Chicago Sky guard DiJonai Carrington viciously clotheslined the Indiana Fever’s Sophie Cunningham while Cunningham was driving for a layup during an Aug. 8 WNBA game. The referees called a flagrant foul on Carrington immediately and ejected her from the game. Sports Illustrated decided to frame it, in its headline, as payback: “Sophie Cunningham Got A Bitter Taste of Karma After Drawing Flagrant Foul.”
What was the “karma” that led to Cunningham’s hardwood tumble? The conservative sports media website Outkick postulated that it came from a late-July ESPN.com profile (“Love her or hate her, Sophie Cunningham Won’t Be Ignored”) where Cunningham spoke out against transgender participation in women’s sports. “I want to protect young girls in a locker room, or young girls in sport who shouldn’t have to go against biological men,” she said. And maybe SI did mean the headline to act as a callback to that. But the article itself explicitly referred to Cunningham’s own hard retaliation foul on Jacy Sheldon the previous season.
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