The Chicago Sky wanted to shut down the latest controversy surrounding former NBA player Enes Kanter Freedom following his ejection from their arena. However, according to WNBA analyst Jemele Hill, the franchise may have inadvertently done the opposite.
During a recent segment on the Flagrant and Funny podcast, Hill and co-host Cari Champion discussed the recent announcement from the Chicago Sky, which banned Freedom from the Wintrust Arena following his heated interaction with guard Natasha Cloud during the game against the Indiana Fever on August 23. There, Hill expressed that banning Freedom might not have been the right move.
“I don’t think he should have been banned, because if you ban him, Cari, it’s going to feed exactly what he wants, which is more attention,” she said in a clip posted to Instagram.
“This is what you don’t want to do, you don’t want to make him a martyr for those people… Now we got to hear this s*** another week. You have to starve attention w***** from the thing they want, which is the attention. And while I definitely understand why T-Cloud checked him, there was a part of me that was like, ‘Damn.’ But now he’s gonna get that thing that he was hoping. He was praying to get this reaction.”
During the game against the Fever, Freedom got into a verbal exchange with Cloud during the third quarter, leading to the guard having to be held back by teammates as the former NBA player walked past the baseline, leading to arena security escorting him outside.
Following the incident, on August 25, Chicago Sky owner Michael Alter addressed beat writers and local media, telling them that Kanter was not going to be allowed back into the Sky’s home games.
“He has demonstrated to us, unequivocally, that he has the potential to be a threat,” Alter said to reporters after the altercation. “That he is not able to control himself to the extent where we can be comfortable that he may [not] step towards the court again and towards the players. So that is the basis for which we will not permit him into the building until such time as he can prove otherwise.”
The owner also explained that, upon speaking to others who had been present within the arena, he was told Freedom had tried verbally engaging Cloud multiple times before the moment when he stood up from his seat. Alter expressed that things changed when he stopped being a fan and turned into a “potential threat.”
Fans who have followed the situation know this began with Freedom’s support for Sophie Cunningham’s stance on transgender athletes in women’s sports. Following her controversial comments in an ESPN profile released on July 21, Freedom declared that he was eligible for the upcoming WNBA Draft to challenge the league’s eligibility criteria.
The Sky might have removed Enes Kanter Freedom from the building, but by doing so, Hill believes they have ensured that he’s going to remain a part of the conversation.
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The post “Don’t Think He Should Be Banned”: WNBA Analyst Makes Feelings Clear on Enes Kanter Freedom Amid Chicago Sky’s Arena Ban appeared first on EssentiallySports. Add EssentiallySports as a Preferred Source by clicking here.
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