The WNBA’s leftist culture just reached a new level of absurdity.
A Canadian expansion team decided the best use of its home debut against one of the sport’s most popular players was a political stunt dressed up in a turtle costume.
And the Indiana Fever’s Sophie Cunningham answered by dropping 13 points and going a perfect 3-for-3 from behind the arc.
Meet Dez: The WNBA’s Newest Political Statement
The Toronto Tempo recently unveiled two new mascots at Scotiabank Arena during the team’s home game against the Indiana Fever. The timing was not subtle.
The Tempo introduced Dez, described by the team as a “butch, non-binary Borealis Blue Snapping Turtle” who uses she/they pronouns and, according to the official announcement, “has a fondness for soft shell tacos.” Dez hails from Muskoka, Ontario, is a Taurus, and joins the Seattle Storm’s Doppler as one of only two non-binary mascots in the entire WNBA.
The second mascot, Dot, is an anthropomorphic arctic hare who uses she/her pronouns.
Tempo Chief Marketing Officer Whitney Bell put the best face on it. “From the beginning, we wanted our mascots to feel distinctly Tempo, rooted in who we are as a Canadian team,” Bell said. “Dez and Dot have completely different personalities, but they’re better together.”
That’s a perfectly fine thing to say. But nobody watching the timing of this announcement believed it was about team identity.
Cunningham has spent recent weeks at the center of a national debate after an ESPN interview published in July in which she said keeping biological males out of women’s sports is a matter of “common sense.” She went further: “I want to protect young girls in a locker room, or young girls in sport who shouldn’t have to go against biological men.”
Those are not extreme statements. They reflect what most Americans actually believe. But inside the WNBA’s leftist, woke culture, they landed like a grenade.
The Tempo chose the Indiana Fever’s first-ever visit to Toronto to unveil a non-binary mascot. Make of that what you will.
Sophie Cunningham Didn’t Flinch
Whatever message the Tempo front office thought it was sending, the scoreboard sent a different one. The Fever won 101-95, extending their winning streak to five games.
Kelsey Mitchell led Indiana with 29 points before leaving with an injury in the fourth quarter. Caitlin Clark added 22 points and seven assists. And Cunningham, who was booed by portions of the Toronto crowd throughout the game, went 3-for-3 from three-point range and finished with 13 points.
In two games against the Tempo this season, Cunningham has averaged 18.5 points per game, including a remarkable 9-of-10 from three-point range. The expansion franchise, sitting at 10 wins and 24 losses, has now dropped 11 consecutive games.
So the team that rolled out a non-binary turtle to make a political point at Cunningham’s expense is also the team she has made look helpless all season. That’s the whole story right there.
Former ESPN anchor Sage Steele saw exactly what was happening and said so plainly. Responding on X to a post about the mascot reveal, Steele wrote: “When your mascot is a ‘butch, non-binary Borealis Blue Snapping Turtle who uses she/they pronouns and has a fondness for soft shell tacos’ … you deserve to be laughed at…simply for your desperate attempt to prove how inclusive you are. Laughable.”
Hard to argue with that.
What the League Is Choosing to Prioritize
Cunningham’s comments drew fire from Minnesota Lynx coach Cheryl Reeve, who wore a “Trans Kids Belong” shirt during a game against Indiana and publicly stated “we need to protect trans kids.” WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert weighed in separately, saying the league is being used as a “political football for people who have never watched the WNBA, never have written about the WNBA or reported on the WNBA.”
But here’s the problem with that framing. The Toronto Tempo’s front office chose the night Sophie Cunningham walked into their arena to unveil a non-binary mascot. That was not a decision made by outside agitators. That was the franchise itself turning its mascot reveal into an ideological statement directed at a specific player.
And that is the WNBA’s leftist culture in miniature. Cunningham says something that the vast majority of the country agrees with. The league’s response, from coaches to front offices to the commissioner’s office, treats her as the problem. The Tempo caps it off by introducing a gender-ideology mascot on the very night she shows up to play.
Leagues face a binary choice when it comes to biological males in women’s sports. If they ban biological males from women’s competition, they are effectively admitting that transgender identity does not change biological sex and that the central claim of transgenderism is false. If they allow biological males to compete, women’s sports will effectively end, because teams will have every incentive to recruit male athletes who claim a female identity in order to dominate competition. There is no stable middle ground that preserves both “inclusion” and the integrity of women’s sports. The Tempo’s mascot reveal did not resolve that tension. It just papered over it with a turtle costume.
Cunningham, for her part, has not backed down. She told reporters she got “a lot of negative feedback about me hating trans,” and pushed back directly: “I never once said that. I think that I am here to extend love. But I also think with that love is truth, being honest.”
That’s a reasonable, measured position. The league’s woke establishment has treated it as a declaration of war.
Vice President JD Vance has publicly expressed support for Cunningham’s stance. Rallies backing her position have shown up outside Fever road games in Seattle, Portland, Minneapolis, and Dallas. The fan response tells you something about where the broader public actually stands on this question, regardless of what the WNBA’s internal culture insists.
The Tempo are a first-year expansion team playing their inaugural 2026 season as the WNBA’s 14th franchise and first team outside the United States. They have a 10-24 record and an 11-game losing streak. They chose to spend their energy on a mascot stunt aimed at a player who is averaging nearly 19 points per game against them this year.
And Cunningham, booed in a foreign arena, answered by going three-for-three from deep and walking out with a win.
The WNBA’s woke culture is alienating fans who simply want to watch basketball. Caitlin Clark’s arrival drove a genuine surge in the league’s popularity, and Cunningham has become one of the most recognizable players in the sport. The league’s response to that growth has been to treat the players who are actually drawing attention as political problems to be managed rather than stars to be celebrated.
A turtle with a pronoun set and a fondness for soft-shell tacos is not a competitive strategy. But it is a pretty accurate summary of where the WNBA’s priorities currently sit.
Sources: New York Post; Breitbart; CBS Sports; Yahoo Sports; ESPN; The Derrick