Last month, Indiana Fever guard Sophie Cunningham ignited a weeks-long media firestorm with her comments in this ESPN profile about transgender athletes in women’s sports.
The discourse has led to anti-trans rallies outside essentially every Fever game, forced coaches throughout the league to answer politically charged questions at their press conferences, and led Cunningham’s own superstar teammate, Caitlin Clark, to be labeled a “coward” for not issuing a strong statement on the matter.
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The entire conversation has overshadowed a growing league with more star power than it’s ever had. It’s gotten so bad that the WNBA issued a statement condemning the use of the players as “political pawns,” and a Fox News host has even grown tired of the network’s extensive coverage of the WNBA.
Despite the irrational and distracting discourse, however, Cunningham seems to think that all the attention that her comments have garnered has actually been “a very positive thing” for the league.
“You have a lot of new fans, not only just watching, but coming to games and seeing the environment and seeing the talent,” Cunningham said before Fever’s loss to the New York Liberty on Saturday, via the Associated Press. “I think anytime you can get more eyes on the W, that’s an awesome thing, because then that inspires other young kids that maybe have never seen the game or heard about the game or been to a game, they get that experience. So I definitely think that it’s been a very positive thing.”
This is a very different take than Cunningham had just a few weeks ago, when she said that the issue was causing “so much distraction” and ripped the WNBA media for covering “everything except basketball.”
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Cunningham delivered similar messaging during her pregame media availability in New York:
The thing is, the WNBA media would love to simply focus on basketball. Longtime WNBA broadcaster Elle Duncan recently described the WNBA as “the most toxic space to cover” in the wake of Cunningham’s comments. Sue Bird has lamented that the league has been unfairly manipulated by the right-wing media. ESPN’s Andraya Carter has spoken out against the fraudulent “fans” who don’t actually watch the games and are simply here for the hatred.
The league continues to grow and set viewership records, but Cunningham seems to be the only one who thinks her comments have been a net gain for the league. Nobody else sees it that way.
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