Skip to content
Bramble

Sport

Athletic columnist says Sophie Cunningham should leave the Fever; conservative outlets push back

The Athletic's Candace Buckner wrote that the Indiana Fever should part with Sophie Cunningham, saying her comments and the attention around her have turned the team into a "circus". Fox News and Hot Air, the two outlets covering it, reject the column.

2 outlets · 0L · 0C · 2R First reported Account updated
Image: Fox News
Image: Hot Air

1 / 2

The story, neutrally told

Right · 2On Tuesday 6 October, The Athletic columnist Candace Buckner wrote that the Indiana Fever must part with guard Sophie Cunningham if the team wants to go back to being a basketball team. Right · 2Buckner called Cunningham "too combustible" to be paired with Caitlin Clark and said the season had seen the Fever and Clark "take a backseat to a bench player with big opinions". Right · 2The column cites figures including Royce White, Enes Kanter Freedom, Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita and Riley Gaines attending Fever games, which it describes as a circus built around Cunningham.

Right · 2Buckner also suggested Cunningham, a 30-year-old unrestricted free agent averaging fewer than 8 points a game, could go to Chicago, Portland or Toronto, or to expansion Cleveland in 2028, unless she has become a UFC ring girl or "full-time finger-pointer" by then. Right · 1According to Fox News, the column also said the Trump administration's X account sharing Cunningham's pointing meme showed "things took a wrong turn", and it appeared to justify A'ja Wilson's behaviour toward a Fever fan by pointing to "the trans fear that overshadowed the games for a long stretch of the season". Right · 1The column followed Cunningham's podcast on Sunday, in which she criticised Wilson and said that WNBA players who want to be regarded like male athletes must accept the criticism that comes with being a professional.

Right · 1Fox News reported that last week Wilson, of the Las Vegas Aces, charged toward a Fever fan who pointed at her and said a foul was on her, and that Wilson scored 36 points with 10 rebounds in the Aces' deciding game that eliminated Indiana from the playoffs. Right · 1Fox News's Matt Calkins called the column "hostile" and "hyperbolic", argued Cunningham is an effective bench player with a .419 three-point percentage (fifth in the WNBA) and a .654 true-shooting percentage (third), and said her popularity is shown by sold-out Adidas sneakers and millions of social followers. Right · 1Hot Air's Beege Welborn dismissed the column as a "hit piece", argued that racial tension around Clark predated Cunningham's arrival in Indiana, and cited earlier commentary by Jason Whitlock and Wilson's 2024 remarks on race.

Every sentence links to the reporting it rests on. The pill in front of each says where its sources sit: Left, Centre or Right when one side supplies at least half of them, Mixed when they are evenly split. The number is how many outlets it cites.

Left0 outlets

No left outlet in our sources has covered this story yet.

Centre0 outlets

No centre outlet in our sources has covered this story yet.

Right2 outlets

Framing
Both outlets defend Cunningham and attack Buckner's column as biased: Fox News (OutKick) calls it hostile and hyperbolic, and Hot Air's opinion post mocks it as a hit piece.
Emphasis
Cunningham's statistics and popularity, her views on sex-based sports categories, claimed political bias in sports media and the league, and earlier racial-tension commentary about Clark.
Leaves out or plays down
Neither gives Buckner's full argument or any response from the Fever, Cunningham or Wilson to the column; coverage mostly quotes selected lines.
Charged language
“circus”“hit piece”“breaking the cult”“hijack”
For example
“The reality is that she's breaking the cult.” — Fox News
“Article? Hit piece?” — Hot Air