“Shame on you!” is not a phrase Enes Kanter Freedom throws around casually. Back in 2022, Kanter Freedom used those same two words while attacking then-NBA commissioner Adam Silver over the league’s relationship with China and its treatment of Uyghur Muslims, daring him to look him in the eye and admit what he already knew. Three years later, the target is Kevin Durant, who once shared a locker room with him in Oklahoma City.

The trigger was Durant’s Tuesday appearance at Houston Rockets Media Day, where reporters pressed him on the months-long push by Kanter Freedom and former NBA guard Royce White to force the WNBA to spell out, in writing, who qualifies as a woman. But Durant was not interested in engaging with the substance of it. “I do not give a f— about none of that,” he told reporters, adding that his focus begins and ends with “flourishing and pushing the league forward”.

Now, in a pointed statement shared on X, Kanter Freedom called out Durant while bringing up his controversial 2016 departure from the Oklahoma City Thunder.

The Thunder acquired Kanter Freedom by trade in February 2015 to take scoring pressure off Durant and Russell Westbrook, and for a season and a half the fit worked. Kanter Freedom said he was fully embraced in that locker room, Turkish heritage and all.

Then, in July 2016, weeks after Golden State erased Oklahoma City’s 3-1 conference finals lead, Durant left to join the very team that had just eliminated his own. And Kanter Freedom has since mocked the move as an attempt to build “the Avengers,” noting the Warriors had just won a record 73 games and, in his words, “didn’t need him.”

The fallout got messier a year later. A fan asked Durant on X for “one legitimate reason for leaving okc other than getting a championship,” and Durant, apparently forgetting which account he was logged into, fired back defending himself in the third person, claiming he left partly because “his roster wasn’t that good, it was just him and russ.”

That comment landed directly on teammates like Kanter Freedom. Durant later admitted the burner-account slip and called the episode “idiotic” at a public tech conference. Kanter Freedom, notably, did not really retaliate. He responded by defending the Thunder organization, calling it the “best and most professional organization in the NBA” and describing his former teammates as “FAMILY.”

That said, their private relationship stayed complicated rather than fully severed. The two later shared an apartment complex in New York, and a former Thunder teammate reportedly warned Kanter Freedom, “If I see one picture of you and KD, don’t come back to OKC,” after learning he had played pickup basketball with Durant there.

Still, the recent stir-up has nothing to do with all that.

It all traces back to a Sophie Cunningham profile ESPN published on July 21, in which the Indiana Fever guard said she wants to protect “young girls in a locker room” who “shouldn’t have to go against biological men”. Her remarks triggered a sharp reaction around the league, drawing public support from White House officials and Riley Gaines while also prompting criticism from supporters of transgender inclusion in women’s sports.

Weeks later, Kanter Freedom jumped into the center of it all, declaring on Aug. 7 that he intended to enter the 2027 WNBA Draft and arguing that, under the league’s existing eligibility framework, simply declaring one’s identity should be enough. White followed with a similar declaration hours later. But on Aug. 24, league sources told Front Office Sports and other outlets that neither man was eligible for the 2027 draft, while one league source characterized the declarations as “simply publicity stunts.”

And although KD never named his former Thunder teammate, Kanter Freedom clearly took the NSFW response personally. Even the WNBA has largely moved on, with the playoffs now right around the corner. Kanter, however, isn’t letting the issue fade into an open-ended debate.