{"id":285717,"date":"2025-11-16T00:15:10","date_gmt":"2025-11-16T00:15:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/285717\/"},"modified":"2025-11-16T00:15:10","modified_gmt":"2025-11-16T00:15:10","slug":"sophie-cunningham-shares-what-fans-get-wrong-about-wnba","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/285717\/","title":{"rendered":"Sophie Cunningham Shares What Fans Get Wrong About WNBA"},"content":{"rendered":"<p id=\"inline-text-1\" class=\"my-[18px] [&amp;_a]:text-primary my-f-1.5\" q:key=\"0\" q:id=\"5f\">The two most polarizing players in the WNBA right now are arguably Indiana Fever star Sophie Cunningham and Chicago Sky standout Angel Reese.<\/p>\n<p id=\"inline-text-2\" class=\"my-[18px] [&amp;_a]:text-primary my-f-1.5\" q:key=\"0\" q:id=\"5i\">Just about every fan has a strong opinion on each of these players. While both are adored by their respective team&#8217;s fan bases and have a large following and supporters on social media, there&#8217;s no doubt that both are vilified by many within the women&#8217;s basketball community, as well.<\/p>\n<p id=\"inline-text-3\" class=\"my-[18px] [&amp;_a]:text-primary my-f-1.5\" q:key=\"0\" q:id=\"5l\">And the reasons for this are similar for both Cunningham and Reese: They&#8217;re both outspoken, unapologetically themselves, and don&#8217;t care what other people think about them or what they say. Not to mention that both play with their emotions on their sleeve and don&#8217;t let anybody get the better of them on the basketball court. <\/p>\n<p id=\"inline-text-4\" class=\"my-[18px] [&amp;_a]:text-primary my-f-1.5\" q:key=\"0\" q:id=\"5o\">Reese and Cunningham both went viral for on-court scuffles in the 2025 season. For Reese, this came when she went after Cunningham&#8217;s Fever teammate Caitlin Clark after Clark fouled her hard during the first game of the regular season, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.si.com\/onsi\/womens-fastbreak\/news\/angel-reese-chews-caitlin-clark-out-for-flagrant-foul-on-her-during-fever-vs-sky-game-01jvfzg09md3\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">resulting in a flagrant foul<\/a> on Clark and a technical foul on Reese. <\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/01ka4jwqv2w7vfwkg979.jpg\" alt=\"Chicago Sky forward Angel Reese (5) reacts to a flagrant foul from Indiana Fever guard Caitlin Clark (22) on Saturday, May 17\" title=\"Chicago Sky forward Angel Reese (5) reacts to a flagrant foul from Indiana Fever guard Caitlin Clark (22) on Saturday, May 17\" width=\"2341\" height=\"1316\" class=\"undefined w-full w-full blur-[5px]\" q:id=\"5x\"\/><\/p>\n<p>Chicago Sky forward Angel Reese (5) reacts to a flagrant foul from Indiana Fever guard Caitlin Clark (22) on Saturday, May 17, 2025, during a game between the Indiana Fever and the Chicago Sky at Gainbridge Fieldhouse in Indianapolis. | Grace Smith\/IndyStar \/ USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images<\/p>\n<p id=\"inline-text-6\" class=\"my-[18px] [&amp;_a]:text-primary my-f-1.5\" q:key=\"0\" q:id=\"61\">And for Cunningham, she incited a brief brawl between the Fever and the Connecticut Sun after she grabbed Sun guard Jacy Sheldon by the neck and threw her to the ground during a June 17 game, which led to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.si.com\/onsi\/womens-fastbreak\/news\/sophie-cunningham-jacy-sheldon-part-of-ejection-fest-after-fracas-in-fever-sun-game-01jy0b5c93mm\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">both players getting ejected<\/a>. <\/p>\n<p>Sophie Cunningham Speaks on What WNBA Fans Often Get Wrong<\/p>\n<p id=\"inline-text-8\" class=\"my-[18px] [&amp;_a]:text-primary my-f-1.5\" q:key=\"0\" q:id=\"67\">Regardless of what Cunningham has done on the court, she believes that this shouldn&#8217;t influence how fans feel about her as a person, which she addressed during an interview with Front Office Sports that was posted <a href=\"https:\/\/www.tiktok.com\/@frontofficesports\/video\/7572675673781800205?lang=en\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">on their TikTok page<\/a> on November 14. <\/p>\n<p id=\"inline-text-9\" class=\"my-[18px] [&amp;_a]:text-primary my-f-1.5\" q:key=\"0\" q:id=\"6a\">&#8220;I&#8217;m not just speaking for myself, I think I&#8217;m speaking on behalf probably the whole league; that when people see us competing, and trying to fight to do anything it takes to win, because this is hard, hard league, they automatically think that&#8217;s what you&#8217;re like off the court,&#8221; Cunningham said when asked what WNBA fans get wrong about her.<\/p>\n<p id=\"inline-text-10\" class=\"my-[18px] [&amp;_a]:text-primary my-f-1.5\" q:key=\"0\" q:id=\"6d\">&#8220;People need to get to know us players more. And I think if they do, they fall in love with us. And so judging the competitive side of us, compared to our off-court [side],&#8221; she added. <\/p>\n<p lang=\"zxx\" dir=\"ltr\"><a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/dJDA35XaUe\" rel=\"nofollow\">pic.twitter.com\/dJDA35XaUe<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Lexie Hull and Sophie C reposts TikTok (@HullTiktok) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/HullTiktok\/status\/1989719024045887743?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">November 15, 2025<\/a><\/p>\n<p id=\"inline-text-12\" class=\"my-[18px] [&amp;_a]:text-primary my-f-1.5\" q:key=\"0\" q:id=\"6j\">While this sentiment would especially pertain to Cunningham and Reese, there&#8217;s little question that all WNBA players would share this same stance as Cunningham. Hopefully, fans can keep this in mind once the 2026 season rolls around.<\/p>\n<p>Recommended Reading:<script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><script async src=\"\/\/www.tiktok.com\/embed.js\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The two most polarizing players in the WNBA right now are arguably Indiana Fever star Sophie Cunningham and&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":285718,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[629],"tags":[49,48,82,630],"class_list":{"0":"post-285717","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wnba","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-sports","11":"tag-wnba"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285717","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=285717"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285717\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/285718"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=285717"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=285717"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=285717"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}