Did I tell you guys I bought a Sophie Cunningham jersey?
I couldn't remember whether I had or not.
It's way cool.
Of course, the opportunities to wear it are kind of limited. I'm going to wait for cooler weather so I can stick one of those lightweight microfiber long sleeves under it. That should rock.
Waiting for cooler weather will be so much easier than waiting for cooler heads when it comes to the Fever and its two stars, Cunningham and Caitlin Clark.
People are still acting and arguing absolutely bat guano over the two of them.
This week's hot take comes from this writer for The Athletic because, of course, she is.
Ms. Buckner takes issue with all things Sophie, particularly the irritating fact that she exists in this rarefied WNBA airspace at all.
From @TheAthletic: If the Indiana Fever ever wants to go back to being a basketball team, Sophie Cunningham has to go, our columnist writes. "Cunningham is too combustible, her takes too turbulent to be paired with Caitlin Clark." https://t.co/X3eXkxlgDh
— The New York Times (@nytimes) October 6, 2026
I really had a whale of a time with the disgusted sniffing in this...I don't know what to call it. Article? Hit piece?
Big fat waah?
Ms. Buckner is irked at Sophie's sass. Why can't she contain herself?
WHY DOESN"T SHE GO FAR, FAR AWAY AND TAKE THE NEANDERTHALS WITH HER
This season, Royce White showed up to an Indiana Fever game while wearing a long blond wig. Enes Kanter Freedom, in a shirt that defined the word “Woman,” got into a yelling match with an opposing player at another Fever game. Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita — not wearing a wig — and Riley Gaines posted a video together inside Gainbridge Fieldhouse, essentially rehearsing a political ad before taking in an Aug. 28 Fever game.
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. 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.
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.
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.
Oh...Cunningham can just go be a 'full-time finger pointer.' Devastating.
And Buckner paints this vision of a halcyon womanly bubble of pure sportsmanship with a Fever team that no one else has seen. The one where Sophie Cunningham started all the racial animosity. The one where sweet little Caitlin Clark was welcomed and beloved immediately by her mostly black, lesbian teammates, and defended against attacks by opposing teams relentlessly by them.
THAT Indiana Fever team?
Girlfriend - whatever ganja you're smoking, it's really good, because that Fever team has never existed. Those delightful women teammates of Buckner's fevered imagination certainly never have.
Let's hit the Wayback Machine, shall we, Sherman? I'd like to revisit a Jason Whitlock column from August 2024, which is *checks notes* a full seven months before Sophie Cunningham joined the Fever and started all the racial animosity.
Dear Ms. Bruckner - why, whatever is Mr. Whitlock talking about here?
Watch Jason Whitlock of Blaze TV’s Fearless explain why he thinks the ‘racism’ and ‘bigotry’ surrounding Caitlin Clark’s rookie season in the WNBA is even more challenging than that of Jackie Robinson’s with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947 as Major League Baseball's first Black player.
Check out the segment above as Whitlock says major networks like ESPN are completely ignoring the racial animus following Clark, saying there’s an ‘angry’ group of Black players who can’t stand the success of Clark, yet the mainstream media is refusing to run with a story oriented around anti-White narratives.
Jason Whitlock: “One of the biggest stories in sports the last year and a half, and the person to be that should be ‘Sportsperson of the Year’ is Caitlin Clark. What cannot be discussed is the level of racial animus that is being directed at her. If you’re in independent media, if you’re Twitter you can talk about it all the time, but I have yet to see it discussed on ESPN. Like, ‘holy cow, these ‘hatin’-a** Shaniqua’s’, this is racism.’
Surrounded by 'racism and bigotry'?
Oh, that can't be - there's no Sophie Cunningham, and all the black players adore Caitlin.
Well, A'ja Wilson never has. She made it about race immediately.
...“I think it’s a huge thing. I think a lot of people may say it’s not about Black and white, but to me, it is,” Las Vegas Aces star A’ja Wilson said when asked about the race element in Clark’s popularity and before she recently signed two major endorsement deals. “It really is because you can be top notch at what you are as a Black woman, but yet maybe that’s something that people don’t want to see.
"They don’t see it as marketable, so it doesn’t matter how hard I work. It doesn’t matter what we all do as Black women, we’re still going to be swept underneath the rug. That’s why it boils my blood when people say it’s not about race because it is.”
I guess Ms. Buckner has never thought once to ask A'ja instead of pointing at Sophie Cunningham, which is admittedly easier.
A'ja gets mad when you point at her.
