Late in the first half of a Los Angeles Sparks-Indiana Fever game on Tuesday night, a neon green sex toy thrown from the stands landed on the floor of Crypto.com Arena, at the feet of Indiana guard Sophie Cunningham.
Simultaneously, a group of people during an audio livestream on X reveled in the moment and celebrated its potential to help boost the value of a particular memecoin, a cryptocurrency deriving from an internet meme but traded through very real markets online. The coin was created July 28, the day before the first occurrence of a sex toy being thrown on a WNBA court. As of Thursday, the coin’s worth had nearly tripled in its first week.
“Someone is tweeting that there’s one at the Sparks game,” one person said on the stream.
“That is literally the best case scenario that we could possibly imagine,” another replied, because the sex toy had fallen near Cunningham, who had previously posted a plea for spectators not to throw the objects onto the court, which was met with numerous replies of memes involving the phallic object.
The disruption in Los Angeles — as well as others that occurred that evening — appeared to be part of a coordinated effort, borne out of conversations held in some particularly murky, often mysterious corners of internet culture, social media and opportunistic plays in the cryptocurrency markets.
Like many things on the internet, users speaking about the disruptions have often shielded their identities through pseudonyms even as they interact in open forums on X and on the messaging platform Telegram. And the memecoin itself appeared to be one in a long line of novelty digital assets originating from a meme, part of an odd intersection of jokes that turn a gag into something users try to spin into play for money, like Dogecoin or Shiba Inu coin.
One user speaking on an X stream called the attention created by the WNBA disruptions and the resulting chatter “next level.”
“This is empowering to every f—ing crypto community to start thinking outside the box. Get creative and f—ing do something that makes people actually laugh. Memecoins should make you laugh,” he said, adding, “The whole mission with this was focus on making an impact in crypto culture.”
It appears the WNBA and its athletes are central to the joke in spite of their objections. And the conversation about the disruptions has created opportunities for detractors of women’s basketball to mock the league and women’s sports more generally.
“The sexualization of women is what’s used to hold women down, and this is no different,” Minnesota Lynx coach Cheryl Reeve said. “These people that are doing this should be held accountable. We’re not the butt of the joke, they’re the problem.”
From @TheAthletic: Making a sex toy the focal point of games in a league that has perhaps the most openly gay and queer players doesn’t seem like an accident, our columnist writes. These recent incidents are another attempt to demean women in sports.https://t.co/cByhwJ5esh pic.twitter.com/vpYMjlYP6E
— The New York Times (@nytimes) August 7, 2025
On Thursday, Donald Trump Jr. shared a meme that pictured his father, President Donald J. Trump, throwing a sex toy off the roof of the White House onto a court of women’s basketball players. “Posted without further comment,” the younger Trump said, adding three crying laughing emojis.
Beginning on July 29, three neon green sex toys have been thrown onto WNBA courts. At Tuesday night’s New York Liberty game, an X video shows a similar object confiscated in the stands. Other social media users claimed there was an attempt to throw one at the Phoenix Mercury game, which was being played at the same time of the Sparks’ contest.
During Tuesday’s livestream, there was also talk of someone throwing another toy at the Seattle Storm’s Climate Pledge Arena during Tuesday’s game against the Minnesota Lynx, though no incident occurred, a Storm spokesperson confirmed to The Athletic.
The conversations appeared to connect to the community for a crypto memecoin called Green Dildo Coin. On Tuesday night’s livestream, members said they had been communicating with people throwing sex toys at WNBA arenas.
“I just got confirmation L.A. is out of the building,” one member of the stream said around seven minutes after the sex toy landed on the court at the Sparks game, indicating that the person who threw it had fled without being apprehended.
“There are community members out there putting their f—ing lives on the line, so the least you can do is retweet,” the same member said as the act was beginning to go viral on social media.
“The potential tosser (in Seattle), if you will, lost his phone in Lake Washington, so I had to reach out to a friend who was able to get me in contact, and he’s all set now,” another member of the stream said of the potential incident at Tuesday’s Storm game.
A league source told The Athletic that the WNBA is aware of the Green Dildo Coin’s recent X stream.
“Upon our request for an update, the league advised the players’ union that it was investigating claims that individuals were being incentivized to carry out these, unsafe stunts,” Terri Jackson, the executive director of the players’ union, said in a statement.
