Sophie Cunningham, guard for the Indiana Fever, suggested that the WNBA might need some new leadership as the league enters uncharted waters.
Speaking to USA Today’s Meghan L. Hall, Cunningham discussed her sudden rise to fame and the future of WNBA leadership.
“Anyone in a position of power has a challenging job, but she believes new leadership might help the WNBA,” USA Today reported, quoting Cunningham.
Cunningham suggested that leadership in the WNBA could be “open” at the end of the year.
“You do have to have a person in power who is bold, who is confident, who wants the best for the players and not maybe for themselves all the time. So I do feel like, as a whole, that could be a position that’s maybe open at the end of the year, but that’s not my call,” Cunningham said.
The Fever star, however, did iterate that WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert has “done a lot of good things, but with where our league is trying to go, I feel like you just want someone who also wants that.”
“That’s just a hard position to be in, in her shoes, us as players ― we always want more, more, more because we see how good it can be, but … that’s up to Adam Silver at the end of the day,” she added.
As The Sporting News noted, since the WNBA operates under the NBA, which owns a controlling stake in the league, the “NBA Board of Governors and NBA commissioner Adam Silver are in charge of recruiting and hiring a WNBA commissioner.”
“Prior to becoming WNBA commissioner, Engelbert was the first female CEO of a Big Four accounting firm at Deloitte,” it added.
Speaking with ESPN recently, Cunningham expressed support for keeping biological men out of 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,” she added.
Her comments sparked severe backlash from the online left, prompting her to double down in a press conference.
“I said what I said. I think it’s kind of common sense, and I think I will always believe in that. “I think it’s really important to protect children.” “
“I don’t dislike anyone,” she added. ” I’m there to love, but I’m also there to love biological women.”