In August, former NBA player Enes Kanter attended an Indiana Fever game. Just a few days later, another ex-NBA player, Royce White, was in attendance at the Fever game. Given their comments and social media stunts, one could hardly qualify their attendance as love for the WNBA. During the same month, political commentator Riley Gaines had also attended Indiana’s game against the Lynx.
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It is precisely because of the outside controversy that The Athletic’s Candace Buckner has previously urged the Fever to get rid of Cunningham. However, in her latest take, Buckner had an unexpected take on Cunningham’s pairing with Caitlin Clark.
“She’s exactly the type of person who should play with Caitlin Clark because Caitlin can generate offense and Caitlin likes to run and Caitlin likes to create and you just need to be ready and firing and Sophie camps and she fires,” Buckner said on the No Offseason podcast.
As a player, Cunningham has been impactful for the Fever. This season, she averaged 7.9 points, 2.3 rebounds and 1.2 assists coming off the bench. She is an excellent 3-point shooter and converted 41.9% of her shots from the field. She helped Indiana space the floor.
But is her on-court production worth the controversy that surrounds her, and the Fever in consequence? Just earlier this week, Buckner wrote in a commentary that the Fever bench player was too “combustible.”
“Cunningham is too combustible, her takes too turbulent to be paired with Caitlin Clark. On the same team, it’s just too much,” Buckner wrote in The Athletic. “Clark, by her presence alone, already can’t get through a season without being thrown into gutter debates that pit White against Black; hate that appears even in the DMs of her own teammates. Cunningham, with only a few words, introduced new divisions.”
During her exit interview, Kelsey Mitchell admitted that she had received hate messages in her DM. Adding that it was difficult for her being a “Fever girl.”
In relation to Kanter, White and Gaines, there was one name on the Fever roster who tied them all, and it was Sophie Cunningham. All of them had come in support of the Fever star since her viral interview with ESPN, where she claimed that young girls shouldn’t play against biological men.
It is precisely because of the off-basketball attention that she brings that Bucker later suggested in the same interview that the Fever get rid of Cunningham.
“When you look at it as a whole, [are your numbers] significant to putting your teammates in compromised positions where they have to answer questions for conversations that you started?” Bucker said on the No Offseason podcast.
“Putting Caitlin Clark in that position, the team’s superstar. I don’t think she is a great talker. I don’t think she enjoys talking about things outside of basketball in the political, cultural, social realm.”
After Cunningham’s July interview with ESPN went viral, Caitlin Clark was asked about it during her post-game press conference. The Fever star refused to entertain the question, saying that she wanted to just talk about basketball. A team that already had the most attention in the league found itself at the center of the political and social debate triggered by one player.
“Cunningham might be content gold, but she’s not nearly worth the trouble for a franchise struggling to keep basketball first,” Buckner had previously written in a commentary on The Athletic.
When Cunningham was with the Phoenix Mercury, she spent her time living her life in anonymity. However, since she landed in Indiana, her image has drastically changed. First, she was the enforcer, but since then, her reach has extended far beyond the basketball court. She is now the second-most followed WNBA player, behind Angel Reese.
Sophie Cunningham’s free agency is set to be a big decision for the Fever. She is loved among the Indiana fanbase and had a good season off the bench. But with the off-court controversy that has followed her this season, there is doubt that the Fever would even want to bring her back. However, Amber Cox, the Indiana Fever GM, has clarified that outside factors won’t impact the team’s contract talks with Cunningham.