INDIANAPOLIS \u2014 This is a column about basketball. Just the way Sophie Cunningham would have wanted.<\/p>\n
On Thursday night, the Indiana Fever and Las Vegas Aces played a highly entertaining basketball game. Though other things happened around the basketball part.<\/p>\n
Recently, Cunningham\u2019s team has found itself squirming beneath an unrelenting spotlight because of something Cunningham said about trans women in sports<\/a>. In an interview with ESPN, Cunningham offered: \u201cI want to protect young girls in a locker room, or young girls in sport who shouldn\u2019t have to go against biological men.\u201d Following those comments, her teammates and head coach have been dragged into the depths of this culture sewage. That means basketball hasn\u2019t been the focus, much to Cunningham\u2019s chagrin.<\/p>\n \u201cThe WNBA media, all we ever do is cover everything except basketball,\u201d Cunningham said Wednesday morning. \u201cIt\u2019s like, \u2018What are we doing?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n There\u2019s no way Cunningham could\u2019ve predicted that her fiery comments about something unrelated to basketball would spark a media inferno. This is a woman singularly focused on basketball \u2014 except, maybe, when she hosts a semi-regular podcast with a reality TV star. (One recent episode teased how co-host West Wilson would break his silence on why he stepped away from \u201cSummer House.\u201d Quite a contrast from The Athletic\u2019s No Offseason podcast,<\/a> which just talks about basketball and stuff.)<\/p>\n So, allow this story to attempt a rare thing with the Indiana Fever of the Women\u2019s National Basketball Association, and mention the word \u201cbasketball\u201d as much as possible.<\/p>\n As we were saying: On Thursday night, the Fever and Aces played a highly entertaining basketball game. Well, until the third quarter, when a long delay interrupted the action while Aces all-star Jackie Young pointed out a courtside fan and security escorted two men out. The pair did not return to their seats. The team said they did not violate the Fan Code of Conduct, though Young said one of the men \u201cmade (a comment) that was a little bit too far.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n Oops. Sorry for that. Let\u2019s redirect to basketball, where Aces guard Chelsea Gray became the first player in WNBA history to hit two rare buzzer-beaters in the same game \u2014 a 3 to tie the game at the end of regulation, and another 3 to win the game in overtime. How\u2019s this for basketball analysis: Gray had as many buzzer-beating 3-pointers as Cunningham had points in the game.<\/p>\n The Aces\u2019 86-84 overtime victory was appealing for anyone who craves late-game chaos. And about what happened earlier \u2026 regret to mention that a demonstrator of one spent an hour or so before the game outside Gainbridge Fieldhouse, speaking into a megaphone about chromosomes.<\/p>\n Since Cunningham\u2019s comments, there have been small groups of protestors demonstrating everywhere her team has resumed its basketball activities because of a topic that has little to do with basketball. In Seattle, in Portland and in Minneapolis, the groups have assembled in support of Cunningham. At times, they\u2019ve met peaceful resistance. However, in downtown Indianapolis, one man paced alone with a sign that on one side read, in part: \u201cNo Child is Trans.\u201d<\/p>\n A grandfather, holding a young girl\u2019s hand, flipped the bird behind his back toward the demonstrator, and an Angel Reese fan from Dayton, Ohio, in town to celebrate her 70th birthday, stopped to talk with the man about his sign, she said she agreed but their conversation dovetailed into race. Mostly, the protest was ignored. Fans walked past him, delightfully unbothered so that they could take a photo beneath Caitlin Clark\u2019s banner hanging outside the basketball arena.<\/p>\n Oh right, that reminds me again of basketball, and Clark, the Fever\u2019s most popular basketball player.<\/p>\n On Thursday, Clark missed her first shot, a deep 3; this season, she ranks fifth in the league in 3-point attempts. This is considered a basketball stat. She did eventually score, however, and on her first bucket she moved around her former teammate, Aces center Brianna Turner. This is the same player who recently had made ripples for non-basketball reasons when she accused the Fever of allegedly silencing players after the team had fired a male staffer over sexual harassment claims. The Fever denied Turner\u2019s allegations<\/a> two weeks later.<\/p>\n But back to basketball, where on Thursday, Clark and teammate Aliyah Boston were named to the USA Basketball roster for September\u2019s FIBA Women\u2019s Basketball World Cup in Berlin. Also this week, Clark\u2019s other All-Star teammate, Kelsey Mitchell, earned Eastern Conference Player of the Month honors for July. Fever fans can\u2019t get enough of their basketball stars, and during the game against the Aces, one woman held up a small sign: \u201cCC + Kelsey MVP.\u201d In Indiana, Clark is viewed as a Most Valuable Player.<\/p>\n However, in MAGA spaces, she\u2019s called a \u201ccoward.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n It feels non-basketbally to bring up that Clark has refused to wade into the conversation that Cunningham sparked about trans women in sports. Initially, after the controversy began, Clark did not speak with reporters. When her absence from the frontlines of this cultural war was noted, and when pro-Cunningham demonstrations continued to overshadow the basketball, Clark finally said: \u201cIt\u2019s for leagues and the governing bodies to work with their athletes to find solutions, but our focus is on basketball.\u201d<\/p>\n Clark has since been torn down by members of the very community that had held her up as its representative. Cunningham, meanwhile, got a shout-out from Indiana\u2019s Lt. Gov. Micah Beckwith,<\/a> who once defended the purpose behind the Three-Fifths Compromise of 1787, which counted enslaved people as three-fifths of a human.<\/p>\n Beckwith said he was \u201cproud\u201d that Cunningham was a Hoosier, and his praise had little to do with her basketball skill set. People like him are not actually listening to Cunningham when she says let\u2019s focus on sports, they\u2019re using her. And they don\u2019t actually care about basketball. Just listen to them.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is week three \u2026 covering the WNBA, and I have to say, I\u2019m done. I hate the WNBA,\u201d said Fox News host Jesse Watters. \u201cI mean, I don\u2019t mind women\u2019s basketball. My girls play basketball, but I don\u2019t want to cover women\u2019s basketball. I don\u2019t want to be a WNBA analyst. We get paid to have an opinion about everything. And this is something I don\u2019t care about.\u201d<\/p>\n In other news of conservative men supporting women, Outkick founder Clay Travis, who has called Cunningham \u201ca rock star,\u201d spent the week baiting the Aces, the defending WNBA champs, to a $10 million payday if they defeated a boys\u2019 state championship team. Cunningham, for some reason, reserved her criticism for the WNBA media.<\/p>\n This is the problem that hounds the Fever. No matter how much the media, the fans and especially the players want to focus on basketball, the sideshow overshadows everything on the court. The protestors and politicians keep showing up. The blue check marks in Elon\u2019s rage arena keep posting about this sport with impure intentions. It\u2019s so exhausting.<\/p>\n For her part, Cunningham is trying to have it both ways. She throws gasoline on the complex discussion of trans women in sport, and fans those flames by spending time before the Aug. 2 game in Minneapolis, smiling and posing for photos with women wearing XX XY T-shirts.<\/a> Then she complains when WNBA media notice what she stands for.<\/p>\n Cunningham wants all the good that comes with her proximity to a superstar like Clark, and the newfound fame she has built with her own outspokenness, but she wants none of the consequences. It would be nice for her if the world worked like that, just like it would be nice if the rest of us could stick to basketball.<\/p>\n