Sophie Cunningham continues to speak her mind on ongoing off-court and on-court issues in the WNBA, and the Indiana Fever star remains in the spotlight for her unflinching take. She recently reflected on the controversial saga surrounding her trans comments, the Fever locker room, and the WNBA leadership in an interview with Meghan Hall of USA Today. Cunningham, in particular, reflected that the league is in a growth phase at the moment and needs someone at the helm who can take on this challenging role while bringing everyone along.

“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,” Cunningham said in the interview with Meghan Hall and USA Today. “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.”

“(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.”

At the moment, the WNBA commissioner has the seemingly impossible job of balancing the demands of all the stakeholders, some of which often remain unfulfilled. 

And Cunningham’s latest comments have once again turned heads in the basketball community. WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert has come under fire this season for issues ranging from officiating in the league and player safety to the league’s stance on transgender athlete participation in women’s basketball.

Engelbert’s tenure ends at the end of the current season, and speculation is rife about the next WNBA commissioner and whether Engelbert will get an extension or not.

While there is no denying that the league has seen its best phase in terms of growth and revenue since Engelbert took over in 2019, she has often been criticized for her silence on pressing issues, the current transgender saga being the latest and most notable one.

Cunningham’s strategy appears to be opposite to Engelbert’s, by her own admission.

“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,” Cunningham said. 

As Cunningham continues to speak her mind and remains firm on her stance, only time will tell if Engelbert remains in her role after this season.