New York Times demands Indiana Fever drop Sophie Cunningham for supporting women and girls

Sports columnist Candace Buckner wrote for New York Times’ The Athletic, “if the Fever ever want to go back to being a basketball team again and follow the lead of rivals openly clashing with the forces trying to hijack their league, then Cunningham has to go.”

Buckner wrote that people such as former NBA players Royce White and Enes Kanter Freedom coming to games in support of Cunningham, as well as figures such as Riley Gaines and Indiana Attorney General Todd Ritka, came “to be part of a circus, not to enjoy a WNBA game. They attended solely to antagonize and amplify a nonexistent issue in this basketball league. All because of Sophie Cunningham.”

Buckner wrote, “This was the season when the Fever and even the whole Caitlin Clark experience took a backseat to a bench player with big opinions.”

She said that Cunningham should instead “Go to Chicago, or Portland. Or maybe Toronto could use a 30-year-old unrestricted free agent who averages fewer than 8 points a game, while her latest TikTok videos are good for about 2 million views a pop. Or perhaps expansion Cleveland can take her in 2028, unless of course she hasn’t already dropped basketball entirely by then to become a professional UFC ring girl, or full-time finger-pointer.”

She claimed that Cunningham is “too combustible, her takes too turbulent to be paired with Caitlin Clark,” and that “On the same team, it’s just too much. Clark, by her presence alone, already can’t get through a season without being thrown into gutter debates that pit White against Black; hate that appears even in the DMs of her own teammates. Cunningham, with only a few words, introduced new divisions.”

She said the “trans fear” had “overshadowed the games for a long stretch of the season,” noting that “for the record: There are no trans players in the WNBA.” While there may not be any trans players currently in the league, Cunningham and others have supported making sure that is not an issue to be faced by players in the future.

She said that while Cunningham “shouldn’t be muted,” she “just needs to do it on another team.” She added, “Cunningham might be content gold, but she’s not nearly worth the trouble for a franchise struggling to keep basketball first. When you add in the crowd that Cunningham has attracted this season, it’s as though the Fever have been reduced to performing in the background while the world’s most contentious Thanksgiving dinner drags on.”