Green dildo thrown on WNBA court as PR crisis over men in women’s sports rages on

During the game between the Los Angeles Sparks and Atlanta Dream on Thursday evening as forward Jihyun Park stepped up to the free throw line, a bright green dildo was thrown onto the court. As a result, officials brough the game to a halt and player Angel Reese was seen on camera pointing in the direction of the person who threw the sex toy.

WNBA announcer Mike Watts said that security "made quick work" of the incident and the perpetrator was apprehended by arena security, per The Athletic. Although it has not happened for some time, the incident calls back to last season where there were a number of dildos thrown onto the court.

Although some of those prior stunts appeared to have been involved with bets related to cryptocurrency, it is not clear if that was the same motivation behind the incident on Thursday night.

The incident comes after the league has been dealing with an ongoing PR crisis where the WNBA cannot decide how to define the "W" in their name, namely, what a woman is. After player Sophie Cunningham made a stand, saying that men cannot play in the sports league, there have been a few NBA players who have declared themselves to be "trans" and claim that they are eligible to play in the women's league.

After the stunts from the former NBA players, the WNBA said officials were going to convene a meeting with a task force that would be "regarding transgender athlete participation in women's basketball."

After the meeting took place, the league made a statement that they would "continue to engage all league stakeholders in the coming weeks and months" around the issue of trans participation in the WNBA but did not make a determination one way or the other on what is considered a woman for their league.

They then called the former NBA players, who claimed to be women eligible to play in the WNBA, "bad-faith" actors meant to "demean or marginalize others."