Sports commentator Stephen A. Smith rebuked WNBA coach Cheryl Reeve for wearing a “Trans Kids Belong” shirt as an apparent troll of Sophie Cunningham.
Smith delivered his takedown of Reeve during a segment on his show on Tuesday.
“You are Cheryl Reeve, Head Coach of the Minnesota Lynx. That is an IRRESPONSIBLE thing to do. You are a coach for a female basketball team. Do you not think that the females are being screwed over if they have to compete against an individual who’s born as a male?” he said.
“No regard for the WNBA, the sponsors who may be put off by that,” he added. “How is that okay?”
In a social media post announcing the video, Smith said that he will not be backing down from his position that biological men should not be playing in women’s sports.
“I’m not backing down from this one. You can support people’s rights AND believe biological men shouldn’t compete in women’s sports. Those two things are not mutually exclusive,” he said. “My issue isn’t hate. It’s protecting women, protecting girls, and asking why a WNBA coach chose to inject herself into a controversy that could hurt the very league she’s supposed to represent. Common sense still matters. That’s where I stand.”
Speaking with ESPN recently, Cunningham expressed support for keeping biological men out of women’s sports.
“I got a lot of negative feedback about me hating trans. And I’m like, ‘I never once said that,’” Cunningham told ESPN.
“I think that I am here to extend love. But I also think with that love is truth, being honest. And I want to protect young girls in a locker room, or young girls in sport who shouldn’t have to go against biological men,” she added.
Her comments sparked severe backlash from the online left, prompting her to double down in a press conference.
“I said what I said. I think it’s kind of common sense, and I think I will always believe in that. “I think it’s really important to protect children.” “
“I don’t dislike anyone,” she added. ” I’m there to love, but I’m also there to love biological women.”
In response, Reeve said that “every kid has a right to sports regardless of (being) gender diverse, transgender.”
“… Now, what gets nuanced is when you’re beyond puberty, when you’re in Olympic sport, when … we have scholarships at stake and that sort of thing,” she added. “That’s where I say that common-sense people get together, and you find common ground to find a way to be inclusive. The answer isn’t no. It is not the case that we have ‘biological men in girls’ locker rooms,’ the way it’s being phrased, the innuendo there that somehow transgender women are predators. … There’s a lot of narrative that is problematic that we need to address. That is simply not what’s happening.”