By Robert M. Levy

This story is not about the Women’s Basketball Association (WNBA) becoming the champion of transgender rights. Nor is a story about protecting women’s sports. It is about the lack of criticism of the media, liberal and conservative alike, when they “bury the lede,” on stories about the transgender controversy in the WNBA. (And yeah, it’s “lede” not “lead”. The spelling is correct).

The WNBA story is a business story about how the league “suckered” its players, its coaches and the American people into endowing the organization with prosperity beyond the racial and sexual dreams of what former female player Sydney Colson described as their “Black, queer” basketball league.

First, let’s look at the facts. There are no “transgender women” (biological men) in the WNBA. The league and its franchisees are not that stupid. If the WNBA was opened to biologically male “second-string bench warmers” from the nation’s top colleges, they would swarm the WNBA with talent that would dwarf every female player in the league. Queer, Black and real female unemployment would skyrocket.

Lia Thomas types who are not popular enough to make money selling their name, image, and likeness (NIL) for anything more than the price of a Big Mac can still dunk a basketball a foot over the head of almost every female player in the WNBA. The mere possibility that a 6-foot 7 inch only slightly talented male dribbler might make millions in the WNBA would motivate any baritone basketball forward to wear fake breasts and vocalize soprano.

Still, any team signing even a small share of surplus male mediocrity would win every title women’s basketball has to offer. In the short term, a team might make “big bank” by paying a man to pretend; but the long-term downside would be devastating. And the league knows that.

Franchises are familiar with the rules of mathematics.

When the same value is placed on both sides of an equation, the mathematical statement does not change. They know that (where XX = a real woman; where T = a man who plays a woman), XX=XX. Also XX+T=XX+T. But, in sports like basketball, T is greater than XX (T>XX). So, XX can never equal T (XX ≠ T). Only T=T.

Hence, the only way to win a game where trans (men) are the opponents is to overload your team with transgenders. Sure, a few lucky lesbians, and one or two straights might make the grade; but they would be as prevalent as the women who win push-up contests during Navy SEAL Team training.

If biological men were included on WNBA rosters, it would change the “women’s basketball league” into nothing more than a “drag show.” Sydney Colson’s Black Queers would lose their league. Its cause of death would be suicide…drowned by its own pomposity…hanged when “hoisted on its own petard.”

The league is not that stupid. There is a lot of profit to be made when “cat fights” interrupt an otherwise mundane basketball game. It’s no different from a wreck on a NASCAR track, a bench-clearing brawl in a baseball game, or a high stick denting the cup protecting a hockey player’s masculinity. The rules aren’t pretty, and the most important rule is real. Violence sells.

So, the WNBA will continue its “woke” virtue signaling rather than practicing the “virtue” it preaches. The former produces profit; the latter produces bankruptcy. The league will feign concern and play up controversy in one of the savviest business moves made by any capitalist since Jeff Bezos put his Amazon book sales on the “back burner” and went all-in on one-day toilet paper delivery.

With all due factitiousness, perhaps “Marxist theory” explains it all best. The capitalist oligarchs of the WNBA have figured out the perfect way to rob their bourgeois basketball fans. The league sells its fans the illusion that their opinions matter…that the price of their ticket will lead to a fundamental change in American society. The league knows it’s an illusion. The fans don’t. They’ll just keep buying tickets…and next season…come back for more.

Were he alive to see it, the WNBA would make circus showman P.T. Barnum proud. He too would believe that “pride” is not nearly as important as making money from it.

Robert M. Levy RobertReports.substack.com

Aug. 30, 2026

Robert M. Levy grew up in Moore County and graduated from Pinecrest High School. He earned a BA in history and sociology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where his honors thesis on the Wilmington Rebellion of 1898 became part of the university’s library collection.

Admitted to the California State Bar in 1978, Levy practiced law for 40 years in California and Maryland, focusing on family and criminal law, including work with juvenile offenders and abused children. His writing on affirmative action appeared in the San Fernando Valley Law Review, and he authored Divorce: A Cynical Experience. He later earned a North Carolina teaching certificate from UNC Charlotte and taught high school social studies across Moore County.

Levy has served as chairman of the Moore County School Board, president of the North Carolina Electoral College, chairman of the Moore County Republican Party, and a columnist for The Pilot in Southern Pines. He lives in Pinehurst with his wife, Linda, and they have three children and four grandchildren.

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