As Sophie Cunningham of the Indiana Fever drove toward the basket for a seemingly easy breakaway layup, DiJonai Carrington of the Chicago Sky bore down on her. Carrington, an aggressive defender, is well-known in the Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) for blocking shots from behind, but this potential block had no potential at all.
When Cunningham left her feet to take the shot, Carrington’s right arm reached out, but missed the ball by several feet. However, Carrington then used her left arm to strike Cunningham’s face, knocking her on her back to the floor, setting off a brief but intense confrontation between the two players.
Officials quickly labeled Carrington’s deliberate foul as a Flagrant 2, which meant immediate ejection. After she marched off to the Chicago dressing room, she bizarrely put on social media, “WHITE PRIVILEGE” in all caps while tagging the Indiana Fever. Although Carrington since has tried to walk back her comments, claiming they were not aimed at either her or the Fever, the truth is that they could not have been aimed at anything else unless she had randomly written down both things simultaneously. Not surprisingly, at this writing three days after the incident, the WNBA leadership still has not made any official comment about Carrington’s social media post.
As someone who has written before about the WNBA’s dysfunction, this story surpasses the league’s self-destructive impulses, but the WNBA is nothing if not strange—a supposed women’s basketball league whose leadership has decided to politicize everything, even to the detriment of the well-being of the league itself. But even as ridiculous as the Carrington affair has become, the league’s leadership had already shown itself to operate in an Alice-in-Wonderland existence.
Some days before the Fever-Sky game, Cunningham was interviewed by ESPN, which reported on her comments that she believed men who say they “identify” as females (transgenders) should not be able to play on women’s teams. In the world of most Americans, hers is a completely reasonable statement. People have not forgotten the controversies when Lia Thomas (formerly, Will Thomas) began undergoing procedures to change his gender and went from being a mediocre male swimmer at the University of Pennsylvania to an NCAA championship women’s swimmer, much to the chagrin of Thomas’s female competitors.
One of those swimmers was Riley Gaines—a multi-time All-American swimmer for the University of Kentucky, who has become an activist for keeping trans women out of women’s sports. While she has received a lot of support, she also has attacked for her views, including being physically assaulted and held against her will by a protesting mob at San Francisco State University while speaking there. (Even in California, assault and kidnapping are crimes, but the president of San Francisco State instead praised the protesters and no charges were filed).
The issue of men declaring themselves to be women and having medical treatments to further the transfer certainly is a hot-button issue in our society, fueling the culture wars, and, at least theoretically, many in the WNBA say they would approve of having a male transexual play in the league, although no men currently play. (Two former NBA players tongue-in-cheek declared for the WNBA draft, saying they have met all “qualifications” for entry into the league).
While Cunningham had not sought out an audience to express her views, nor did she employ any hateful language in her ESPN interview, the reactions were explosive—on both sides. Supporters of Cunningham’s views demonstrated at games, and two teenage girls holding signs thanking Cunningham attended a recent Fever game against the Seattle Storm held in Seattle, where things took a bizarre turn.
One of the female owners of the Storm, Celeste Keaton, confronted the two girls, cursing them and driving at least one to tears. If the prospect of a grown woman going into a rage in a public venue at two teenage girls because she doesn’t agree with their views on sports seems highly inappropriate, you probably are correct. Even the WNBA executive leadership thought her actions were out of bounds and suspended Keaton from attending the next five Storm home games. At that same game, the Seattle crowd loudly booed Cunningham when she entered the game and whenever she touched the ball.
When the Fever played the league-leading Minnesota Lynx in Minneapolis shortly after Cunningham’s ESPN interview, Cheryl Reeve, the Lynx coach, wore a T-shirt saying, “Support Trans Kids,” something clearly aimed at Cunningham. The WNBA commissioner, Cathy Englebert, put out a memo that said:
[The league will] always approach this topic thoughtfully, respectfully, and in alignment with the longstanding values of our league. Second, our player eligibility rules, unlike the eligibility rules of some other leagues and governing bodies, are collectively bargained.
The WNBA’s Players Association, not surprisingly, issued a statement that left open its support of transgender athletes playing in the league:
We embrace justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion. Those are the values that unite this Union and allow it to protect women’s sports while creating transformational change. Hate, abuse, and demonization of any person or group of people, including transgender people, only fuel fear, division, and harm. We will continue to have hard conversations. But we will not be used as political pawns.
