Every once in a while, a struggling institution gets an offer it probably never expected.

The WNBA may have just received one.

With Commissioner Cathy Engelbert retiring after a turbulent stretch for the league, former NBA player and outspoken conservative activist Enes Kanter Freedom announced Friday that he is ready to take over—and promised to make the WNBA “Female Again.”

The slogan may not have quite the ring of MAGA, but Freedom is clearly aiming at something much bigger than a catchy acronym.

“If the WNBA is unable to define what a woman is, then I — Enes Kanter Freedom — will be more than happy to step in as commissioner and lead this league back to greatness and restore fairness for all women,” Freedom said.

Then came the punchline:

“I will bring common sense. I will bring fairness. And yes, I will bring a dictionary.”

It is difficult to imagine a more direct challenge to the league's recent controversies.

The WNBA has spent years trying to navigate questions surrounding women's sports, fairness and eligibility while simultaneously dealing with the explosive popularity of players such as Caitlin Clark. Engelbert's departure now leaves the league facing a leadership vacuum at precisely the moment when it needs to figure out what kind of institution it wants to be.

Freedom appears to have a rather uncomplicated answer.

Protect women's sports. Define what a woman is. Bring common sense back into the room.

And, apparently, keep a dictionary handy.

There is one small technicality: Freedom can't exactly “lead the league back to greatness” if the league never quite reached that destination in the first place.

But that's a minor detail.

The larger point is that his proposal exposes an increasingly obvious problem for the WNBA. The league has an opportunity to capitalize on enormous interest in women's basketball, yet questions surrounding its leadership and its handling of women's-sports issues have repeatedly threatened to overshadow the game itself.

Freedom's candidacy would certainly not be boring.

It would also solve one problem before it even started: nobody could accuse the WNBA of hiring a man to take a woman's job without noticing the rather spectacular irony.

Freedom has already made his position unmistakable, including through T-shirts featuring the definition:

“WOMAN noun. adult human female.”

That is not complicated.

Neither is the fundamental purpose of women's sports: giving female athletes a fair field on which to compete.

Whether Freedom has any realistic path to the commissioner's office is another question entirely. But his announcement lands at a fascinating moment for a league searching for its next leader.

The next commissioner will have to decide whether the WNBA wants to keep stumbling through culture-war controversies—or return its focus to the women whose talent built the league in the first place.

Freedom has offered his solution.

Common sense, fairness, and a dictionary.

Frankly, the WNBA could do worse.