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It’s been a very positive thing’: Sophie Cunningham thinks her anti-trans comments have been good for WNBA
Aug 8, 2026; Chicago, Illinois, USA; Indiana Fever guard Sophie Cunningham (8) looks on during the second half at United Center. Mandatory Credit: Kamil Krzaczynski-Imagn Images
Last month, Indiana Fever guard Sophie Cunningham set off a weeks-long media firestorm after comments she made about transgender athletes competing in women’s sports, but she seems to think that her comments were a net gain for the league.
Even though Cuningham’s comments have directly led to anti-trans rallies outside essentially every Fever game, forced coaches across the league to field politically charged questions during their press conferences, and even resulted in Cunningham’s superstar teammate, Caitlin Clark, being labeled a “coward” for declining to issue a strong statement on the issue, Cunningham says that her comments were a “very positive” thing for the league.
‘You have a lot of new fans’
Before Fever’s loss to the New York Liberty on Saturday, Cunningham spoke to the media, where she answered some questions about her controversial comments.
Cunningham claimed that despite all the distractions that they caused, her comments were a “very positive thing” for the league because it helped bring attention.
“You have a lot of new fans, not only just watching, but coming to games and seeing the environment and seeing the talent,” Cunningham said via the Associated Press . “I think anytime you can get more eyes on the W, that’s an awesome thing, because then that inspires other young kids that maybe have never seen the game or heard about the game or been to a game, they get that experience. So I definitely think that it’s been a very positive thing.”
Not What She’s Said Before
That is a noticeably different position from the one Cunningham took just a few weeks ago, when she argued that the controversy was creating “so much distraction” and criticized the WNBA media for covering “everything except basketball.”
“There is so much good going on in the WNBA. I think basketball is being played at the highest level it’s ever been,” Cunningham said earlier this month. “There’s just so much distraction. The WNBA media, all we ever do is cover everything except basketball. It’s like, what are we doing? You can talk about other things, I think those are great stories, it shows fans who people are outside of the court, but I also think we gotta keep the main thing the main thing.”
“I want to get back to basketball, it’s always been about basketball,” Cunningham insisted. “That interview happened in February when I was asked a question. And for me, I just want to make sure the focus stays where it should.”
The reality is, the rest of the league would have loved to be focusing on basketball all this time, but Cunningham is the one who started this firestorm.
The post ‘It’s been a very positive thing’: Sophie Cunningham thinks her anti-trans comments have been good for WNBA appeared first on The Comeback: Today’s Top Sports Stories & Reactions .
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