Sophie Cunningham Says the WNBA and Its Refs “Do Absolutely Nothing To Protect” Caitlin Clark
Days earlier, a Mercury player made fist contact with Clark’s throat during a scramble. No foul was called on the floor, and Clark left the game with a back injury.
The hit came in a June 24 game between the Indiana Fever and Phoenix Mercury, when Alyssa Thomas caught Clark in the throat area during a pile-up after Clark drove and fell. Officials didn’t whistle it in real time. The WNBA reviewed the play, upgraded it to a Flagrant 2 for a “non-basketball act,” and suspended Thomas one game.
Cunningham, Clark’s Fever teammate, laid out the pattern on her podcast. She said players are “definitely targeting” Clark and that the physicality happens “every single game,” arguing that if the same thing happened to anyone else on the roster, the team would react hard.
The timing sharpened the criticism. Around the same stretch, the league put out a 30th-anniversary poster featuring 30 players and left Clark off it, even as she’s driven record ratings, attendance, and revenue since arriving in 2024.
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