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The Athletic’s Candace Buckner wrote a short, sharp piece urging the Indiana Fever to “part ways” with guard Sophie Cunningham. Buckner argues Cunningham’s comments about men in women’s sports and the attention they drew are a distraction the team can no longer tolerate. That demand — and the over-the-top tone behind it — says more about today’s sports media than it does about Cunningham or the Fever.
The Athletic’s Demand to Cut Sophie Cunningham
Buckner’s column bluntly says, “Cunningham has to go,” calling her “too combustible” and her “takes too turbulent” to share a roster with Caitlin Clark. The Athletic is treating opinion like roster strategy. They equate disagreement with disloyalty, and they treat fans who disagree as a cancer on the franchise. That is a dangerous line of thinking. Sports teams are not courtrooms for enforced agreement. They are workplaces and entertainment for fans of all stripes.
What Cunningham Actually Said — And Why It Matters
Sophie Cunningham said she doesn’t want biological men competing in women’s sports and that she wants to protect girls’ locker rooms. She said, “I said what I said. I think it’s kind of common sense.” That is not a hate speech manifesto. It’s a policy opinion about fairness in competition. Some high‑profile activists and politicians have shown up at Fever games since then. That attention is noisy, but the answer is not to purge a player for making a common-sense point that millions of Americans share.
Team Response and Free-Agency Reality
Fever general manager Amber Cox has already said Cunningham is a “really solid leader in the locker room” and that the team will have offseason conversations — Cunningham is an unrestricted free agent. That is the right posture: weigh locker-room value, team chemistry, and on-court production. Cunningham is a productive shooter and a veteran voice. If the Fever sacrifice talent to appease media gatekeepers, the team will lose on the court and in credibility off it.
Keep the Focus on Basketball, Not Culture Wars
Here’s the blunt fact: teams that make roster decisions based on who is loudest in the media lose. If the WNBA wants to grow, it should welcome fans and players who care about the game — not punish those with views some columnists dislike. Candace Buckner can write what she wants. But telling a team to fire a player for an opinion sets a scary precedent. The Fever should keep their eyes on basketball, keep Cunningham in the conversation, and reserve roster decisions for basketball reasons — not for who wins the culture-war shout match. That would be common sense, too.
