Sophie Cunningham Has Quite A Journey To Get Back To Basketball

After inflaming a culture war and causing her teammates and colleagues to be bombarded with hypothetical questions for weeks due to her transphobic comments published in a national media outlet, Sophie Cunningham wants to stick to sports. “I’m going to let people just do the speaking for themselves, but for me, I want to get back to basketball,” she said last Wednesday. If this past week has been her trying to get back to basketball, she might not ever catch up to it.

Saturday’s Fever-Sky game will keep Cunningham in the greater news cycle, albeit for a reason more germane to her sport. Late in the first quarter, Cunningham went up for a layup on a fast break, and Chicago’s DiJonai Carrington clobbered her across the face, sending the Fever guard tumbling to the floor. Cunningham then popped up before she was corralled by her teammate Makayla Timpson in a classic “Hold me back” situation. The officiating crew reviewed the play and tagged Carrington with a flagrant 2 foul, automatically ejecting her from the game.