Sophie Cunningham Nuking the WNBA Commissioner from Orbit is Yet Another Reason to Respect and Admire Her

We all knew to a moral certainty as soon as we saw Sophie Cunningham's cinematic finger point that we hadn't seen the last of it, or heard the last from her about the game in which her teammate Caitlin Clark was taking more hits than Gina Carano took from Ronda Rousey. In a moment, we could be sure hers would be the Point That Would Launch a Thousand Memes. Yes, including Helen of Troy:

DiCaprio:

It's even been used by Dutch himself:

And even while she called it "the stupidest thing I've ever done," she's not backed down a millimeter about it. Adding, ""Everyone's like, 'That is so dumb.' I think it's dumb, but it was pissing her off and I couldn't help myself. I could not. She [DeWanna Bonner] was losing her shit and all I was doing was literally pointing." 

But with all that said, it's not Cunningham's thoughts about The Point I'm here to discuss. It's the absolute flamethrower she took to the WNBA, the Commissioner, the officials, and the Marketing Department in the same interview. In a podcast she admits has gotten her fined in the past:

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I suggest you invest the less than three minutes it takes to watch the whole thing. But for those of you on the toilet at work, here are some of the better quotes:

--"You see the videos of literally kneeing and cheap-shotting C in the throat, like if she did that to any of our teammates, we would be pissed. But like they are definitely targeting her and the league and the refs do nothing to protect her."  

--"None of our team saw it happen because I promise you if we would have seen that happen, we would have had her back." 

--"Unfortunately, this type of shit happens every single game to her and the league and the refs do absolutely nothing about it." 

--"It IS a joke. That's why [Commissioner] Cathy [Englebert] and the WNBA is getting lit up on social media. Because you're leaving out a generation - the best player to ever go through the WNBA - on this [30th anniversary poster] roster. Honestly, if they were smart, they would market the shit out of some of us. They don't. They don't."

--"Why are they putting random players on there? I'm one of them!" 

OK, I'm going to have to put an end to the quoting and push back against this last statement of Sophie's. There may be "random players" on this poster. In fact, all but a two or three seem random to me:

But she is not one of them. She's generational talent in her own way. A highly recognizable, instantly identifiable, face-of-the-league type. With a Q-rating that is in the upper percentiles, and a massive fanbase. Consider the data:

So she couldn't be more right about the way Cathy Englebert is running this league like these two just crashed her wedding. She's acting like she wants Clark gone, her players are acting accordingly, and her officiating crews are doing what they can to facilitate it by looking the other way every time the abuse is dished out. Never mind that losing either of these two would be the worst thing for a pro sports league becoming relevant for the first time in its existence. 

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The best thing for the league would be for Clark to keep dishing out her own punishment on the scoreboard and for Cunningham to keep getting behind a mic and telling us what's on her mind. This is how you grow your otherwise irrelevant sport, Englebert. Not trying to get your most popular meal ticket killed and fining your second most popular player for telling the truth.