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The Guardian - US
The Guardian - US
Sport
Howard Bryant

Sophie Cunningham isn’t rejecting politics. She’s cashing in on them

Sophie Cunningham is playing her eighth WNBA season with her second different team.
Sophie Cunningham is playing her eighth WNBA season with her second different team. Photograph: Sean M Haffey/Getty Images

Invoking a wounded innocence that their desire for sports to be simple, just like they used to be, conservatives for a decade and a half have dreaded the word “politics”. Now they cannot get enough.

Philadelphia Eagles defensive coordinator Vic Fangio has spent 40 years in the National Football League unknown except for his defensive schemes, but last week opened his press remarks mocking the congressional testimony of Dr Anthony Fauci, jokingly invoking the Fifth Amendment before taking questions. Apropos of nothing, President Trump publicly surmised that LeBron James might be a racist. Indiana Fever guard Sophie Cunningham is now in the act, accepting the role as the right’s anti-Black, anti-transgender culture war ambassador, the role originally intended for Caitlin Clark.

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