Indiana Fever fans are convinced that head coach Stephanie White quietly punished backup guard Sophie Cunningham on Sunday evening.
Cunningham played just seven minutes in a blowout loss to the Washington Mystics on Sunday evening. Cunningham did not have a good game, scoring 0 points and grabbing 0 rebounds and dishing out 0 assists, but just seven minutes of game action off of the bench is quite rare.
The low game action comes after Cunningham publicly questioned her coach during an episode of her “No Hesitation” podcast that aired on Thursday.
“Being traded up here to Indiana, we practice, man! Like, we practice, practice. We are still practicing for probably like two hours against guys full court, hard. Yeah. And we have four more games left,” Cunningham said.
“So, to each their own. Everyone has a different style. We have a very rookie team, too, who maybe they’re learning how to be a pro, and so I can see both sides of it. But we’re still practicing, like, two and a half hours, hard,” Cunningham added.
Days later, after her comments went viral, Cunningham received very little game action from her head coach.
Was this a quiet punishment?
Indiana Fever fans are convinced it was.
“Sophie Cunningham went on her podcast and talked about the long practices Stephanie White make them have and Stephanie White played her for (expletive) 4 minutes the next game!! It’s an understatement for me to say how much I hate this Coach,” one fan wrote.
“Sophie always speaks very highly of White, and I have no reason not to believe her. But then you see how she’s used, and it takes a real effort not to think the worst; I don’t know how anyone can expect her to perform at her best like that,” one fan added.
“Bad coaches have the longest practices. Wooden’s and Lombardi’s were remarkably short,” one fan added.
“I feel like the Fever front office gave the order to freeze her out even before this happened. Her playing time has been slowly going down for a while now. This organization has managed to ruin Lexie Hull. And now it sure looks like they’re trying to ruin Sophie Cunningham,” one fan added.
The Fever dropped to 27-17 on the season with Sunday’s loss to the Washington Mystics.
