In Retrospect, Sophie Cunningham is Actually Okay with Shutting Up and Dribbling: ‘I Want to Get Back to Basketball’

Julio Cortez/AP Photo

Indiana Fever guard Sophie Cunningham had pretty interesting remarks for the “WNBA media” at the team’s practice Wednesday: stop making such a big deal about non-basketball topics.

“The WNBA media, all we ever do is cover everything except basketball … You can talk about other things, those are great stories, it shows fans who people outside of the court, but I think we gotta keep the main thing the main thing,” she told reporters in Indiana.

Cunningham added, “I want to get back to basketball.”

Funnily enough, that sounds an awful lot like the political right’s oft-insisted upon stance for athletes, or at least for Black athletes who offer political opinions the right doesn’t like: shut up and dribble.

Cunningham, of course, is the same player who volunteered her thoughts on how to “protect women’s sports” in a July interview with ESPN’s Hallie Grossman. Cunningham was asked to address the “MAGA Barbie” nickname corners of the internet have given her.

Instead, she zeroed in on a specific issue no one else brought up: trans girls and women in women’s sports.

“I got a lot of negative feedback about me hating trans. And I’m like, ‘I never once said that,'” Cunningham told ESPN. “I think that I am here to extend love. But I also think with that love is truth, being honest. And I want to protect young girls in a locker room, or young girls in sport who shouldn’t have to go against biological men.”

While a lot of the interview was actually about basketball, nothing Cunningham chose to say there really was. It certainly wasn’t about the WNBA, the league Cunningham has played in since she was drafted by the Phoenix Mercury as the No. 13 overall pick in the 2019 WNBA Draft.

It also certainly wasn’t about Cunningham’s own history playing on her high school boys’ football team without, it seems, a care for her own safety.

Cunningham’s decision to double and triple down on her statement didn’t have much to do with basketball, nor did her appearance as a ring girl at UFC fight alongside Conor McGregor, who has dealt with several allegations of abusing and assaulting women.

She also didn’t seem too bothered about addressing non-basketball topics Friday, when the Fever played the Portland Fire in Oregon. Cunningham practically skipped into the Moda Center’s visiting team press conference room, grinning and popping gum.

The controversy—sparked by her very words—presented a “great opportunity” for the WNBA, she said, simmering with pride at that apparent clever gotcha.

“You know, they preach diversity and being inclusive. So what a great opportunity for them to actually be that,” she said. “And so we don’t always have to agree. We can still be kind. We can still thrive and be successful in in the same area. And I think that’s what I’m going to do, and that’s what I have been doing.”

The WNBA has yet to comment on Cunningham or even the safety and inclusion of transgender girls and women.

If there are questions about the league’s emphasis on “diversity and being inclusive,” at this point, those aren’t about whether it supports Cunningham and people like her.

Perhaps Cunningham has realized that taking a political stance is, ideally, something one does because they really mean it.

It’s done with the expectation that making a public statement, especially a large and divisive one, often means you’ll be talking about that stance for weeks, months, or even years after you’ve said it.

Maybe, despite the fact that she told Associated Press reporter Annie Peterson in Portland the controversy isn’t a “distraction” to her team (“Because I think at the end of the day, I come in and I do my job. I think everyone who knows me personally, they know that I’m full of love”), it’s turning into one after all.

After all, the Fever are ranked fifth in the league and on a hot win streak.

Cunningham’s teammate Caitlin Clark is putting in 20+ point performances each night. Kelsey Mitchell is hitting a peak in her career that’s been rewarding to witness.

The Fever is very likely to make it to the playoffs this season, and might even be a big threat to the Minnesota Lynx, Las Vegas Aces, Golden State Valkyries, and Dallas Wings, the four teams that currently outrank them.

In that respect, maybe the distraction isn’t as fun as she thought it would be.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.

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