If Clark has lacked the courage and dexterity to say anything beyond the milky and ambiguous, Sophie Cunningham does not suffer from such internal conflicts. Largely anonymous politically or otherwise during her eight-year career, Cunningham \u2013 she of the viral finger-point which has been adopted as a symbol of the white animosity toward the WNBA culture \u2013 is in her moment. Her comments in a lengthy 21 July ESPN profile<\/a> stating her opposition to transgender athletes has earned her hero status of the specious \u201cProtect Our Girls\u201d movement, even though you\u2019d need a microscope to find any critical mass of transgender women participating in sports at any level.<\/p>\n Cunningham plays role of the blithe and bubbly iconoclast, oblivious to the world around as she unapologetically speaks her truths, but she is every bit as political as Colin Kaepernick<\/a>, Megan Rapinoe, or her locked-armed, T-shirt wearing colleagues that defined the WNBA when she first entered the league in 2019. Cunningham forged a tough, take-no-prisoners-without-taking-herself-too-seriously persona, but was too meek to address the toxic roots of her newfound fame.<\/p>\n Sophie Cunningham (right) and Caitlin Clark have become the WNBA\u2019s most talked-about teammates for better or worse. Photograph: Jess Rapfogel\/Getty Images<\/p>\n So too, was ESPN, which waited nearly 75 paragraphs just to sidestep the foundation of Cunningham\u2019s rise: she is profiting from cultural fractures that may be good for her but are tearing her league apart:<\/p>\n double quotation markCunningham intentionally yanked Sheldon down by her neck and was hailed as a protector. A year later, the Mercury\u2019s Alyssa Thomas put her fist to Clark\u2019s throat \u2013 accidentally, Thomas says \u2013 and was excoriated as reckless and worse. The circumstances were different, but both were undeniable fouls that merited punishment from the league. One player \u2013 Cunningham, who is white \u2013 earned a flood of new endorsements in the aftermath. The other \u2013 Thomas, who is Black \u2013 a barrage of death threats.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a truth that is as inescapable as it is difficult to grapple with. Cunningham prides herself on being an open book, but through her representative, declined to discuss the role race played in the public perception of her fight and rise. So, too, did a handful of current WNBA players.<\/p>\n Cunningham\u2019s moment arrives with two fundamental differences. The first is that she does not represent the politics of change but the politics of reinforcement. The WNBA<\/a> doesn\u2019t have a racial problem. It is not fighting a culture war, but a civil one, navigating the seismic reality that the price of the league\u2019s increased revenues and popularity will be the arrival of men, its bro culture, its hetero lens that consumes sports largely through its objectifying of women, its insistence in controlling whatever space it occupies. Like all entrenched powers, men don\u2019t share. They take.<\/p>\n Cunningham is well positioned to thrive in this new world. Just as Clark\u2019s long-range shooting made the W accessible to the men who either ridiculed or ignored women\u2019s sports, so too does Cunningham\u2019s barstool friendliness. With mainstream money comes the mainstream language \u2013 and its accompanying racism and misogyny. Her whiteness sells. Her whiteness and straightness in a time of nationwide anti-blackness and homophobia sell even more. Cunningham doesn\u2019t fight it. She bathes in it.<\/p>\n People rally to support Sophie Cunningham after her comments on transgender athletes in women\u2019s sports before a game between the Fever and Fire in Portland on Friday night. Photograph: Craig Mitchelldyer\/AP<\/p>\n As the WNBA rightsholder, ESPN knows this, too. Neither the league nor the network is less political \u2013 its politics have merely shifted. ESPN has yet to analyze in any meaningful way the powerful levers that are instigating these tremors \u2013 the congressional threats last month to investigate the treatment of Clark and their accusation that Clark is a victim of on-court racial harassment \u2013 but followed up burying Cunningham\u2019s unwillingness to discuss her role as an avatar with another column blaming the league for \u201cshooting itself in the foot\u201d in its handling of anti-transgender protests, all without an acknowledgment of the coordinated political forces targeting the league.<\/p>\n The great essayist Rebecca Solnit would refer to this eliding as \u201cstatus quo bias\u201d, neutral-appearing coverage because the actions of the mainstream are baked into the everyday, but whatever qualifies as normal is nevertheless political, especially in a time when today\u2019s normal is so obviously corrosive. She knows exactly who she\u2019s talking to and what she\u2019s not protecting, which is the old rebellious WNBA culture. Sophie Cunningham is not a rebel. She\u2019s a sentry.<\/p>\n The second difference is that in an attention economy, where being noticed is the currency, Cunningham is using the attention not to further a cause, but to further herself. She understands the source of the attention \u2013 the white dude bros who are the engine of the male sports economy who need a sexy, long-legged blonde to fuel their interest in the women\u2019s \u2013 and the avenues it provides: the broadcast booth, the paid celebrity appearances, the playful get-over-yourselves UFC ring girl brand. She\u2019s setting up her second act, and if she plays these 15 minutes right, they could last 30 years. It\u2019s an obvious, empty grift for an obvious, empty culture.<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/a>Free newsletter | Weekly for the 2026 WNBA season<\/p>\n Sign up to WNBA 30<\/p>\n A limited run women\u2019s basketball newsletter dedicated to the league\u2019s historic 30th season. <\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n Sophie Cunningham made an appearance as a UFC ring girl last month in Las Vegas. Photograph: Chris Unger\/Zuffa LLC<\/p>\n It\u2019s also an old playbook. Just as the Black body has always outvalued the Black brain as its main asset in America whether it be the cotton field or the playing field, so too it is with women \u2013 sex is always near. The former tennis star Anna Kournikova never won a WTA tournament \u2013 not a single one \u2013 yet everyone knew her name. Blonde and perky will do that.<\/p>\n When the LPGA was launching, how did women\u2019s golf get its boost? By putting the blonde-haired, blue-eyed Aussie Jan Stephenson on the May 1977 cover of Sport Magazine, smiling and braless, showing just enough cleavage, just enough nipple to tantalize the boys. Golf Magazine put Stephenson on its cover, recreating the iconic Marilyn Monroe subway grate scene from The Seven-Year Itch. Stephenson did a calendar shoot posing in a bathtub full of golf balls. If the Title IX revolution sought equality and respect, Cunningham has reminded it that nothing builds bank accounts faster than long legs and pandering to the boys.<\/p>\n Sophie Cunningham has been in the league eight years. She\u2019ll be 30 later this month, five and a half years older than Clark, and for the large majority of those years, she\u2019s been a serviceable, unremarkable player who is a top-notch three-point shooter. She wasn\u2019t even who the marketers picked to sell sex to the boys \u2013 the role of the glammed-up, blonde beauty baller belonged to 6ft 4in Cameron Brink<\/a>. Cunningham needed the culture war to get on the map, needing it as much as it needed her, and all it took was a silly finger-point and being in opposition to someone Black. To the aggrieved whites, standing up to someone Black meant standing up for them. Add transphobia to her portfolio, and the result is a star, the latest participant in an old game no more complicated than checkers but far less interesting.<\/p>\n Howard Bryant is the author of 11 books, including The Heritage: Black Athletes, A Divided America, and the Politics of Patriotism and Kings and Pawns: Jackie Robinson and Paul Robeson in America.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Invoking a wounded innocence that their desire for sports to be simple, just like they used to be,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":799073,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[99,434],"class_list":["post-799072","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\/799072","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=799072"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/799072\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/799073"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=799072"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=799072"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=799072"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/wnba_newsletter_(35eacf7cad976602e57c2c59c926a2575e382de6)_(4).jpg\")
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