Indiana Fever continue to thrive on the court despite constant barrage of off-court distractions

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — Indiana Fever guard Sophie Cunningham walked into practice Wednesday with every intention of talking basketball and only basketball.

She still couldn’t completely avoid the latest off-court firestorm — her belief that trans women should not be competing in women’s sports.

While Cunningham declined to directly address the issue that’s created another circus-like environment for the WNBA’s most visible team, the former Missouri star did talk about her pregame conversation with the league’s winningest coach, Cheryl Reeve, and challenged media members to find better stories than just the latest controversy.

“There’s just so much distraction,” she said before practice, noting the ESPN interview that started the debate was filmed in February. “I think the WNBA media, all we ever do is cover everything except basketball. It’s like, what are we doing? There’s so much, like you can talk about other things. I think those are great stories. I think it shows fans, you know, who people are outside of the court. But I also think we’ve got to keep the main thing, the main thing.”

Avoiding the traps

Despite the continually swirling storms, nobody has played better basketball than the Fever.

Indiana is 9-3 since July 1, including a 5-2 record on two recent road trips. It beat defending league champ Las Vegas by 16 and 34 points during the first Western swing and can sweep the season series Thursday when the Aces make this season’s only trip to Indianapolis. Las Vegas eliminated injury-depleted Indiana in last year’s conference semifinals.

The Fever’s five-game winning streak, which ended with Sunday’s 108-100 loss at Minnesota, matched the fourth-longest in franchise history. Indiana will try to extend its league record for consecutive 100-point games to seven on Thursday.

Not enough?

Indiana’s per game scoring average of 96.5 points is on pace to shatter the Phoenix Mercury’s previous single-season league record of 93.9 points in 2010.

And as All-Star guards Caitlin Clark and Kelsey Mitchell and All-Star center Aliyah Boston produce career-best seasons. Cunningham thinks all three should be MVP candidates, even as she shoots 48.2% from the field and 45.2% on 3-pointers, both career bests amid all this new attention.

The key to their success is no secret — experience.

“My first six years (in the WNBA), I was with Diana Taurasi and Brittney Griner and so that causes a lot of buzz on your team as well and so you just have to protect the locker room,” Cunningham said. “And then you come here and it was like 100 times more. So last year, you know, I think we had a lot of preparation for what distractions and outside forces could do to a locker room. So this year, we’re used to it. We’re tight in the locker room. We try to protect those walls like no other. We try to protect each other like no other.”

Challenging course

A year ago, the leaguewide focus was on a new collective bargaining agreement and whether Clark would play a key role in pushing for changes. But in Indiana, the central theme was the daily updates on Clark’s soft-tissue injuries and others including Cunningham’s season-ending right knee injury.

This year, a May sideline spat between Clark and coach Stephanie White raised questions about their relationship and led to speculation about White’s potential firing. That was followed by Cunningham’s 22-second pointing video that went viral and the still image of Alyssa Thomas hitting Clark in the throat with a fist. The latter led to questions about whether Clark was being targeted with overly aggressive contact. The U.S. Congress even sent a letter to WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert about the incident.

Now it’s the rallies — in support and opposition — to Cunnigham’s position at recent games, which also led to the discussion between Reeve and Cunningham.

“She just came up and, you know I respect her for coming up in person because I think a lot of people behind the screens love that type of thing,” Cunningham said, gesturing as if she were typing a message. “She (Reeve) had stories about her point of view, and I had stories about my point of view, and we left with love and respect, and I think that’s what it’s all about.”

Staying together

One potential benefit of Cunningham’s sudden celebrity is that Clark can spend more time working behind the scenes on her craft.

But White believes the constant wave of storms also has steeled Indiana’s locker room from the outside noise and forced players to focus more on winning games and playing better defense.

“Any time we have an opportunity to navigate challenges together, you know, it reveals I think the character of who you are, and I think our group continues to stay together, continues to pull together,” White said, one day before she was named the league’s Coach of the Month for July. “When you have opportunities to be on the road for as long as we were last week, that also helps. I think we just have a really good group when it comes to really understanding one another and understanding the situation we’re in.”

Even when the glare of the white-hot spotlight goes far deeper than basketball.

“I just think when you have this platform and everything you do is magnified by 10,000, you kind of get used to it,” Cunningham said. “So this team, everywhere we go, everywhere we play it’s their Super Bowl. It’s nothing new for us and when you join this team, it’s something you have to expect and something you have to know going forward — like all eyes are on you 24-7.

”I want to get back to basketball,” she added. “It’s always been about basketball.”

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