Sophie Cunningham has been everywhere lately: billboards and the Sports Illustrated's swimsuit issue and, yes, WNBA courts across America. But despite being a 6-foot-1 guard on the league's Indiana Fever team, Cunningham's virality has little to do with basketball.
According to her comments during an interview on Aug. 6, this is now a problem. "WNBA media, all we ever do is cover everything except basketball," Cunningham said. "And it's like, what are we doing?"
Within an hour of the interview going live, members of the media were defending themselves and their coverage, while fans noted the obvious: Cunningham’s shift from middling role player to the right's favorite It Girl who can sell out a signature shoe in a couple of hours is directly fueled
by excessive chatter, in the media and elsewhere, about everything other than hoops.
This call-out is the proper, obvious take. It also assumes an ignorance that Cunningham has never displayed.
Cunningham isn’t begging for more reporting on points per game or wins and losses. She’s using the media to her own advantage. She’s riling up the follower base that has made her famous by tapping into their preexisting disdain for everything-not-Fox-News. By suggesting a shared frustration with the mainstream press. Cunningham is giving her followers another reason to root for her – and ultimately giving her own celebrity another boost.
A viral gesture turned marketing tool
On July 29, I received an email from a publicist pitching a discount prescription drug marketplace called SHARx. The subject line: More to “The Point:” SHARx and Sophie Cunningham Turn a Viral Spotlight on Prescription Affordability
“The Point” in reference is, of course, Cunningham’s viral gesture toward Phoenix Mercury forward DeWanna Bonner.
During a heated matchup between the Fever and Mercury on June 22, Clark was assessed a technical foul following a basketball dustup with Bonner. Cunningham argued that Bonner should’ve been T'd up as well, and when Bonner told Cunningham to stop pointing, the Cunningham extended her finger for a full 22 seconds.
There was no basketball happening on the floor; play had long been whistled dead. But Cunningham kept smirking and kept pointing, just to get under Bonner’s skin.
"I think it's dumb,” Cunningham said days later, as the petty reaction continued to spread like wildfire across social media, sports talk shows and media publications large and small. “But it was pissing her off, and I couldn't help myself. She was losing her s*** and all I was doing was literally pointing.”
Companies were eager to capitalize on the viral moment, but all licensing requests that came to the league office were promptly denied. Official policy of the WNBA Players Association states that corporate partners of the league are not allowed to profit from any disputes between players.
As an individual, Cunningham was held to no such restrictions. So no matter how dumb, antagonistic or unrelated to basketball "The Point" was, she’s been more than willing to throw it up while posing with young fans, or use it in a press pitch for cheaper prescription meds.
The Caitlin Clark effect
In a normal basketball universe, Cunningham's efforts to defend a teammate may not be worthy of a single 280-character post on X. But since Caitlin Clark joined the league, nothing about the WNBA, or the discourse around it, has been "normal."
From the moment her Iowa team lost to Angel Reese’s LSU squad in the 2023 NCAA Women’s National Championship, Clark has been all but deified by white conservatives. Clark's struggles to adapt to a WNBA game that is faster, more physical and more skilled than what she’d played in the Big Ten weren’t seen as opportunities for her to grow. They were weaponized as proof that the women of the WNBA were jealous of the white, straight Clark and ungrateful for the benevolence of her presence.
As an eight-year veteran of the league, Cunningham was around before Clark and witnessed the impact of her arrival firsthand. Generally speaking, the rising tide has lifted all boats – just ask the average Clark fan, who will likely note how TV viewership and, subsequently, player salaries have skyrocketed since her arrival.
But as a member of the Phoenix Mercury when Clark was drafted in 2024, Cunningham never had the talent or star power to see the personal career growth of, say, A’ja Wilson, Napheesa Collier or Sabrina Ionescu.
Then, just ahead of the 2025 season, there was a shift. A trade landed Cunningham in the same Fever locker room as Clark. Finally, she had a chance for her own moment in the spotlight.
From teammate to right-wing folk hero
She seized her opportunity quickly, near the end of a game against the Connecticut Sun in June.
Sun guard Jacy Sheldon had inadvertently poked Clark in the eye, and in a moment of vengeance/retaliation/on-brand pettiness, Cunningham clotheslined Sheldon on a drive to the basket, sending her crashing to the floor. For her willingness to “protect the star player of the WNBA,” Cunningham was assessed a $400 fine by the league. She also amassed millions of new fans who couldn’t care less that she’s averaging just 9.3 points, 2.3 rebounds and 1.4 assists over her career.
In a recent profile of Cunningham, Hallie Grossman of ESPN described it thusly: “These late-game theatrics – the pro-wrestling bluster disguised as flagrant foul, her ejection, the scrum that breaks out after the takedown – are not, it turns out, the end of anything. They're the beginning of everything.”
That “everything” is lock-step support of Clark, no matter the egregiousness of her tantrums or bad behavior, and it’s a full-throated adoption of Clark’s conservative cohort. It’s why Cunningham donned a Tres Leches shirt with her face on it – a nod to her bond with Clark and fellow Fever guard Lexie Hull, as well as their collective whiteness. It’s why she was so vocal in her opposition of transgender girls or women competing in women’s sports. And it’s why, after a recent ESPN interview in which Clark lambasted the media for “controlling narratives” that are “so far out of touch with reality,” Cunningham took her own shots this week.
"There's so much distraction," she said, spinning the narrative and stretching the truth and, inevitably, creating even more distraction upon which to rest her newfound fame. "...For me, I want to get back to basketball. It's always been about basketball."
Andrea Williams is an opinion columnist for The Tennessean and curator of the Black Tennessee Voices initiative. She has an extensive background covering country music, sports, race and society. Email her at adwilliams@tennessean.com or follow her on X (formerly known as Twitter) at@AndreaWillWrite and BlueSky at@andreawillwrite.bsky.social.
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Sophie Cunningham's media call-out is hypocrisy and strategy | Opinion