Although Cunningham said nothing in her interview that could be construed as hateful, nor has she made any subsequent statements of this sort, it is clear that to the WNBA leadership any statement that does not fully comply with the cultural agenda of LGBTQIA+ is considered hate speech. Furthermore, ideology or not, transgender players would be devastating to the league, even if the hard-left dogma hides its reality.
When one brings in the two years of dysfunction that has accompanied the presence of Caitlin Clark, a generational player who is both sexually straight and white in a league dominated by black women and claims a large percentage of lesbians on its rosters, it becomes clear that the actual game of basketball in the WNBA takes a back seat to racial and LGBTQA+ activism. Not surprisingly, this latest round of drama has caught the attention of The Athletic which is the sports division of the New York Times. Writes Candace Buckner:
The WNBA has all of our attention, but now I just want to look away. The league of powerful women — Caitlin Clark exploring the boundaries of the game like an abstract painter, Olivia Miles personifying the rebirth of slick, Breanna Stewart pulling out new tricks from her offensive arsenal, A’ja Wilson shapeshifting nightly into a GOAT — feels less like a sport and more like a societal powder keg.
It has spiraled into a rinse-and-repeat drama.
She continues:
It’s Fever guard Sophie Cunningham choosing to weigh in on the divisive topic of transgender athletes in women’s sports, a grossly exaggerated “issue,” and opening the door for a flood of agitators to defile the discussion.
It’s Sky guard DiJonai Carrington, carelessly tossing matches onto the already incendiary discourse of race by posting “WHITE PRIVILEGE” after being ejected for her flagrant foul on Cunningham.
It’s Phoenix Mercury forward Alyssa Thomas’s fist to Clark’s neck, Seattle Storm co-owner Celeste Keaton’s F-bomb directed at two teenage fans. It’s the piling on whenever anything like these events take place.
Yet, while Buckner rightly complains about the toxic culture that is the WNBA, she fails to understand why things are seemingly out-of-control in that league. Ian Miller of the Fox sports page, Outlook, however, has pointed out the real problem: politics. From its start, the WNBA has followed the path that we often see in women’s sports in the US in which culture war politics dominate. Miller writes:
After years of being mostly ignored, the WNBA suddenly finds itself at the center of the sports world. And it’s for all the “wrong” reasons.
For a league that’s never turned a profit, or even really come close, the WNBA received an incredible gift with Caitlin Clark. Fan interest in seeing Clark led to an influx of revenue, viewership, and merchandise sales, to the point where the players were able to bargain for better benefits and perks, making their quality of life significantly better. All thanks to one player.
It’s no secret that most of the league, from coaches, staff, other players, and even the commissioner, hate her for it. Even though Clark has done her best to avoid offending anyone’s sensibilities or make controversial comments, she’s among the most despised players in the sport. Because, as has been extensively covered, of jealousy and the fact that many associate her fans with being on the political right.
Even some Republican Congressmen have weighed in, demanding that the league “protect” Caitlin Clark, and Indiana’s Lt. Governor Micah Beckwith called for the firing of Fever coach Stephanie White. While, no doubt, most people associated with the league would think this to be overkill, nonetheless, when politics dominates a sports league like it does the WNBA, we should expect politicians to act in a ridiculous manner. Miller writes:
The WNBA has spent years telling anyone who would listen, and there weren’t many who would, outside of left-wing sports media, that they were proudly political. They celebrated public expressions of political activism. As long as it focused on one side of the debate. They made DEI an integral part of the league’s process. They refused to acknowledge that Clark was the league’s biggest star, and now have taken an openly antagonistic view toward Cunningham.
Asking the principals of an organization that has embraced left-wing politics and whose leadership has jumped feet first into every aspect of the Sexual Revolution to suddenly pivot and start concentrating on playing basketball is an exercise in futility. Women’s professional basketball is political and always will be, so we cannot raise our expectations for the WNBA.
The sad thing is that after nearly three decades of the league being a barely-noticed afterthought, the leadership of both league administrators and the players themselves have deluded themselves into thinking that the current popularity of the WNBA and the significant raises the players now are enjoying just magically appeared. But they are wrong. The league has become more popular because players like Caitlin Clark and Sophie Cunningham have connected with the league’s newfound fan base, something the WNBA leadership apparently cannot handle now — and never will.
