Did the WNBA issue a requirement mandating all its teams to use safety nets separating the courts from the viewers to protect players from sex toys thrown at them? No, that's not true: The rumor was initially posted by a self-described satire account. The picture from the entry that purportedly showed newly installed nets was digitally manipulated to add them.
The claim originated from a post (archived here) published on X on August 9, 2025. It opened:
All 13 WNBA teams are now required to install safety nets to protect against dildo-throwing incidents, per league officials.
This is what the post looked like on X at the time of writing:
(Source: screenshot of a post by the TheNBACentel account on X. com)
The account that published it, however, had a parody disclaimer (archived here):
(Source: screenshot of the TheNBACentel account on X. com)
Furthermore, the image reused in the post was digitally manipulated: The original version of it (archived here) from the WNBA website did not show any nets separating the court from the audience.
A series of incidents involving sex toys thrown at the female players started on July 29, 2025. It was reportedly linked (archived here) to a memecoin launched one day earlier (archived here). On August 8, 2025, Donald Trump Jr. posted (archived here) a digitally created collage portraying his father, U.S. President Donald Trump, throwing a green penis-shaped object onto a court.
As of August 11, 2025, the WNBA did not say (archived here) that nets were a solution to the problem. The news section on the league's website didn't show (archived here) the purported statements, and searches across news reports on Google (archived here) and Yahoo (archived here) did not show matches confirming the rumor.
