The Indiana Fever defeated the Toronto Tempo 101-95 on Tuesday night to take over sole possession of third place in the WNBA standings as the playoffs draw nearer. Reserve guard Sophie Cunningham had one of her best games of the season, scoring 13 points off the bench and going 3-for-3 from the three-point line.
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Cunningham’s production on the floor comes at a time when the discourse surrounding her has overwhelmingly been focused on her comments regarding transgender athletes participating in women’s sports.
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“I got a lot of negative feedback about me hating trans. And I’m like, ‘I never once said that,’” she told ESPN in a July profile. “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.”
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In a recent conversation with USA Today, Cunningham spoke about balancing things on and off the basketball court.
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“People are like, ‘You have a platform. Use it,’ and then once you use it, it’s like, ‘Go back to playing basketball.’ I think the reason why I stated that is because you go into media, and it’s not anything even about basketball. I think I could do both,” she said . “Ask me about what’s going on and what I said. And also ask me how great my teammates are doing, how great our team is doing, how great the league is doing.
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“We can be a great example of how to do both.”
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Time for a new voice at the helm?
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Cunningham also spoke candidly about the WNBA’s leadership.
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“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,” she said.
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“(Cathy Engelbert’s) 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.”
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“That’s not gonna make me dim my light.”
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As she preps for Indiana’s next game, a contest with the Dallas Wings on Thursday, Cunningham is making it clear she’s not going to change, even amidst all the coverage.
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“When you do have so many eyes on you … that people can use your words for the positive. People can weaponize your words. So that’s just how people are. That’s how human nature is. So, that’s not gonna make me dim my light any more,” Cunningham said.
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“I try to just show people love and try to go that route, and when people actually talk to me in person, I think they feel that, and I’m arms wide open. So I can’t control how other people do stuff, but I do think that you just always have to see how your words can maybe be interpreted by other people. But at the end of the day, if you’re constantly doing that, you’re going to lose yourself, and so I just try to control what I can control.”
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