The phrase “80-20 issue” is thrown out quite a bit in spaces such as these. But Tuesday, a 95-5 issue seems to have emerged.
The 95% in this case? The people on the internet bashing a piece from The Athletic that attacked WNBA guard Sophie Cunningham.
Columnist Candace Buckner argued that the soon-to-be free agent was a “combustible” figure whose “turbulent” opinions were a distraction to the Indiana Fever. Never mind that Cunningham’s most publicized stance — that biological males shouldn’t compete in female sports — is shared by the vast majority of the country.
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Buckner’s conclusion? That the Fever must part ways with Sophie so that they “can go back to being a basketball team.” This sparked the public to break out their drivers.
Among the most prominent critics teeing off was nine-time Wimbledon winner Martina Navratilova, a staunch advocate of keeping men out of women’s spaces. Said the tennis legend on X: “Buckner seems to forget the W in @WNBA stand for women. There was nothing wrong with what Sophie said originally. It’s the response from WNBA that made it blow up. The policy is the problem, not Sophie Cunningham.”
This is hard to deny. The “circus” Buckner says surrounds Cunningham wouldn’t exist if the WNBA could simply define what a woman is. Doing so would have kept former NBA players such as Enes Kanter Freedom and Royce White from declaring their intent to enter the WNBA Draft. But the W doesn’t want to have that discussion. Its leaders are too afraid of the internal blowback. They opt for the more widespread external blowback instead.
Another Buckner critic was podcast host Stephen L. Miller, who focused less on the trans issue and more on the media’s hypocrisy. Mocking the Athletic’s post on X, Miller wrote: “If the San Francisco 49ers want to go back to being a football team, Colin Kaepernick has to go.”
Yes. I can make a Namath-esque guarantee that nobody in media decrying Cunningham as a distraction had that same energy for Kaepernick 10 years ago. Forget that Kaepernick made a conscious decision to enter the political fray whereas Sophie simply answered a question about trans athletes in an ESPN interview. The problem for media pundits isn’t that Cunningham has “big opinions,” as Buckner said — it’s that she has the wrong opinions.
But the disdain players and critics have for Sophie is often projected onto her fans as well. There seems to be this idea that Fever supporters are these backward hillbillies filled with hate because they back players embraced in conservative circles. So, you’ll get players such as Angel Reese claiming that they heard racist comments from attendees in Indiana, or Brittney Griner saying that the league’s “new fans” shouted racial slurs at her.
Except, there hasn’t been an ounce of evidence that any of this “hate” it taking place in real time. Which led to this rather on-the-nose post from the X account Veritas Explorer, which wrote “The real story was the anti-Fever, racist media campaign led by Jussie Smollett.”
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All in all there were 1.3K comments on The Athletic’s tweet linking to Buckner’s column against 1.1K likes. That’s a standard “ratio” — as the repulsed replies flooded in. What was interesting is that Buckner didn’t tweet the column out on her personal account, which she often does. She likely knew what kind of reaction awaited her.
To be fair, though, this is X — whose political tenor has shifted rightward since Elon Musk bought the platform four years ago. So maybe the readers over at The Athletic/New York Times were digging the take? Eh…not so much.
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The most “liked” comment (by far) under her column read as follows.
“Hold up. I clicked on this article because I wanted to see the basketball reasons why they should trade Cunningham. Turns out there are none, and the issue is because of off the court issues with something she said. And that is just stupid. I currently live in a city with a football team that employs Deshaun Watson, someone who is far far more destructive to the dignity of women and yet he plays and we don’t get constant columns how he should be. The WNBA should be about the top level of Women’s Basketball. Not the top level of women’s basketball who happen to agree with you. That alone will harm this league more than anything.”
The second-most “liked” comment was more succinct.
“Candace had this one in the drafts for 6 months lol. Sophie did nothing wrong.”
No, she did not. She stood up for what she believed in. And in the wake of this Buckner column, the public stood behind her.
