The New York Times-owned The Athletic seems to have a problem with strong women and is calling for the WNBA’s Indiana Fever to fire star player Sophie Cunningham because she is “too turbulent.”
Columnist Candace Buckner kicks off her attack on Cunningham by blaming the player for Enes Kanter Freedom’s efforts to expose the WNBA’s transgender policies and Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita’s warnings that the WNBA’s trans policies could violate state laws aimed at protecting women.
“They all showed up 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,” she said, referencing a previous interview that Cunningham gave wherein she said that she does not think men pretending to be women should play in women’s sports.
Buckner goes on to claim that if the Fever wants to “go back to being a basketball team again,” then “Cunningham has to go.”
The screedist rips Cunningham’s playing record, too.
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.
Yes, that right. Candace Buckner can’t stand strong women who have their own opinions.
But Buckner isn’t done attacking strong women players. She also put a target on the Fever’s Caitlin Clark—because of course she did.
“Cunningham is too combustible, her takes too turbulent to be paired with Caitlin Clark,” she continued. “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 specifically blasts Cunningham for opposing the radical “LGBTQIA community” — something that Cunningham explicitly did not do. The Fever star didn’t disparage anyone in the alphabet “community.” She only said men should not play in women’s sports.
There was more lashing out in The Athletic, too. Unsurprisingly, Buckner attacked the Fever’s fans for being racists. Though she carefully avoided the “r” word and couched her attacks as being on “new fans” and those who “go to darker places.”
As far as Buckner is concerned, Cunningham and Clark bring the “wrong” kind of fans to the WNBA. In her opinion, these new fans are racists, haters, rabble-rousers, and… gasp… Republicans. These are people that Candace Buckner feels should not be allowed to be WNBA fans. And if Clark and Cunningham bring these sorts of fans to the league, then she feels the players need to be dumped as apostates to the message.
Buckner ends her attack on Cunningham, Clark, and Republicans by suggesting that the Fever needs to shut them all out of the game.
“Cunningham, however, is also adored by the likes of Royce White and Kanter Freedom, a pair of has-beens who latched onto her words to crawl back into the spotlight. She’s revered by Rokita, a politician who uses his public office to stoke culture wars,” she wrote. “And one-hit wonder Riley, who’s made a living off playing the trans card. They aren’t fans, but agitators. They showed up because Cunningham held open the front door and let them in. The Fever need to reconsider who they let into their sacred home, including the players.”
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