Indiana Fever guard Sophie Cunningham did not hold back how she really felt about the new WNBA franchises entering the fold throughout the rest of the 2020s, which will include teams in Detroit, Cleveland, and Philadelphia.
Cunningham told reporters prior to today's Commissioner's Cup game between the Fever and the Minnesota Lynx that while she's happy to see "more opportunities" for the league to roster more talented WNBA players, she thinks the league "has to listen" to players about preferences regarding where they'd like to play.
"Where do they wanna play? Are they gonna get excited to play. I do think Miami would've been a great one. Everyone loves Florida. Nashville's an amazing city. Kansas City is another one, the women's soccer league is showing that. I'm not so sure what the thought process is there. At the end of the day, you also gotta think you're not expanding our league too fast. That's another thing that, you don't want teams to totally in and some teams that aren't. It's kind of a hard situation. I don't know how excited people are to be going to Detroit or [Cleveland]."
Cunningham delivers shots to incoming WNBA teams
It's a bit of an unnecessary blow to Detroit and Cleveland, two cities actually well known for huge sports fandom across the major leagues that play there. Both cities are also prior hosts to WNBA franchises, which should rile up (in a good way) fans of those past teams - the Shock and the Rockers.
Additionally, it's been common when evaluating expansion teams for the commissioner, Cathy Engelbert, to prioritize both availability of arenas capable of hosting new teams and a teams' ability to actually invest state-of-the-art facilities and money into whichever players they end up rostering.
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The Golden State Valkyries, for this reason, were able to quickly land a talented roster and have thrived as a result of both investing a ton into the franchise and gaining major revenue back in return from an extremely motivated fanbase.
Cunningham is right in one aspect - southern WNBA fans do deserve more teams, especially as the only team in the southeast is the Atlanta Dream. However, it's possible that Detroit, Cleveland, and Philadelphia were all able to present a clear plan that showed they could begin playing games more quickly than the cities Cunningham mentions in the clip.
Regardless, it's not a good look overall to already be dismissing two cities with actual WNBA franchise history before they've even revamped their new team.