Sophie Cunningham’s Scoring Has Fallen Off Since Publicly Opposing Trans Athletes

After being asked about the month-long national controversy that has followed her July 21 ESPN profile in which she expressed opposition to transgender participation in sports, WNBA player Sophie Cunningham deflected, telling people to instead look at her stats.“Look at my stats… I don’t know why people think this is such a big distraction… Great time to be a Fever,” the Indiana Fever guard told reporters before her August 22 match against the New York Liberty — which the Indiana Fever lost, by the way.Sophie Cunningham says political discourse hasn’t affected her play:“Look at my stats…I don’t know why people think this is such a big distraction…great time to be a Fever” pic.twitter.com/0keTohgDH5— Kris Pursiainen (@krispursiainen) August 22, 2026 So we did!Them ran the numbers and when stacked up against a comparable period immediately prior to the ESPN profile, Cunningham’s average points per game (PPG) have dropped 32.8% since saying that she wants “to protect young girls in a locker room, or young girls in sport” from “biological men” — common anti-trans dog whistles used by conservatives. After comparing the 13 games played prior to her July 21 feature and the 13 games she has played since making these statements and doubling down on them, even posing with Riley Gaines, her PPG average has dropped from 9.85 to 6.6. Now, look. We’re not scientists at Them. Correlation is not causation and all that. We can’t definitively state that endorsing transphobic viewpoints makes you a worse basketball player, but… we can point at a nearly 33% drop-off in scoring and allow you to draw your own conclusions.Beyond not helping her score more points or become a better player, Cunningham’s comments have become the catalyst for a full-force anti-trans push against the WNBA — largely supported, it seems, by people who do not follow women’s sports despite claiming to want to protect them from trans players. (It should be reiterate