{"id":48506,"date":"2025-08-06T03:02:09","date_gmt":"2025-08-06T03:02:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/48506\/"},"modified":"2025-08-06T03:02:09","modified_gmt":"2025-08-06T03:02:09","slug":"wnba-punishes-fevers-sophie-cunningham-for-second-time-in-2-weeks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/48506\/","title":{"rendered":"WNBA Punishes Fever&#8217;s Sophie Cunningham for Second Time in 2 Weeks"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Indiana Fever guard Sophie Cunningham is no stranger to hearing from the league office.<\/p>\n<p>Less than two weeks ago the 28-year-old guard was fined $500 by the league for criticizing its officials in a <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/sophaller\/status\/1948103662154232223\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\" class=\"multivariate\">TikTok video from July 18<\/a>, in which Cunningham lip-synched the lyrics &#8220;Stupid, or is it, slow? Or maybe, useless?&#8221; from Sabrina Carpenter&#8217;s &#8220;Manchild&#8221; song with the caption &#8220;@ some refs&#8221; on the screen.<\/p>\n<p>The video garnered 1.3 million views since its posting, and has helped boost Cunningham&#8217;s social media profile.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I got fined $500 for this <a href=\"https:\/\/www.newsweek.com\/topic\/tiktok\" data-sys=\"1\" class=\"multivariate\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">TikTok<\/a> \ud83e\udd23\ud83e\udd23 ,&#8221; Cunningham wrote on X back on July 23. &#8220;idk why this is funny to me&#8230; like ok you got it bud! Cause there&#8217;s not more important things to be worried about with our league right now.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Cunningham seemingly didn&#8217;t learn her lesson, as she was back criticizing the WNBA officials again during the debut episode of her &#8220;Show Me Something&#8221; podcast, which she co-hosts with Bravo star West Wilson.<\/p>\n<p>More WNBA: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.newsweek.com\/sports\/diana-taurasi-silences-caitlin-clark-rivalry-talk-latest-comments-2108173\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\" class=\"multivariate\">Diana Taurasi Silences Caitlin Clark Rivalry Talk With Latest Comments<\/a><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"mapping-embed imgPhoto\" id=\"i2697251\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/cunningham.jpg\" alt=\"Cunningham\" width=\"1200\" height=\"766\"\/><br \/>\nSophie Cunningham #8 of the Indiana Fever shoots against the Las Vegas Aces at Gainbridge Fieldhouse on July 24, 2025 in Indianapolis, Indiana.<br \/>\nSophie Cunningham #8 of the Indiana Fever shoots against the Las Vegas Aces at Gainbridge Fieldhouse on July 24, 2025 in Indianapolis, Indiana.<br \/>\nAndy Lyons\/Getty Images<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m not saying that your job is easy, but when it is a simple call right in front of your face multiple times, what are you doing?&#8221; Cunningham asked. &#8220;They&#8217;re just so inconsistent, like that&#8217;s one thing. If you&#8217;re on the other team, and you&#8217;re going to be fouling the [expletive] out of me, cool. But let me do it to you.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I think players across the league, and new fans across the country are like, what is going on with the refs? And I&#8217;m like, &#8216;I don&#8217;t know.&#8217; And you fining me $500 is not going to do [expletive].&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Well those remarks cost Cunningham three times as much as her first fine did as the Missouri alum revealed on Tuesday she had been hit with a $1,500 fine for her most recent remarks.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m like what? This is just the beginning,&#8221; Cunningham stated on Episode 2 of her &#8220;Show Me Something&#8221; podcast. &#8220;&#8230; What happens is they email our GM, and she pulls me aside and goes, &#8216;Come here, Soph, I have to talk to you.&#8217; &#8230; And she just smiled and goes, &#8216;Hey, they&#8217;re going to fine you again.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>More WNBA: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.newsweek.com\/sports\/wnba-commissioner-breaks-silence-caitlin-clark-bullying-controversy-2107905\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\" class=\"multivariate\">WNBA Commissioner Breaks Silence on Caitlin Clark Bullying Controversy<\/a><\/p>\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">sophie got fined $1500 for ref comments on ep 1 lmfaoooo<\/p>\n<p>\u201cthey email our gm and she pulls me aside\u2026and she just smiled and goes hey they\u2019re gonna fine you again. i even told them i credited them that their job was hard! i did say that and i said that i would not be good at it.\u201d <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/fEVq4kIJws\" rel=\"nofollow\">pic.twitter.com\/fEVq4kIJws<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 correlation (@nosyone4) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/nosyone4\/status\/1952799867027550584?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">August 5, 2025<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Cunningham then pointed out she even noted on the last podcast she acknowledged that the officials have a difficult job, and she seemingly felt the league overlooked that part in deciding on her latest fine.<\/p>\n<p>Cunningham isn&#8217;t the only member of the Fever to have a run-in with the league over its officiating. Earlier this season Fever head coach <a href=\"https:\/\/www.indystar.com\/story\/sports\/basketball\/wnba\/fever\/2025\/05\/28\/fever-coach-stephanie-white-fined-wnba-officiating-comments\/83856621007\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\" class=\"multivariate\">Stephanie White was also fined<\/a> after being critical of the refs following a loss to the New York Liberty.<\/p>\n<p>  <script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Indiana Fever guard Sophie Cunningham is no stranger to hearing from the league office. Less than two weeks&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":48507,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[629],"tags":[461,49,48,5904,82,630],"class_list":["post-48506","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wnba","tag-basketball","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-indiana","tag-sports","tag-wnba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48506","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=48506"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48506\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48507"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48506"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48506"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48506"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}