This is September of 2024. Sports writers are feeding the racial animosity angle. They go to Fever games and, for the first time, oh dear! They feel 'unsafe.'
Of course, Angel Reese is the post picture for this story.
The Indiana Fever vs. Connecticut Sun WNBA game made me feel unsafe
Women’s basketball fans broke my heart this time
Iattended my first WNBA game in 2018.
Six years ago, I drove down to the Mohegan Sun Arena in Connecticut from my home in Boston. It was one of those early “camp games” that new fans recently got so up in arms about this summer, and the stands were filled with kids in the upper bowl. In my section in the lower bowl, I squeezed in alongside a group of older lesbians who good-naturedly heckled the refs. I’d never had more fun at a sporting event. I felt like I’d found a version of home.
I have never felt anything but safe, welcomed, and celebrated at a WNBA game — until Wednesday night. The crowd attending Game 2 of the first-round matchup between the Connecticut Sun and the Indiana Fever felt different, and not in a good way.
Even though I’m a veteran sportswriter, I was not credentialed as a press member for this one. Instead, I attended the game as a fan with my partner. After arriving, I quickly noticed the crowd seemed to be rooting for the visiting team, the Fever. Most of the people seated around me were also Fever fans, most of them decked out in Fever guard Caitlin Clark gear.
...This didn’t bother me, but it did surprise me. I’d heard (and written) about the “Caitlin Clark effect” all season, but this was my first time seeing it in action. As someone who has spent the better part of a decade trying to tell anyone who will listen how great the WNBA is, I’m thrilled to see more people jumping on board. But very quickly, something started to feel off about the crowd.
“Tonight I felt very uncomfortable,” Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, a Sun fan who has been attending games since 2018, told Andscape. “It was disappointing to see so many people from the area come out to support the opposing team. And on top of it, they had a kind of vitriol for our players that had racial overtones.” Prescod-Weinstein was at the game with their husband. They are both people of color, and Prescod-Weinstein is queer and agender. As a result, “I didn’t feel safe challenging the nasty behavior from the people around me,” Prescod-Weinstein said.
The 'Caitlin Clark effect' link now goes to a null NCAA page.
All these racial overtones in the stand, and no Sophie Cunningham.
I wonder how that could be?
The gist of this article is that it was all the fault of Fever fans.
You get where the author's animosity comes out a few paragraphs down.
...It was at that point that my partner asked her, “Are you going to be racist for the entire game?” She huffed and puffed a bit but quieted down. Then I noticed a woman standing up and dancing to the music two sections over. Her shirt said, “Ban nails” and she was wearing cartoonishly long fake acrylic nails made out of paper on her hands. It was clear that she was mocking Carrington. There were several “Make America Great Again” hats, including a man wearing a “Trump 2024” hat and holding a sign that said, “Make Basketball Great Again #22.”
Every time the Fever scored, the crowd would erupt, but it didn’t feel like fans were rooting for their team. It felt like a threat. There was an ominous feeling in the building.
Oh, then we see why she's really pissed.
...But it hasn’t always been this way. “Most games feel like a mini Pride party,” Kate, a Sun season ticket holder who requested we only use her first name, posted a TikTok video about her experience at the game, told Andscape. “Last night felt like a MAGA rally in Connecticut. It felt rabid.”
I'll bet Ms. Buckner has read this story.
By December, Sophie Cunningham still isn't a Fever member, and Caitlin Clark is beaten into multiple public land acknowledgments and genuflecting about her 'privilege.'
Caitlin Clark Acknowledges Her Privilege & Admits Black Players Built WNBA: “The More We Can Elevate Black Women, That’s Going To Be A Beautiful Thing”
Caitlin Clark finished her first season as a professional basketball player in the WNBA and was recently named Time’s Athlete of the Year.
The Indiana Fever star set rookie season records, including a WNBA league record for assists in a single season.
With the added attention Clark has been receiving, in her interview with Time, she reflected on the league’s history and acknowledged her privilege.
By April of 2025, Cunningham has joined the team, but Clark is still doing the 'privilege' belly crawl, trying to be nice. Accommodating to women who want nothing to do with that.
Indiana Fever star Caitlin Clark once again acknowledged the "privilege" afforded to her as a white player in a league where the majority of her peers are Black women and women of color.
Clark discussed the topic with David Letterman in the newest episode of his My Next Guest Needs No Introduction series on Netflix. She told the retired late-night host that "I definitely have privilege" (via Brendon Kleen of Awful Announcing).
