Barstool Sports flagged it first: dildos have found their way back onto WNBA courts. Pardon My Take followed minutes later with the same news, confirming this isn't a one-off rumor floating around Twitter — it's happening again, live, in front of a national audience.
Dildos have found their way back onto WBNA courts https://t.co/l620Iv5OyF
If this feels like deja vu, that's because it is. The WNBA spent the back half of last season dealing with a wave of sex toys getting chucked onto courts, starting with an incident during a Dream-Valkyries game and escalating fast from there — including one thrown at a Wings-Liberty game that struck a 12-year-old girl in the crowd, according to CBS Sports. That case ended in an assault charge, not just a trespassing ticket.
A dildo has been thrown onto the WNBA court https://t.co/wAXY6wsl28
The league didn't stay quiet about it. After the string of incidents, the WNBA announced that any fan who intentionally throws an object onto the court will be immediately ejected and face a minimum one-year ban, on top of being subject to arrest and prosecution by local authorities, per Fox News and CBS Sports. That's about as blunt a warning as a pro league can issue, and it clearly hasn't scared everybody off.
What's frustrating for the league is that these incidents aren't random anymore — they're a pattern, and patterns invite copycats. Multiple people have already been arrested and charged over prior throws, with one man facing disorderly conduct and indecent exposure counts and another facing two counts of assault. None of that deterred whoever decided tonight was the night to try it again.
The bigger issue for the WNBA is optics. The league is in the middle of its most-watched, most-covered season ever, and stories like this keep hijacking the news cycle away from the actual basketball. Every time one of these incidents goes viral, it becomes the headline instead of whatever happened on the scoreboard — which is exactly the kind of attention no front office wants, no matter how many jokes fly around it online.
Expect security and arena policy to tighten even further after this one, and don't be surprised if whoever's responsible ends up facing the same charges as the fans who came before them. The one-year ban threat is already on the books — the only question now is whether the league actually starts making examples out of people, or if this stays a running joke that keeps repeating itself.