Saturday’s game between the Indiana Fever and Chicago Sky caused a ruckus. In the first quarter, Fever guard Sophie Cunningham was attempting a transition layup when Sky guard DiJonai Carrington thwacked her in the face while going for a chase-down block, sending Cunningham crashing to the floor.
The two had to be separated after the exchange, and ultimately, Carrington was assessed a flagrant 2 foul and ejected from the game. For Carrington’s part, she felt that she was making a basketball play and was ejected for one particular reason altogether.
“WHITE PRIVILEGE,” she posted on Threads, tagging the Indiana Fever’s official account on the platform.
View on Threads
“An absolutely insane thing to say”
On Monday, Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy weighed in on the controversy on Wake Up Barstool.
“She commits the flagrant 2 on Sophie Cunningham,” Portnoy said of Carrington. “Clearly a flagrant 2 by the way…
“She ya later, hit the showers. There’s flagrant 2s in basketball, in the WNBA. That’s a totally fine reaction to a play like that, and maybe the story ends there if Carrington doesn’t go to the locker room, pick up her phone, and tweet, ‘white privilege.’
“Which is insane, an absolutely insane thing to say. Now, if you go watch other networks, I’m not going to say it on Fox, but ESPN is filled with absolute morons. They have a panel of morons sitting there, discussing this play, and talking about whether it was the right call and things of that nature, and they don’t even mention the fact that she said, ‘white privilege.’
.@stoolpresidente gives his take on everything that went down with DiJonai Carrington & Sophie Cunningham pic.twitter.com/2u6DakxocF
— Wake Up Barstool (@wakeupbarstool) August 10, 2026
“That is the story; the story isn’t that she got kicked out, it’s that she tweeted out ‘white privilege’ as though because Sophie Cunningham is white somehow that’s why she got kicked out.
“They go on to defend her, the story, the narrative that, ‘she’s not a dirty player, she makes plays like this all the time.'”
He continued, “This is not a skin color thing; she has a history of making dirty plays.”
“Now where this thing gets absolutely bananas is when you start making it into a race and culture war, and the people talking about it are not mentioning 99 percent of the time that she went back and tweeted white privilege…
“So, when you have commentators, Cheryl Reeve, who I like, Elle Duncan, I’m putting some of the names down, who are like, ‘conservatives are an outside force trying to hijack the WNBA, and trying to make everything about race and trying to make it a culture war.’ No, it’s you guys.”
The Fever and Sky will face each other again on August 23, and it’s all but guaranteed to be one of the most viewed games of the season.
About Qwame Skinner
Qwame Skinner has loved both writing and sports his entire life. In addition to his sports coverage at Comeback Media, Qwame writes novels, and his debut; The First Casualty, an adult fantasy, is out now.