about, you’re not raising… pic.twitter.com/lz6EhEnEWY
— Marco Foster (@MarcoFoster_) August 24, 2026
Since the incident, Kanter has maintained his innocence in this interaction, stating that Cloud started the argument.
While on the ‘Ingraham Angle’ show on Fox News, Kanter said any report that states he may get banned from showing up to WNBA arenas in the future was “fake news”.
In fact, he’s not lost a bit of steam as he stated on her show that he plans to attend “every single” Playoff game the Fever play to showcase his support for Cunningham.
