Michele Tafoya remembers when the WNBA was about celebrating women’s basketball.
She told Dan Dakich on “Don’t @ Me” that she no longer recognizes the league she once helped broadcast.
Tafoya, who called WNBA games during the league’s inaugural years, said politics has replaced the celebration of women’s basketball she remembers from the league’s early days.
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“I’m losing faith in this league,” Tafoya told Dakich. “I have talked about this when this league had its inaugural first three, four seasons, I was one of the three play by play voices. It was Robin Roberts, Hannah Storm and myself and I worked with Reggie Miller and we had a blast. And it was a celebration of these women. This league has now somehow morphed into something that feels like activism on display.”
Tafoya pointed to the protest outside a recent Minnesota Lynx game as evidence of how emotionally charged the debate over women’s sports has become.
She said pro-trans activists used bullhorns and sirens in an effort to drown out women speaking in defense of female-only competition.
“They (pro-trans protesters) were loud,” Tafoya continued. “They had bullhorns. They would press their little siren button and just blast us so we could never talk. It’s just hard to believe that we are still conflating this idea of women having their own sport, but trans women somehow having access to that sport when they aren’t biologically female.
“This is not an anti-choice, transphobic movement at all. God bless Sophie Cunningham and you know it as well, if not better than I do. She’s got a spine. And she is a hero of mine.”
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Cunningham, one of the WNBA’s most outspoken defenders of women’s sports, has drawn both praise and fierce criticism for refusing to back down.
When Dakich asked whether her willingness to speak out might encourage other players to do the same, Tafoya admitted today’s locker room culture makes that a difficult proposition.
Tafoya also pointed to Lynx head coach Cheryl Reeve wearing a “Trans Kids Belong” T-shirt on the bench, saying it reflected, in her view, a league more interested in pushing activism than promoting basketball.
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“I hope it opened the doors for others. But you know what? It’s going to be a very narrow group. And the way that the WNBA is responding with Lynx coach Cheryl Reeve wearing a T-shirt, trans kids belong. By the way, this has nothing to do with kids, and I’d love to leave kids out of this entire ideology altogether.”
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Tafoya made it clear that, in her view, protecting women’s sports is not about hate. It’s about fairness, meritocracy and preserving categories women fought decades to establish.
For Tafoya, the WNBA keeps creating distractions of its own making. The more the league leans into activism, she believes, the more the basketball gets lost in the noise.
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