A former WNBA star has attacked the league, claiming most players are lesbians and that she was harassed for being straight and popular with fans.

“Me being heterosexual... and being vocal in my identity as a straight woman was huge,” Candice Wiggins, a former guard for the Minnesota Lynx and New York Liberty, told the Chicago Tribune. “I would say 98% of the women in the WNBA are gay women. It was a conformist type of place. There was a whole different set of rules they could apply.”

Wiggins, who is working on her memoir, claims there was a “very harmful” culture in the WNBA during her eight-year career. She announced her retirement abruptly in March, after receiving a contract extension from the Liberty.

“I wanted to play two more seasons of WNBA, but the experience didn’t lend itself to my mental state,” she explained. “It was a depressing state in the WNBA. It’s not watched. Our value is diminished. It can be quite hard. I didn’t like the culture inside the WNBA, and without revealing too much, it was toxic for me... My spirit was being broken.”

“People were deliberately trying to hurt me all of the time. I had never been called the B-word so many times in my life than I was in my rookie season. I’d never been thrown to the ground so much. The message was: ‘We want you to know we don’t like you.'"

Her frustration is fueled by the lack of respect she feels the WNBA receives. “We’re all fighting for crumbs... Viewership is minimal. Ticket sales are very low. They give away tickets and people don’t come to the game.”

Within the league, Wiggins claims, femininity was looked down upon.

"The way I looked, the way I played—those things contributed to the tension," she says. "It comes to a point where you get compared so much to the men, you come to mirror the men,’ she said. “So many people think you have to look like a man, play like a man to get respect. I was the opposite. I was proud to a be a woman, and it didn’t fit well in that culture.”

While she says “there were horrible things happening to me every day," Wiggins claims it ultimately made her stronger. "If I had not had this experience, I wouldn’t be as tough as I am."

A number of past and current WNBA athletes have come out, but there’s no hard data on the number of lesbians in the league, which has more than 120 players. Her declaration has been rebuked by other players, including Chicago Sky center Imani Boyette, who says Wiggins is reinforcing stereotypes about women in basketball.

“I’m disappointed in you,” Boyette told the retired player in an open letter on her website.

"You stated that '98% of the women in the league are gay'—that’s not only false but it’s unfair. You retired last year, have you met all 144 of us and been privy to our private lives? Do you understand what you’ve done? You’ve reinforced unfair stereotypes. A person’s orientation is their choice and their business. Now, because of your article, it is no longer out of bounds to ask WNBA players about their sexuality."

Boyette added that, ”Whether you want to admit it or not, a lot of people saw that fake statistic and looked at it negatively because it says lesbians. Do you feel that way too?"

Meanwhile, with basketball behind her, Wiggins is excited about a new sport: beach volleyball. She has been training with current women’s players and hopes to enter the volleyball tour circuit, and maybe even the Olympics.

Unlike basketball, she says, pro volleyball embraces a “celebration of women and the female body as feminine, but strong and athletic.”