A WNBA player just may have put a tired debate to rest for good.
Indiana Fever guard Sophie Cunningham responded to comments made by a panel of male basketball players last week, and her willingness to agree with them might land her in hot water with gender activists.
‘Men are just stronger, bigger, athletic; they just are a different build.’
On Tuesday, NBA players Michael Porter Jr. and Lonzo Ball and former pro LiAngelo Ball shot down claims from WNBA star Paige Bueckers, who said she could beat NBA player Josh Hart one-on-one. The panel also denied former NBA player Pat Beverley’s claim that the WNBA champions could beat an NBA team.
By Thursday, Cunningham said dozens of people had sent her the remarks looking for her reaction.
“This is my personal opinion, but if you are a professional football player, basketball player … if you’re in that elite-level group, yeah, you should be able to beat the girls,” she explained. “Like, I’m not surprised by that.”
The 29-year-old then delivered a blunt message to her peers: “I just don’t get why it’s continuing to get brought up. And like, if women are saying that, like, he couldn’t beat them, yeah, he could. Any NBA star or player could beat a female in high school,” she said.
Cunningham’s co-host on the “Show Me Something” podcast, West Wilson, had a different approach to Porter’s comments. He put forward the notion that Porter has some sort of issue with women that caused him to bring up the topic.
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Wilson said Porter has been “talking about true women” for the last two years, adding that he believes the Brooklyn Nets player is “weirdly insecure about women being around him” and their “reflection of him.”
The co-host was silenced when he read the contextual argument made by Porter. However, he omitted the portion of Porter’s remarks in which he said he had played against Cunningham when he was in the eighth grade and easily defeated her.
“My sisters went to University of Missouri, and I was still a young dude, and they had me playing on the scout team,” Porter said last week. “And they had a few WNBA players on their team, like Sophie Cunningham and a couple others. I think I was in seventh or eighth grade.”
Cunningham then brought her co-host back down to earth with her next comments, admitting that a team of elite eighth-graders could indeed handle adult women on the court.
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– YouTube
“If they’re future pros,” she prefaced, “… it’s probably true.”
Cunningham continued, stating the obviously biological differences.
“I don’t want to be unrealistic or delusional, like, men are just stronger, bigger, athletic; they just are a different build. And so if you put them up against females, well, yeah, they’re gonna win. Duh,” she said.
Wilson asked if any WNBA players thought they could beat a group of high-school boys, and Cunningham was more than willing to put a nail in the coffin.
“Dude, there’s no way. … If you put their best high-school [players] against the best WNBA … the male and female are just so different. I just don’t think that’s a fair matchup,” she admitted.
Interestingly, the duo went on to discuss Cunningham’s basketball history, which included discussions of playing with Porter’s older sisters.
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