INDIANAPOLIS — This is a basketball column. Just the way Sophie Cunningham would want it.
On Thursday night, the Indiana Fever and Las Vegas Aces played a very entertaining basketball game. Although other things were happening around the basketball part.
Recently, Cunningham’s team found themselves under an unrelenting spotlight because of something Cunningham said about trans women in sports. In an interview with ESPN, Cunningham offered, “I want to protect young girls in the locker room or young girls in sports who shouldn’t be fighting biological men.” After those comments, her teammates and head coach were drawn into the depths of this cultural sewer. That means basketball wasn’t the focus, much to Cunningham’s chagrin.
“WNBA media, all we do is cover everything but basketball,” Cunningham said Wednesday morning. “It’s like, ‘What are we doing?’”
There’s no way Cunningham could have predicted that her fiery comments about something unrelated to basketball would spark media hell. This is a woman who is singularly focused on basketball — except, perhaps, when she’s hosting a semi-regular podcast with a reality TV star. (A recent episode teased that co-host West Wilson will break his silence on why he walked away from “Summer House.” Quite the opposite of The Athletic‘s No Offseason podcast, who just talks about basketball and stuff.)
So allow this story to try the rare thing with Indiana Women’s National Basketball Association fever and mention the word “basketball” as much as possible.
Like we said: On Thursday night, the Fever and Ace played a very entertaining basketball game. Well, until the third quarter, when a lengthy holdout interrupted the action as Aces star Jackie Young pointed to a fan on the field and security escorted the two men away. The pair did not return to their seats. The team said he did not violate the Fan Code of Conduct, although Young said he was one of the men “wrote (a comment) that went a little too far.”
Oops. Sorry about that. Flash forward to basketball, where ace guard Chelsea Gray became the first player in WNBA history to hit two rare buzzer-beaters in the same game — a 3 to tie the game at the end of regulation and another 3 to win it in overtime. How’s this for basketball analysis: Gray had as many 3-pointers as Cunningham had points in the game.
The Aces’ 86-84 overtime win was appealing to anyone craving late-game mayhem. And about what happened earlier… we regret to mention that a protester spent an hour or so before the game outside Gainbridge Fieldhouse, talking into a megaphone about chromosomes.
Since Cunningham’s comments, small groups of protesters have demonstrated wherever her team continued its basketball activities over a topic that has little to do with basketball. In Seattle, Portland and Minneapolis, groups rallied in support of Cunningham. Sometimes they encountered peaceful resistance. However, in downtown Indianapolis, a man walked alone with a sign that read, in part, “No child is trans.”
The grandfather, holding the young girl’s hand, flipped the bird behind his back at the protester, and fan Angel Reese of Dayton, Ohio, in town to celebrate her 70th birthday, stopped to talk to the man about his sign, said she agreed, but their conversation turned into a race. The protest was largely ignored. Fans walked past him, delightfully undisturbed, so they could take pictures under the Caitlin Clark banner hanging outside the basketball arena.
Oh yes, it reminds me of basketball again and Clark, the Fever’s most popular basketball player.
On Thursday, Clark missed her first shot, a deep 3; ranks fifth in the league in 3-point attempts this season. This is considered a basketball statistic. She ended up scoring, though, and on her first bucket she went around her former teammate, Aces center Brianna Turner. This is the same player who recently made waves for non-basketball reasons when she accused the Fever of allegedly silencing players after the team fired male staff over allegations of sexual harassment. Fever he denied Turner’s allegations two weeks later.
But back to basketball, where on Thursday Clark and teammate Aliyah Boston were named to USA Basketball’s roster for September’s FIBA Women’s Basketball World Cup in Berlin. Also this week, Clark’s other All-Star teammate, Kelsey Mitchell, won the Eastern Conference Player of the Month for July. Fever fans can’t get enough of their basketball stars, and during a game against the Aces, one woman held up a small sign that read: “CC + Kelsey MVP.” In Indiana, Clark is considered the most valuable player.
However, in MAGA spaces, it is called a “a coward.”
It’s un-basketball sentiment to mention that Clark refused to wade into the conversation Cunningham started about trans women in sports. Initially, after the controversy began, Clark did not speak to the press. When her absence from the front lines of this culture war was noted, and as pro-Cunningham demonstrations continued to overshadow basketball, Clark finally said, “It’s up to the leagues and governing bodies to work with their athletes to find a solution, but our focus is on basketball.”
Clark has since been brought down by members of the very community that considered her their representative. Cunningham, meanwhile, got booed Indiana Lt. Micah Beckwith, who once defended the purpose of the Three-Fifths Compromise of 1787, which counted enslaved people as three-fifths of the people.
Beckwith said he was “proud” that Cunningham was a Hoosier, and his praise had little to do with her basketball skills. People like him don’t really listen to Cunningham when he says let’s focus on the sport, they use it. And they don’t really care about basketball. Just listen to them.
“This is the third week … covering the WNBA, and I have to say, I’m done. I hate the WNBA,” said Fox News anchor Jesse Watters. “I mean, I don’t mind women’s basketball. My girls play basketball, but I don’t want to cover women’s basketball. I don’t want to be a WNBA analyst. We’re paid to have an opinion on everything. And this is something I don’t care about.”
In other conservative men supporting women news, Outkick founder Clay Travis, who called Cunningham a “rock star,” spent the week baiting the Aces, the defending WNBA champions, into a $10 million payout if they beat the boys’ national championship team. For some reason, Cunningham reserved her criticism for the WNBA media.
This is the problem that plagues the fever. As much as the media, fans, and especially the players want to focus on basketball, the sideshow overshadows everything on the court. Protesters and politicians keep showing up. The blue ticks in Elon’s rage arena continue to post about this sport with impure intentions. It’s so exhausting.
For his part, Cunningham tries to have it both ways. She’s throwing gasoline on the complex debate about trans women in sports, and fanning those flames by spending time before the Aug. 2 game in Minneapolis, smiling and posing for photos with women wearing XX XY T-shirts. Then she complains when the WNBA media notices what she stands for.
Cunningham wants all the good that comes with her proximity to a superstar like Clark and the newfound fame she’s gained from her outspokenness, but she doesn’t want any consequences. It would be nice for her if the world worked that way, just as it would be nice if the rest of us stuck to basketball.
