The WNBA has found itself in the culture-war crosshairs as it attempts to navigate Sophie Cunningham\u2019s comments calling for transgender women to be kept out of women\u2019s sports.<\/p>\n
If the league had hoped for the topic to change or for the spotlight to shift, it doesn\u2019t appear that\u2019s going to happen anytime soon, especially as Cunningham has continued to stand by her initial comments<\/a>.<\/p>\n Before and after Friday\u2019s game between the Indiana Fever and the Portland Fire, coaches and players were asked directly about transgender athletes\u2019 participation in women\u2019s sports, and more specifically, in the WNBA, by a reporter from the Fox-owned OutKick.<\/p>\n Before the game, the two head coaches, Indiana\u2019s Stephanie White and Portland\u2019s Alex Sarama, offered support to the transgender community and called for inclusivity<\/a>.<\/p>\n As for the game itself, Fever superstar Caitlin Clark recorded the fourth triple-double of her career in a 112-98 win. She finished the game with 26 points, 10 rebounds, 10 assists, and 2 steals while becoming the fastest player in WNBA history to reach 1,500 points and 500 assists (in 78 games).<\/p>\n It would stand to reason that Clark would be at the Fever post-game press conference, as league rules state each team must provide their head coach plus\u00a0two key players (usually the leading scorer and another major contributor). However, Clark was absent from the team\u2019s presser, with Aliyah Boston and Makayla Timpson speaking with reporters instead. The two spoke with the media for about five minutes, but when the OutKick reporter tried to ask them a question about transgender athletes, a representative ended the presser<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n The Atlantic\u2019s Jemele Hill, who has called out the WNBA over its media restrictions in the past<\/a>, said Saturday that the league does its players a disservice by shielding them from situations like this.<\/p>\n \u201cCaitlin Clark should not have to answer to something her teammate said. That said, if she is asked the question \u2014 a fair one \u2014 and opts to say no comment, or I don\u2019t have enough information, or a non-answer, that\u2019s fine, too. Or if she just says what she feels,\u201d said Hill on X<\/a>. \u201cThese teams do their players a disservice by doing things like this because it creates a bigger story. If y\u2019all don\u2019t have her prepped for these moments, what are you even doing?\u201d<\/p>\n Hill was also quick to note that the concerns over transgender athletes in the WNBA are overblown<\/a> (nonexistent, to be exact<\/a>). But she\u2019s right to note that attempting to put everyone\u2019s head in the sand when there are motivated provocateurs attempting to turn you into the villain isn\u2019t a smart strategy in the modern media ecosystem. Unfortunately, this is a red-meat topic for right-wing journalists, and the more the WNBA attempts to shield itself from honest stances and conversations, the more those people will push and pry and provoke.<\/p>\n It\u2019s not the responsibility of every WNBA coach or player to take a public stance on this issue, but running and hiding from these opportunities won\u2019t shield anyone from the conversation forever. And it certainly doesn\u2019t send the message that you stand arm-in-arm with a community the league has made it clear it wants to be seen as supportive of.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The WNBA has found itself in the culture-war crosshairs as it attempts to navigate Sophie Cunningham\u2019s comments calling…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":841110,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[629],"tags":[49,735,48,2803,11503,82,146823,630],"class_list":["post-841109","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wnba","tag-ca","tag-caitlin-clark","tag-canada","tag-indiana-fever","tag-jemele-hill","tag-sports","tag-transgender-athletes","tag-wnba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/841109","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=841109"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/841109\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/841110"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=841109"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=841109"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=841109"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}