Patrick Beverley has imagined one phone call from his daughter that he clearly does not want to receive. Adlaia Beverley is a basketball player competing on the EYBL circuit, pursuing a college opportunity of her own, and Beverley has described exactly what that call could sound like. “Dad, Royce White and Enes Kanter are in my locker room,” he said a month ago. That is why, during his Out The Mud appearance, the podcast hosted by Zach Randolph and Tony Allen, whose tagline is “where bullies get bullied,” Beverley didn’t hold back again.

“You’re trying to get a point across,” Beverley told his hosts. “It’s 100 ways to skin a cat. Don’t you get on there, put on no wigs, and do all that. Don’t you disrespect that brand like that, right? I got a trans cousin. I got a gay cousin. I got love for everybody. I don’t care. It ain’t that deep with me, man. Love who you love, man. Peace and love. Keep it moving.”

So Beverley warned the two former players again: “But you ain’t about to tell me, man, you about to compete with these WNBA players. If my daughter tells me that you in the locker room with her, I’m at the facility after practice.”

Tony Allen, the co-host of the podcast, also addressed the controversy. But the former Memphis star’s argument centered less on Kanter and White themselves and more on the respect he believes the WNBA deserves.

“Let’s respect them as women,” he said. “Let’s not make a mockery out of nothing that they folks getting million-dollar contracts now. And that’s why — being a father of girl — it’s sensitive to me, bro… it’s no time to make a mockery out of that.”

The latest WNBA flare-up of the debate began with Sophie Cunningham. The Indiana Fever guard told ESPN in a July 21 profile that she wanted young girls kept out of competition against what she called biological men, and when reporters pushed her on it the next day, she didn’t blink: “I said what I said.”

The remarks set off protests outside arenas on both sides of the issue, got a Seattle Storm co-owner suspended for confronting teenage fans, and had Minnesota coach Cheryl Reeve wearing a “Trans Kids Belong” T-shirt under her jacket within days. Into that opening stepped Kanter Freedom and White.

Within hours of each other in early August, both announced their intentions to declare for the 2027 draft, pointing to the WNBA’s eligibility framework, whose CBA says only women are eligible but does not further define the term. White even posted himself in a new blonde wig and joked he’d entered his “feminine era.”

Beverley weighed in soon afterward on his own show, aiming squarely at Kanter Freedom: “You ain’t even from here. You come to another country, they give you $102 million in the NBA.”

Then, on August 23, Kanter Freedom sat courtside at a Chicago Sky-Indiana Fever game wearing a shirt spelling out a dictionary definition of “woman,” got into it with Sky guard Natasha Cloud, and was escorted out of Wintrust Arena. Sky owner Michael Alter subsequently barred him from Wintrust Arena for Sky games unless he could demonstrate that he would abide by the arena’s rules. And Cloud made the ask clear afterward: “We’re asking for protection, and that’s what protection looks like from a man.”

Freedom also sent Commissioner Cathy Engelbert a five-point demand for answers. He wanted to know what rule had been used to eject him, who actually ordered his removal, whether Natasha Cloud’s conduct toward him would be reviewed and whether she or the Sky would face consequences, why he had not received a refund for his courtside tickets, and whether the league would preserve all video, security reports, and communications surrounding the incident. He gave the WNBA five business days to respond.

Days later, White showed up to a Fever-Connecticut Sun game wig and all anyway, telling reporters he’d come to scout the competition. The league had already condemned what it called ‘bad-faith efforts’ to use the issue to demean or marginalize others, and by August 24, league sources had confirmed that both men were ineligible for the 2027 draft.

White kept going regardless, rebranding himself online as “Queen Roysha,” while a group of Republican lawmakers has since pointed to that same ineligibility ruling as proof that the league already knows exactly what a woman is, even without saying so on paper.

The controversy eventually intersected with the WNBA’s leadership. On September 4, commissioner Cathy Engelbert announced she would retire at year’s end after seven years in the job. Days later, Beverley offered his own theory about Engelbert’s departure on his podcast: “They got her out of there… they cooked her.”

That said, he wasn’t the only former Laker unimpressed by the theatrics, either. Montrezl Harrell, who won a title with the Lakers in 2020, called the whole campaign “corny and lame” that same week, arguing that two grown men storming arenas for attention weren’t winning anyone over.