{"id":77700,"date":"2026-08-21T08:54:50","date_gmt":"2026-08-21T13:54:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/2026\/08\/21\/wnba-commissioner-says-haters-trying-to-stir-up-debate-about-trans-athletes-and-league\/"},"modified":"2026-08-21T08:54:50","modified_gmt":"2026-08-21T13:54:50","slug":"wnba-commissioner-says-haters-trying-to-stir-up-debate-about-trans-athletes-and-league","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/2026\/08\/21\/wnba-commissioner-says-haters-trying-to-stir-up-debate-about-trans-athletes-and-league\/","title":{"rendered":"WNBA commissioner says \u2018haters\u2019 trying to stir up debate about trans athletes and league"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li>\n<p>Transgender woman has never played in the league<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p>Engelbert says league being used as \u2018political football\u2019<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The WNBA commissioner, Cathy Engelbert, has denounced people she said are trying to \u201csow divisiveness\u201d as the league <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/sport\/2026\/aug\/13\/wnba-transgender-eligibility-bad-faith-statement\">grapples with a debate<\/a> over transgender athletes.<\/p>\n<p>Engelbert made the comments on Thursday before the Indiana Fever\u2019s loss to the Dallas Wings at the home of the Dallas Mavericks. Demonstrators showed up outside American Airlines Center, as they have at other venues since the Fever\u2019s Sophie Cunningham <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/sport\/2026\/aug\/01\/sophie-cunningham-transgender-sports-protests-fever-wnba-portland\">voiced support<\/a> for barring transgender girls and women from girls\u2019 and women\u2019s sports.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/sport\/2026\/aug\/21\/wnba-commissioner-says-haters-trying-to-stir-up-debate-about-trans-athletes-and-league\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Transgender woman has never played in the league Engelbert says league being used as \u2018political football\u2019 The WNBA commissioner, Cathy Engelbert, has denounced people she said are trying to \u201csow divisiveness\u201d as the league grapples with a debate over transgender athletes. Engelbert made the comments on Thursday before the Indiana Fever\u2019s loss to the Dallas &#8230; <a title=\"WNBA commissioner says \u2018haters\u2019 trying to stir up debate about trans athletes and league\" class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/2026\/08\/21\/wnba-commissioner-says-haters-trying-to-stir-up-debate-about-trans-athletes-and-league\/\" aria-label=\"Read more about WNBA commissioner says \u2018haters\u2019 trying to stir up debate about trans athletes and league\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-77700","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77700","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=77700"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77700\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77700"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77700"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77700"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}