CHICAGO — Leaning against the wall in a United Center tunnel Saturday afternoon, Sophie Cunningham reflected on the emerging truth of her existence: Sometimes she seeks the spotlight, and the rest of the time, the spotlight seeks her.
“Another day, another dollar, welcome to my life, boys and girls,” the Indiana Fever guard declared.
It should surprise no one, of course, that Cunningham took a hard foul in a 90-86 win over the Chicago Sky and then elected to give as good as she got. The arm-to-the-neck she absorbed from the Sky’s DiJonai Carrington on a first-quarter layup attempt, which resulted in Carrington’s ejection, was just the start.
“From my point of view, I mean, clearly I think it was unnecessary,” Cunningham said after the game. “I’ve never really spoken to her and have no beef with her. But I guess she has some pent-up stuff. So get your s— off. That’s fine. I can take it.”
Cunningham immediately popped up, pushed Carrington and was restrained by teammate Makalya Timpson while exchanging words. (“I’m not going to let anyone just do that to me, I think everyone knows that,” Cunningham said.) Carrington was assessed a Flagrant 2 foul, but Cunningham wasn’t hit with a technical foul for the shove because officials “deemed her reaction to the severity of the contact to be acceptable,” per a pool report distributed after the game.
Shortly after heading to the locker room, a post appeared on Carrington’s Threads account tagging the Fever with the phrase “WHITE PRIVILEGE.” (Carrington was not available for comment Saturday.)
“Oh yeah, we saw it,” Cunningham said. “I think the league is taking care of that. I mean, this has nothing to do with race. Last year I did the same thing, and I got kicked out, as I deserved to be kicked out. There’s no reason to even play that card.”
While Fever coach Stephanie White said after the game that she didn’t believe Carrington connected with Cunningham’s neck intentionally, Cunningham drew a straight line to her own infamous ejection against the Connecticut Sun late last season — and not necessarily to the backlash against her recently published comments regarding transgender athletes.
In that 2025 game, Cunningham chased down guard Jacy Sheldon, now a member of the Sky, on a breakaway and wound up applying a headlock to Sheldon in the ensuing dust-up. The disconnect for Cunningham is that Carrington wasn’t even a member of the Sky last year.
“She has no reason to be doing any of that,” Cunningham said. “Like, I don’t even know her. She wasn’t even on the team when all that was going on. But I do think when people play the Fever, we’re nationally televised, there’s a lot of eyes on us. People just want attention. And that’s her just trying to get attention.”
The ruckus around Cunningham does not appear to be dissipating, in any event. There were more protests and counterprotests regarding transgender athletes around the United Center on Saturday, and Cunningham checked into the game to a mixed chorus of cheers and boos in the first quarter.
Not long after, she had not one but two teammates turning her away from another conflagration in the wake of Carrington’s foul — first Timpson, then veteran Monique Billings.
“She’s like, ‘Quit being messy,’” Cunningham said of Billings. “I’m like, ‘You’re right, Mo. This is time for me to be better.’”