"I'm obviously white, but I think I'm somebody who grew up a huge fan of this league," Clark said. "I grew up watching this league, going to games, supporting this league. So I know where this league comes from: a lot of Black women that grew up making this league what it is. And that's kind of the shoulders that we stand on.
Column after column upbraiding Clark, for example, for constantly chastising the 'racist troll fans' she brought with her to the league.
Another black sportswriter, Stephen A. Smith, said in May of last year that black WNBA players were 'resentful' of Clark and acting out because of it.
...“The issue is anytime she gets into a confrontation, because whether we like it or not — I’m not trying to say there is a racial dynamic as if it’s something specifically against her — what I’m saying is that Caitlin Clark came into the league with major sizzle, major shine and headlines. She happens to be white,” Smith began during Friday morning’s First Take on ESPN. “And as a result of her greatness combined with her being white, there are plenty of Black players who were excelling on the WNBA level for many years before Cailtin Clark ever arrived that didn’t receive that shine. So, there is resentment from the perspective that, ‘Damn, we were doing this and everybody’s trying to act like it’s just her.’
What's missing from all of this?
The race-baiting that Ms. Buckner is laying at Sophie Cunningham's feet, for one, and the fantasy, racially harmonious WNBA league that never existed the second Caitlin Clark moved over from college.
...Think of the WNBA, the league, as a house. Once upon a time, it was a quaint little dwelling on the edge of town. It wasn’t hidden at all, not with the rainbow flag billowing out front, but only a niche group knew where to find the place. (Remember when it was a big deal when 12 WNBA games were streamed live on Twitter, and another 20 on Facebook Watch? That was five years ago.) In a blink, with Clark and Angel Reese entering the league, the home underwent massive renovations — like going from a bungalow with good bones to a high-rise condo in the middle of almost every metropolis.
The problem is, the league is still trying to come to grips with this rapid change. The players certainly enjoy the mainstream money that it brings, but not necessarily all the melodrama. Especially not a finger-pointer at a Fever game.
The black, mostly lesbian players were all fine with it as long as there were no white (God forbid straight) girls in the league good enough for a Cheerios or Reese's cereal box.
And now there was.
There is no club pissier than the lesbian club when it gets broken up by forces beyond its control - believe me, as a female service member having to deal with them, I know.
Throw the racial component in and egos a mile wide, and you're off to the races, especially when you have drivel like this claptrap being published as if it were a deep psychological study for the good of the sport.
Back in August, Ms. Buckner's column bemoaning the state of the WNBA had a list of miscreants of all colors, but her criticism of Cunningham was not for on-court behavior - it was for expressing an opinion she didn't care for. Cunningham, Ms. Buckner sniffs, left the door wide open for 'a flood of agitators to DEFILE the conversation.'
*end sniff*
...More than any other sports fanbase, the new and broader audience that consumes the WNBA craves the simple and salacious. That nature to wallow in mud might never change as long as people rule this planet. But while there are enough factions clashing against the country’s most popular and prosperous women’s professional sports league, the players of the W — the ones who should be safeguarding their commodity — are falling into the trap. Sometimes, willingly.
It’s Fever guard Sophie Cunningham choosing to weigh in on the divisive topic of transgender athletes in women’s sports, a grossly exaggerated “issue,” and opening the door for a flood of agitators to defile the discussion.
It’s Sky guard DiJonai Carrington, carelessly tossing matches onto the already incendiary discourse of race by posting “WHITE PRIVILEGE” after being ejected for her flagrant foul on Cunningham.
It’s Phoenix Mercury forward Alyssa Thomas’s fist to Clark’s neck, Seattle Storm co-owner Celeste Keaton’s F-bomb directed at two teenage fans. It’s the piling on whenever anything like these events take place.
Sports are supposed to be a diversion, something we consider fun, a reprieve from real life, but it feels like psychological warfare just to engage with the WNBA. It’s getting to the point where you have to brace for impact every time “WNBA” pops up in the algorithm.
Who asked Ms. Buckner to be the off-court speech police? I believe this is the root of her problem with Cunningham; only she twists it into race in order to justify it.
...So, Cunningham shouldn’t be muted. She can serve up hot takes on her podcast about Wilson needing to “grow up” all she wants. She just needs to do it on another team. 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.
And, oh, meow.
...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. 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.
That's not a 'sports' writer worried about the purity of the game
That's a battleaxe grinding...
a frightening and unpleasant older woman with strong opinions
...who's had her comfortable little rainbow-flagged cottage in the unicorn bubble world popped by people she doesn't like.
Call a waahbulance, sister, but don't pretend you're talking about basketball.
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