Last week, a 23-year-old Georgia man was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct, public indecency/indecent exposure and criminal trespass, according to Clayton County’s court system, days after the first of these incidents.
Messages shared on the stream and in the community’s Telegram chat suggested that those directly involved in the Green Dildo Coin community were not aware of Delbert Carver before his arrest, although members of the community were alerted to watch the Atlanta Dream-Golden State Valkyries game on July 29.
“Obviously, that was not anybody in the community,” said one member on Tuesday’s stream. “I didn’t want to give it any credit, but I was kind of thinking we could go and pay that guy’s bail, and just say, like you know what, we support green dildo throwers.”
The WNBA said in a statement Saturday that anyone throwing an object onto the court would be immediately ejected, is subject to a one-year ban and could face arrest and prosecution by local authorities.
“The safety and well-being of everyone in our arenas is a top priority for our league. Objects of any kind thrown onto the court or in the seating area can pose a safety risk for players, game officials, and fans,” the league said.
An 18-year-old man, Kaden Lopez, was also arrested while at Tuesday’s Mercury game after police said he threw a sex toy toward the seats in front of him, hitting a man and his 9-year-old niece. Sergeant Phil Krynsky, a spokesperson for the Phoenix Police Department, confirmed Lopez’s arrest in a statement.
The identities of those who originated Green Dildo Coin are unclear, though the domain of the memecoin’s website was registered on July 19, according to Who.Is, an internet domain lookup service. Memecoins, according to Christian Grewell, an expert on blockchain and cryptocurrency technology at New York University, “cost almost nothing to make, essentially they’re free, but they can generate millions in profits within days.”
The community also has an online storefront that sells apparel related to the sex toy and the memecoin. It was registered on July 7, close to two weeks before the first sex toy was thrown onto a WNBA court.
Green Dildo Coin launched its account on X on July 28. Its apparent founder, who uses the name Lt. Daldo Raine, voiced a nearly 15-minute speech spoofing the opening speech of Brad Pitt’s character, Lt. Aldo Raine, in Quentin Tarantino’s “Inglorious Bastards,” to explain the purpose of the memecoin. The WNBA is not explicitly mentioned in the opening comments, but Raine said that “evidence of our cruelty” would be found in the “giant green, aggressive, and erect candles we leave behind.”
In multiple livestreams reviewed by The Athletic, members routinely voiced crude humor about the WNBA. Jokes were made about WNBA viewership, and memes circulated in the group’s Telegram often superimposed the sex toy into the hands of WNBA players.
Three moderators of the Telegram group and the official account on X for the coin did not provide comment, though the moderators said they would forward The Athletic’s request to answer questions about the streams and the chats.
The disruptions appeared to change the trading prices of $DILDO. According to the coingecko cryptocurrency website, it had a trading volume of more than $1.5 million between Wednesday and Thursday afternoon. Polymarket, a cryptocurrency-based prediction model, also took bets on whether disruptions would occur. The site reported that it took in more than $180,000 in volume on whether a sex toy would be thrown at a game by Aug. 10. Users of the platform could also speculate on when another sex toy might hit the court.
“The dildo-throwing incidents were essentially an excuse for bad actors to hijack existing negativity and convert it into attention,” Grewell said in an email.
Raine, the spokesperson of the group, told USA Today that the disruption using sex toys at WNBA games is likely done, but that the pranks wouldn’t stop. A photo circulated online, and in the community’s Telegram chat, of a spectator holding a green sex toy at Wednesday night’s Miami Marlins game.
“If we’re too disruptive for too long, people will get pissed off,” a member said Tuesday on stream. “The bigger events, we gotta find creative ways to like trick the cameras onto us and then, f—ing bingo.”
WNBA players and coaches have voiced their displeasure with the incidents and asked for consideration of player safety.
After the second incident, which occurred in Chicago last Friday, Sky center Elizabeth Williams said it was “super disrespectful” and “really immature.”
“It’s ridiculous, it’s dumb, it’s stupid,” Sparks coach Lynne Roberts said.
The Athletic‘s Matt Moret contributed to this report.
(Photo of Sophie Cunningham: Sean M. Haffey / Getty Images)