The woke leftists at The Athletic, which functions as the sports department of The New York Times, cannot stand Indiana Fever basketball player Sophie Cunningham for her defense of women's sports, and keeping biological men off their court and out of their locker rooms.
On October 6, columnist Candace Buckner insisted the Fever brass needed to dump Cunningham over her objectionable politics. The headline was "Fever should part with Sophie Cunningham. She’s too turbulent to be paired with Caitlin Clark."
This was the season when the Fever and even the whole Caitlin Clark experience took a backseat to a bench player with big opinions. So 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....
Cunningham is too combustible, her takes too turbulent to be paired with Caitlin Clark. 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.
Buckner isn't going to find any female athletes who have racial "gutter debates" -- as long as they side with wokeness. Liberals hate "divisions," unless they're doing the dividing -- like removing Cunningham from her team.
On her "No Hesitations" podcast, when co-host Drew Hanlen brought up the article Cunningham told her and other haters to "suck it."
Sophie Cunningham responds to the recent column that argued the Fever should not bring her back next season. "Whatever, suck it." https://t.co/b2suNi4gh8
— Jackson Thompson (@JackThompsonFOX) October 10, 2026
I literally don’t even care what anybody says about me anymore, because I’ve said this so many times — if you’re going to live by the praise, you’re going to die by the hate.
And the majority of these have never picked up a ball in their entire lives and they’re just like thirsty to like, have attention or be relevant in some type of way.
And like, no matter what anybody says to me, I’m going to continue to do me. I know what I bring to the table, it’s not always in the stat sheet. And so, for you to like, not say I’m effective or any of that, whatever! Suck it!
She could point out that on her LinkedIn page, Buckner jokes that in high school, she was a "Career bench warmer athlete and shooting guard who was afraid to shoot."
Buckner complained that Cunningham was delighting the right-wing culture warriors who don't really care about sports: "Back in July, Cunningham said something in an ESPN article about protecting girls in sports from transgender athletes. This naturally set off alarms for the kind of audience that loves its culture wars served with a side of sport. So, when that base discovered all kinds of new and fun ways to disrupt the most profitable women’s professional league, which is also powered by the LGBTQIA community, they found their new hero. Sophie was her name."
Here's the original Cunningham take that drew so much ire: “I got a lot of negative feedback about me hating trans. And I’m like, ‘I never once said that,’” [Cunningham] said. “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.”
