In what is becoming a weekly occurrence, Sophie Cunningham has been fined by the WNBA for publicly criticizing the officials.<\/p>\n
The Indiana Fever guard revealed on the latest episode of her podcast that she was fined for her comments about the calls being given to Paige Bueckers during an Aug. 12 game against the Dallas Wings (starts at 9:40 mark).<\/p>\n
“I’m officially 3 for 3 on being fined by the WNBA. They didn’t like my comments on Paige Bueckers,” Cunningham said.<\/p>\n
Cunningham made the comments<\/a> on her podcast episode that released on Aug. 13. She praised Bueckers as a player before explaining that the “refs were giving her every whistle last night.”<\/p>\n “Like you literally couldn’t touch her, couldn’t touch her,” Cunningham said. “If you’re going to do that, then give it to our guards.”<\/p>\n Cunningham didn’t specify how much she was fined. It was the third time the league has docked her pay for criticizing the officials. She previously paid $500 for a TikTok video lip-synching to the Sabrina Carpenter song “Manchild” with lyrics like “stupid,” “slow,” or “useless” in which she also wrote “@ some refs” on the post.<\/p>\n On the Aug. 5, Cunningham said<\/a> she was fined $1,500 for comments critical of the refs that aired on the premiere episode of the podcast.<\/p>\n “If I was a ref, I know I would mess up all the time,” she said on the July 30 episide (via\u00a0Matthew Glenesk<\/a>\u00a0of the\u00a0Indianapolis Star). “Like, I’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? What are you doing? … They’re just so inconsistent, like that’s one thing.”<\/p>\n Even though Cunningham has been arguably the most vocal critic of the officiating, she is far from alone among WNBA personnel in believing it has been a problem.<\/p>\n ESPN’s Maria Lawson<\/a> reported on July 17 that “several” players and coaches expressed their frustration over the state of refereeing during the first half of the regular season.<\/p>\n “I work my f–king ass off all offseason for these 4.5 months to try to win a championship,” New York Liberty guard Natasha Cloud told Lawson. “And if I feel like [refs are] having too much f–king impact on the game, it shouldn’t be. … This is collaborative to make this thing go.”<\/p>\n These criticisms aren’t isolated just to players and coaches. Television broadcasters have spoken out<\/a> on telecasts about obvious fouls not being called.<\/p>\n WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert responded<\/a> to the concerns by saying the league has heard them and is constantly reviewing plays, then following up with officials to ensure things are being called as they should be.<\/p>\n The good news for Cunningham is she probably won’t be fined coming out of this podcast episode. She didn’t exactly defend the officials, but she calmed her mom down by saying<\/a> the play in Sunday’s game against the Connecticut Sun in which she suffered a season-ending torn MCL<\/a> was a clean basketball play by Bria Hartley.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In what is becoming a weekly occurrence, Sophie Cunningham has been fined by the WNBA for publicly criticizing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":84279,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[629],"tags":[49,48,82,630],"class_list":{"0":"post-84278","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\/84278","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=84278"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84278\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/84279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=84278"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=84278"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=84278"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}