Brooklyn Nets forward Michael Porter Jr. has addressed for the first time a controversy surrounding a 2023 trip to Taiwan, saying he was unaware of the transgender identity of the woman he briefly met during the visit.
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Porter’s 2023 NBA championship with the Denver Nuggets came before the incident resurfaced online, and the controversy surrounding his Taiwan visit did not emerge publicly until years later. On a recent episode of his Curious Mike podcast alongside Hollywood personality Jason Lee, the 28-year-old forward addressed reports and social-media speculation surrounding a photo that linked him to Taiwanese transgender influencer Xiao A La. Porter said he did not know the woman’s background at the time of their encounter.
Porter said the situation caught him off guard after a photo from the 2023 trip resurfaced online and began circulating internationally.
“I went out to Taiwan, dog… I was out in Taiwan and like one thing about the women out there is they stay very petite and they, you know, they don’t have a lot going on…” Porter recalled. “So I was out there doing some appearances and I get a DM from some woman out there, and she got something going on. Like, she looks kind of good to me, like more like my type physically. And I respond to the DM. We end up kicking it, but I like was having to talk to her through Google Translate because we didn’t speak the same language.”
Porter said the meeting was brief and that a photograph was taken of the pair. He said he later learned that the image had circulated in Taiwan before reaching audiences in the US.
“And we kicked it for like maybe an hour, and someone had taken a picture. And like three years later, the picture came out. I guess it went viral in Taiwan first, and it never like reached over here. And people were DMing me saying, ‘Yo, you’re going viral in Taiwan right now. People are saying that you were spotted with a transgender woman.’ And I was like, ‘Uh oh.’ But then it reached over here, went viral here, and everyone thought I got caught with a transgender woman.”
Porter said he did not know whether the woman was transgender and stressed that the two did not have an extensive conversation because they communicated through Google Translate.
“I had no [idea] I don’t even know who this woman was, and I don’t know if she was a transgender woman. We never got that far into speaking. We’re talking on Google Translate. Someone took a picture, but to this day, I don’t technically know because some people, especially over there, the surgeries are so good, you really can’t tell if someone’s a woman or a man these days in some of these places in the world.”
Lee, who has discussed transgender issues publicly, offered his view that people involved in intimate relationships have a right to know relevant information about their partners.
“I think if you find yourself in a situation where you meet a trans lady or trans woman who you think is attractive, I think you need to sit with the idea that you are attracted to a person who is presenting as a woman… I do think that everybody, though, has the right to know what they’re getting into.”
In response, Porter reaffirmed his stance, admitting the ordeal blindsided him:
“Yeah, I agree. ‘Cause when that story came out, it caught me completely off guard. Like, I had no idea, and I still don’t think that the woman that I was kicking it with was transgender to this day.”
The resurfaced Taiwan encounter sparked intense interest The Taiwan controversy didn’t really break into the mainstream until 2025, when Taiwanese outlet Mirror Media reported that transgender influencer Xiao A La had been spotted with an unidentified American basketball player at a luxury hotel in Taipei.
The outlet didn’t name Porter outright – instead, it was online users who connected the dots, pointing to his physical build, height, and a partially visible tattoo as the basis for their speculation.
Other reports similarly described the identification as speculation. Porter had visited Taiwan in September 2023 for basketball-related appearances, a fact that was cited alongside the physical similarities as a reason for the online speculation.
Porter’s comments don’t fill in every blank from the original Taiwan reports.
What Porter has made clear is this: the meeting lasted about an hour, he had no knowledge of the woman’s transgender identity at the time, and even after everything became public, there are still parts of the story he says he’s uncertain about.