The Athletic wants Sophie Cunningham run out of Indiana. It has it backwards — she's a locker-room favorite, one of the best three-point shooters in the WNBA, the most fearless voice for women in the sport, and part of the sold-out crowds following the Fever from Indianapolis to Atlanta.

10/07/2026 | Location: Indianapolis, IN

The Athletic published a column Tuesday calling for the Indiana Fever to part ways with Sophie Cunningham, branding her "too combustible, her takes too turbulent to be paired with Caitlin Clark" and blaming her for a season of controversy she did not create [The Athletic, Candace Buckner, Oct. 6]. The piece argues that Cunningham's willingness to speak her mind turned the Fever's season into a "circus" and that the franchise should let her walk. It is a tidy argument, and it falls apart the moment you look at what Cunningham actually does for Indiana — on the floor, in the locker room, and at the box office.

Buckner's ask is not subtle, so let's state it plainly before we answer it: she wants the Fever to move on from Cunningham — a 30-year-old unrestricted free agent — and not bring her back, because, in her words, "Cunningham has to go" [The Athletic, Oct. 6]. That is the demand. Here is why it is wrong.

Start with the basketball, because the column conveniently skips it. Cunningham is not a "bench player with big opinions," as The Athletic dismisses her. She is a 6-foot-1 guard who came off the bench for 22.2 minutes a game and averaged 7.9 points — modest volume, elite efficiency. She shot 41.9 percent from three-point range — a top-10 mark in the league, ranked fifth by one USA Today accounting and seventh by another [USA Today/Northam]. On a team that lives and dies by spacing around Caitlin Clark, a veteran who is among the best shooters in the W is exactly the kind of piece contenders are built on — not the kind you ship out of town because she is outspoken. Ask around the league and you get the same answer: "From just a basketball perspective — regardless of what she's said or enemies she's made — she's too good of a 3-point shooter to not have a roster spot," USA Today's Mitchell Northam posted on X, predicting the Fever re-sign her and that another playoff team takes her if they don't [Northam, @primetimemitch, via Yahoo Sports]. A top-10 finish in 3-point percentage is not a stat line a franchise discards.

She is also the Fever's enforcer, and the team is better for it. When Connecticut's Jacy Sheldon got a finger in Clark's eye during a June 17, 2025 Fever win over the Sun, Cunningham body-checked Sheldon and put her on the floor — three players (Cunningham, Sheldon and Lindsey Allen) were ejected after the shoving match that followed, with Cunningham drawing a Flagrant 2 for the foul and Sheldon a flagrant for the poke on Clark [Yahoo Sports; ESPN; WCMH/CW Columbus, June 2025]. When opponents have spent the past two seasons targeting Clark — and the numbers back that up — Cunningham was the one who said what everyone else in the building was thinking. "During real time last night, I did not see that happen. None of our team saw it happen, because I promise you, if we would have seen that happen, we would have had [Clark's] back," Cunningham said on her podcast, "Show Me Something" [episode published June 27, 2026; carried verbatim by CBS Sports and USA Today]. "Unfortunately, this type of s--- happens every single game to [Clark], and the league and the refs do absolutely nothing about it." She was not exaggerating. Since Clark entered the league, Clark has taken more flagrant fouls than any other player — nine in 72 games [count compiled by CBS Sports from data tracked by Across the Timeline; not an official league statistic]. The league has twice acknowledged after the fact that contact she absorbed should have gotten an opponent ejected. Somebody had to say it. Cunningham said it.

The claim that Cunningham is a "distraction" ignores the one admission her critics keep making. Buckner wrote that after "the moments away from so many prying eyes and intrusive cameras," she noticed "the closeness of the Fever players, and Cunningham is beloved." That is the whole story, buried inside the hit piece. Ask the people who actually share a locker room with her. "She brings levity, but also brings a lot of experience," Fever general manager Amber Cox said at exit interviews, hinting that the team wants her back. "She's serious and is an important voice in our locker room when we need it, when we really need to lock in." In a state that worships this team, only Caitlin Clark is more loved in Indiana than Sophie Cunningham. That does not sound like a problem to be solved.

And then there is the business of Sophie Cunningham. Her No. 8 jersey has held the No. 1 "Most Popular" spot on the WNBA's Fanatics storefront, and she and Clark own the league's top two spots [Outkick/Fox News]. The pair have been widely reported to account for roughly 71 percent of WNBA jersey sales — a figure neither the league nor Fanatics has ever officially confirmed, though both have consistently ranked among the W's top merchandise sellers [Figures via @TheseLeagues; unverified by WNBA/Fanatics, per NDTV fact-check]. Her first player-exclusive Adidas sneaker — the Crazy Energy PE, retailing between $110 and $120 — sold out online in under an hour of its July 24 release [Outkick/Fox News; Sports Illustrated]. And the same media outlet calling her a distraction elsewhere admits the attention is real: Buckner notes Cunningham's social accounts gained more than a million followers after that Sheldon dustup [The Athletic, Oct. 6]. She draws people who otherwise would never buy a WNBA ticket, and she fills buildings. The Fever are the W's biggest draw, turning road arenas into de facto home games. "A lot of teams say that every game is a home game, but I do really believe that," Cunningham said. "I think we have the best fans in the W. Worldwide, I really think wherever we go it's a home game for us." The Athletic calls that "content gold." The scoreboard and the turnstiles call it value.

Most of all, Sophie Cunningham is a voice — for her teammates, for young women in the sport, and for women athletes who are tired of being told when they are allowed to speak. She has taken a position on protecting girls in women's sports and absorbed a firestorm for it, and she has refused to walk it back. Whatever you think of that debate, the principle underneath it matters: a female athlete stated an opinion about women's sports, and a national media outlet is now calling for her job over it. "I think that I am here to extend love, but I also think that with love is truth," Cunningham told ESPN. "And I want to protect young girls in a locker room or young girls in sport." She has stood her ground through death threats, through stalkers, through an FBI investigation, and through columnists telling her to go be quiet somewhere else. That is not a distraction. That is courage, and it is exactly the kind of spine this league needs more of — not less.

The Athletic's closing line is that the Fever "need to reconsider who they let into their sacred home." Fair enough. But the person who has drawn more new eyes, more new jerseys, more new fans, and more young girls into that home than almost anyone in the WNBA is not the intruder in this story. She is the reason the lights are on. The Fever shouldn't run Sophie Cunningham out of Indianapolis. They should be building around her — because franchises that punish their most fearless, most beloved, most marketable voices for the sin of having one are the ones that end up with an empty arena and nothing left to say.