{"id":184058,"date":"2025-09-26T23:40:11","date_gmt":"2025-09-26T23:40:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/184058\/"},"modified":"2025-09-26T23:40:11","modified_gmt":"2025-09-26T23:40:11","slug":"suns-bria-hartley-breaks-silence-on-personal-struggles-triggered-by-sophie-cunningham-injury","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/184058\/","title":{"rendered":"Sun\u2019s Bria Hartley Breaks Silence On Personal Struggles Triggered by Sophie Cunningham Injury"},"content":{"rendered":"

The cherry on top of Indiana\u2019s awful, injury-riddled season was added on the evening of the trade deadline. In one fell swoop, Stephanie White\u2019s team lost both Sophie Cunningham and Sydney Colson in a game against the Connecticut Sun. The Indiana Fever\u2019s backcourt was already weakened because of Caitlin Clark\u2019s injury, so losing Cunningham\u2019s minutes because of an unfortunate accident hit really hard. Afterwards, fans directed a lot of hate towards Bria Hartley, the Sun guard responsible for the injury. But was that really fair?<\/p>\n

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In simple terms, no, it wasn\u2019t. Hartley didn\u2019t choose to fall on Sophie Cunningham\u2019s outstretched leg during the game. So, the vitriol and the hate that she received for simply\u00a0falling at the wrong time don\u2019t make sense. And the Connecticut Sun guard did an amazing job of not responding to the haters, but that doesn\u2019t mean she wasn\u2019t impacted by what they said.<\/p>\n

On The Good Follow podcast<\/a>, Sun guard Bria Hartley got candid about the harrowing experience. \u201cPeople are going to say what they want, but you see it all. It\u2019s hard not to see it, to be honest, when it\u2019s flooding all of my posts, like my engagement post\u2014they\u2019re commenting under everything.\u201d She said, emphasizing the extent to which haters went after the Indiana Fever game. They spammed Hartley\u2019s posts, blaming her for the Fever\u2019s latest injury report additions.<\/p>\n

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And it wasn\u2019t just the recent posts either. Apparently, Fever fans did a deep dive into Hartley\u2019s accounts, leaving not-so-pleasant words under every upload. \u201cThere was a point where I turned off my comments on my first, probably 15 or 16 photos. You\u2019d have to scroll all the way down to comment, and some people still scrolled all the way down to do it. I just turned them off for a bit, and then I think I ended up turning them back on later.\u201d\u00a0The entire situation was incredibly unfair towards the Sun guard, because some injuries are bound to happen when you play competitive sports.<\/p>\n

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To hold another player fully responsible for an accidental collision is just the wrong thing to do. Bria Hartley went through a difficult period due to this situation. However, things did improve for her in the short term, especially when Sophie Cunningham herself vouched for Hartley. Let\u2019s find out exactly what happened!<\/p>\n

Sophie Cunningham\u2019s words absolve Connecticut Sun guard of guilt<\/p>\n

Living life means you accept that there are risks and gambles at every level, and this is doubly true if you end up playing sport. On paper, everyone knows the risks involved. That is, however, until your favorite star gets injured. Cunningham\u2019s MCL tear led to a massive blame game<\/a>, culminating in Bria Hartley receiving a lot of hate. And the Indiana Fever star took an extra step to make sure everyone knew exactly what happened.<\/p>\n

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On her Show Me Something podcast, Sophie Cunningham addressed the situation in great detail and with an optimistic outlook. \u201cIf you\u2019re gonna hurt your knee, that is the best possible case.\u201d She said, pointing at a million other injuries she could\u2019ve sustained that would\u2019ve been a lot worse to deal with. The Fever guard could\u2019ve torn her ACL, which is an automatic 12 months in bed, or her cartilage, which could have led to lifelong issues. So, in the grand scheme of things, an MCL tear is nothing to write home about.<\/p>\n

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And about the hate? Cunningham had an important clarification to make. \u201cThere was no ill intent, I think it was a basketball play,\u201d She said. \u201cI was just in the wrong spot at the wrong time [and]\u00a0 she fell. There\u2019s no way that she would go in there and potentially try to hurt me. I have nothing but love for Bria \u2026 and so I hope people stop giving Bria some heat because I don\u2019t think she meant to do that at all.\u201d\u00a0Her words caused a lot of the fans to back off, much to our relief.<\/p>\n

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Blaming a star for her role in someone else\u2019s injury is not the right thing to do if it was unintentional. And if you run the clip back? You\u2019ll see there\u2019s nothing Bria Hartley could\u2019ve done about the incident. Cunningham\u2019s addressing the situation was the perfect way to put an end to a rather tumultuous saga.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The cherry on top of Indiana\u2019s awful, injury-riddled season was added on the evening of the trade deadline.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":184059,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[99,434],"class_list":["post-184058","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wnba","tag-sports","tag-wnba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184058","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=184058"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184058\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/184059"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=184058"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=184058"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=184058"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}