Katie Nolan thinks Sophie Cunningham isn’t seeing the true picture when it comes to her comments on transgenders athletes partaking in women’s sports.
The Fever star expressed during a recent ESPN interview that she supports banning trans athletes from competing in women’s sports because she wants to protect female athletes and that her views did not come from a position of hate for the trans community.
She has since doubled down on her stance.
That view has since set off plenty of criticism of Cunningham, a rally in support of her outside the Fever’s game in Seattle and Storm co-owner Celeste Keaton getting suspended five games by the WNBA after two teenage fans claimed she called them “f—king insane” over a sign supporting the WNBA star.
Cunningham has been booed by fans inside the arena in Seattle and Portland and even Fever coach Stephanie White, who said exclusion is not the answer, called all the drama surrounding Cunningham “tiresome” as the team keeps winning games.
While many have chimed in on Cunningham’s comments, Nolan took a different track on her “Casuals” podcast this week. She believes Cunningham doesn’t fully understand the issue she’s talking about and missed a chance to move outside her potential ideological comfort zone and engage in a meaningful discussion while playing alongside many LGBTQ women in the WNBA.
Nolan said those controlling the conversation on this issue are using it as a hot-button topic as the House has passed the Protection of Womens and Girls in Sports Act of 2025, which would prohibit schools from allowing biological males to participate in women’s sports.
Nolan believed the issue is more nuanced than his stopping biological men from competing in women’s sports and noted that Cunningham’s podcast co-host Wes Wilson articulated the issue better than the Fever forward did by calling the conversation a “borderline nonexistent issue” in America.
“Nobody is saying we should get rid of, for example, the WNBA and the NBA, and everybody should just compete together,” Nolan said. “Nobody’s saying that. And so, the people that are packaging it as that are doing so on purpose. And when you are consuming it and going, ‘How could anyone disagree with this statement?’ You never consider that it’s because the statement itself does not reflect the actual issue that we’re discussing.”
It made Nolan chide Cunningham, saying, “you don’t really have critical-thinking skills” or she’s not “interested in employing them.”
Nolan, who has supported transgender athletes’ inclusion in women’s sports, feels the WNBA star is blindly helping sell the highly political message without questioning it at all.
“You’re taking the message that’s being given to you by people who are highly invested in this dividing stuff, and you’re helping them sell it by not questioning it at all,” Nolan said. “Which is extra crazy given the fact that you’re surrounded by people you could talk to about this issue to better understand it.”
Nolan called Cunningham a hypocrite for being a ring girl at UFC 329, which was co-main evented by Conor McGregor, who was found civilly liable for sexual assault in Ireland.
UFC CEO Dana White was caught on video striking his wife.
“You couldn’t catch me dead at that fight. F–k Conor McGregor, respectfully,” Nolan said. “And you [follow up] by saying that it’s really important for you to protect little girls. From some theoretical transgender person who might take advantage of — so many things would have to happen for the harm you’re claiming to be worried about to actually be carried out — meanwhile men come into women’s sports in various positions of authority … and they take advantage of women all the time. And where were you, Sophie, on any of that?”
