Sophie Cunningham Is No One’s Culture War Punching Bag

The WNBA has a new punching bag — Sophie Cunningham. The Indiana Fever star had the temerity to suggest that locker rooms for girls be restricted to girls. For that statement, she’s been labeled a transphobe and, for good measure, a racist. When she recently took an elbow to the face while defending Nia Coffey of the Minnesota Lynx, she was called for the foul.

Now Caitlin Clark, the original punching bag and Cunningham’s teammate, is being called a coward by Megyn Kelly for sidestepping a question about Cunningham’s statements. Instead of wading into the issue, Clark responded with “it’s for the leagues and governing bodies to work with their athletes to find solutions.” And while she’s taking some other shots online for dodging the question, Clark did absolutely nothing wrong here.

As Dave Portnoy, speaking with his normal measured and reserved style, said of the “coward” take: “Absolute moron/idiot to call Caitlin a coward for this answer. 1st of all you don’t even know how she feels on this issue and more importantly she doesn’t owe it to you or anybody else to be your political talking point. She just wants to play ball. Total coward cheap shot to call her a coward for not being your puppet.”

This is exactly right. If Cunningham wants to speak out, she can. If Clark doesn’t want to comment on Cunningham, she’s equally free. For starters, as Portnoy noted, they’re basketball players. Second, nothing either of them says is really going to move the needle. Politics may be downstream of culture, but we’re talking about the WNBA. Even as it’s more popular now than it’s ever been, largely thanks to Clark, it’s still not that popular.

Sorry, but that’s the cold truth. NBA games average 1.78 million viewers and Kamala Harris lost even with Steph Curry’s endorsement. With the WNBA up to an average of 742,000 viewers per game, the reach just isn’t there. It’s not just about popularity, though. Nor is it about “shut up and play.” It’s not even Michael Jordan’s “Republicans buy sneakers, too.”

It’s that the players themselves are free, or at least should be, to discuss whatever they want. It’s also that we shouldn’t expect everything to be all politics, all the time. It’s unhealthy. One’s convictions shouldn’t be tied to what celebrities and pro athletes believe. If you need Caitlin Clark to validate your positions, that’s a you problem, not a Clark problem.

Similarly, it’s fine to praise Cunningham for taking a principled and correct stand. It’s already an issue that roughly 85% of the population agrees with, though. It’s not the most popular position in the WNBA — Lynx coach Cheryl Reeve wore a “Trans Kids Belong” T-shirt when the team played the Fever — so Cunningham deserves some credit for speaking up. Yet, doing so doesn’t exactly make her a hero.

Cunningham and Clark play games to distract and entertain people. Their decisions and opinions do not affect the wide world outside of sports. They don’t owe anyone other than their owners and teammates anything. To paraphrase Portnoy, they aren’t anyone’s puppets.

Also, as another basketball star once said in a Nike commercial, “I am not a role model … just because I dunk a basketball doesn’t mean I should raise your kids.” WNBA stars may not be great at dunking, but we still shouldn’t expect them to raise our kids, even if Cunningham’s offense was focused on protecting them. That’s a job for parents. They are the ones who can choose not to drive their kids to the locker rooms that Cunningham was discussing. And they are free to make that choice regardless of what any WNBA player says or does not say.

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Rich Cromwell is a writer living in Northwest Arkansas. He produces the Cookin’ Up a Story podcast, which you can listen to here. You can also follow him on X: @rcromwell4