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TERFs taking their gloves off for Imane Khelif
(i.imgur.com)
To clarify, the pictured poster Caroline Kwan is an ally, not a TERF. The TERFs referred to in the title are the ones ‘protecting a very specific idea of what a woman is’
It was her choice which leagues to try to join. She didn't try for the NBA and fail - she didn't try for the NBA. There were even some commentators far deeper into the sport than I considering the possibility that she might do so before she joined the WNBA instead.
As far as it being the Air Bud rule, one woman has officially been drafted by the NBA in 1977. She decided not to try out because she got pregnant. Mark Cuban talked about considering Britney Griner back in 2013, and there's currently some chatter about possibly drafting Caitlin Clark though she'd be one of the smallest dozen or so players at only 6' tall.
But yeah, there is no professional sports league in the US that bans women from participating if they can compete at the relevant level. There's even the occasional woman that tries out for the NFL, the last of which got injured early on in the process and bowed out. High contact sports are a hard sell for women to compete with men just because of size, weight and strength differences and professional sports athletes being more than a standard deviation from the mean.
Or maybe most women who think they have a shot get scared off by a bunch of asshole misogynists- the same asshole misogynists who think that they also can't compete with women.