Natasha Cloud stands firm in protecting WNBA against ‘political or culture wars’

Chicago Sky guard Natasha Cloud has long been one of the WNBA’s fiercest advocates and activists — winning the Dawn Staley Community Leadership Award in the same year she won the WNBA title in 2019.

Cloud has never backed down, and she’s not about to abandon her voice when it is needed more than ever.

In the month since ESPN published a Sophie Cunningham profile, in which she aligned with barring transgender athletes from women’s sports, antagonists have latched onto the WNBA to push that agenda.

Last Sunday, during the Sky’s loss to the Indiana Fever in Chicago, Cloud got into a verbal altercation with Enes Kanter Freedom, who was ejected.  The ex-NBA player previously mocked the transgender community by declaring for the 2027 WNBA Draft.

“To every trans kid/person, you are apart of MY community [and] tribe,” Cloud posted on Threads afterward. “You belong. You’re loved. You’re seen. You’re perfect as you are [and] you will always be protected by me.”

Before the Sky’s game against the New York Liberty on Saturday, Cloud met with the media for the first time since then. She declined to acknowledge Kanter, “an irrelevant person,” according to the Chicago Sun-Times.

In typical Natasha Cloud fashion, she redirected everyone’s attention to legitimate issues facing the country, especially women in the country. She called out the right wing for using the transgender community to distract and divide and scoffed at the hypocrisy of those shouting about protecting women when their past actions suggest they couldn’t care less about women.

“It is an intentional distraction,” Cloud said. “The more that we hate each other and have bias against each other, the more we’re going to be distracted from real-life issues that are plaguing these communities that we’re here to support and here to protect.”

“We won’t allow our league to be used as a pawn for any political or cultural wars that the right wants,” Cloud said, per Chicago State of Mind Sports. “We’re absolutely not going to. This league has always stood on principle and on our humanitarian efforts.”

Last week, the WNBA released a similar statement to Front Office Sports.

Cloud additionally explained why she feels so passionately about using her platform.

“Everywhere I go, I mean, I just had a fan who identifies as trans cry to me in here, and this is why I do what I do,” Cloud said, according to Myles Ehrlich. “None of this is performative. I don’t want to put myself in front of fires all the time. I don’t want to be the one that always has to speak up. But somebody has to f*cking do it.”

Cloud continued:

“With this platform, with all these phones in my face, with all these stories that you’re about to write today, I would be doing a disadvantage to communities that I desperately care about, that I identify with, if I didn’t use this platform to try to shed light on issues that are plaguing those communities. But I feel empowered. I tell people all the time, jokingly, dogs and kids and babies love me, so I’m good at heart.

“But especially when I come around these arenas, and I have so many people reach out to me, show me love. It just, if anything, it reignites the feeling of having to stand up for others because it’s reaching, it’s being felt, it’s being heard, and that’s what we’re supposed to do.”

Earlier this summer, Cloud walked Sue Bird through her prolonged free agency before signing with Chicago in May.

“My contract was terminated because I hired an outside marketing agency,” Cloud said on the June 5 episode of Bird’s Eye View with Sue Bird. “Because I was a really happy with the agency that I was with on the court, [it] was amazing; always got my contracts, my basketball deals on the court. But when it came to off the court, I was just being told I wasn’t marketable. I was being told my activism was a reason as to why I wasn’t getting certain deals and sponsorships.”

Cloud has the full support of her peers, however. Sky head coach Tyler Marsh voiced his support after Kanter’s stunt.

“I told her that we all embrace her as someone that protects our team and protects people that need to be protected,” Marsh told reporters. “Tash is always going to stand on that, and we stand for Tash.”

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