Chicago Sky head coach Tyler Marsh praised Natasha Cloud after she was involved in a verbal altercation with Enes Kanter Freedom.
During the third quarter of the Indiana Fever's 113-90 win over the Sky at Wintrust Arena, Cloud began barking at Freedom, who was sitting courtside. Freedom then stepped toward the floor and yelled back at Cloud with his arms spread, with security quickly intervening and ushering Freedom out.
Marsh said the team embraces Cloud for protecting "people who need to be protected."
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"I talked to the team and Tash didn’t want to feel like she was a distraction, I told her she wasn’t. I told that we all embrace her as someone that protects our team and protects people that need to be protected. And so Tash is always going to stand on that and we stand for Tash," Marsh said at the postgame press conference.
Marsh said that Cloud needed to be settled down a little bit after the incident and that he thought she locked back in and played a good game.
"I just told the team that I’m proud of how we ride for each other," Marsh said. "She’s passionate, and she’s passionate about the things she believes in, she’s passionate about her teammates and we’re passionate about her."
When asked whether he had a message for Kanter, or people like him, Marsh said people should go to WNBA games and enjoy the basketball.
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"I think that there’s so much good things about this league and so many good things about the play of these players and if you come to a game you should probably come to enjoy the basketball and that seems pretty simple to me. I think these players deserve that and have earned that. Being a former basketball player you should understand and feel that too," Marsh said.
Cloud was not made available for the team’s postgame press conference. Sky forward-center Azura Stevens opened the team’s press availability, saying that security handled a fan incident and that the team was going to focus on the game.
Kanter later spoke to OutKick about the incident.
"Sophie Cunningham shot a three, and I put my hands up to celebrate," Freedom said. "Literally, a couple possessions later, Natasha came back and started screaming and yelling and said, ‘She’s not gonna sleep with you.’
"And I was like, ‘I am not trying to sleep with her. I’m just here to protect women and support her.’ And then, obviously, after that she started yapping, and she started to walk towards me, and literally I just got up, and then I was like, ‘I’m just here to protect women, and that’s all.’"
Kanter, who recently declared himself eligible for the 2027 WNBA Draft, attended the game wearing a shirt that defined what a woman is, something the league itself has not yet seemed to answer.
When he arrived at the game, he was quickly mobbed by a hostile crowd that wanted to give the 11-year NBA veteran a piece of its mind. Kanter took to X to post about his experience at the game.
"I just got kicked out of a WNBA game for supporting WOMEN! Let that sink in, AMERICA!" he posted to X.
"It’s always women hating on other women," he said in a separate post to X.
Kanter said he believed his T-shirt, which contained the definition of a woman, sparked the incident.
"I was cheering for my friend Sophie because when she shot that three, I put my hands in the air," Freedom said. "A couple possessions later, she came back and said, ‘She’s not gonna sleep with you.’ And I was shocked. I was like, ‘Listen, I’m not trying to sleep with her. I think she’s awesome. She’s a good friend.’ But I think it has a lot to do with my shirt
Kanter’s interaction with Cloud was not the first time the two had crossed paths. He offered to buy her a plane ticket to China, Russia or Turkey when she previously called America "trash," so that she could experience actual tyranny.
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Freedom has been relentless in taking on the WNBA and its policies, and it doesn’t appear that will stop anytime soon.
Fox News' Jackson Thompson contributed to this report.
