Indiana Fever star Sophie Cunningham believes WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert may not hold her position at the top of the women’s basketball league for much longer.
Cunningham, who has become the center of controversy in recent weeks over her divisive stance on transgender athletes’ place in women’s sports, said as much in an interview published Wednesday with USA Today Sports. During her conversation with the outlet, Cunningham expressed her opinion on Engelbert’s future with the WNBA.
“You do have to have a person in power who is bold, who is confident, who wants the best for the players and not maybe for themselves all the time,” Cunningham said. “I do feel like, as a whole, that could be a position that’s maybe open at the end of the year, but that’s not my call.”
“[Engelbert’s] done a lot of good things, but with where our league is trying to go, I feel like you just want someone who also wants that,” Cunningham continued. “That’s just a hard position to be in, in her shoes, us as players ― we always want more, more, more because we see how good it can be, but … that’s up to [NBA commissioner] Adam Silver at the end of the day.”
Engelbert, 61, has served as WNBA commissioner since 2019. While she has steered the league through a massive explosion in popularity in recent years, Engelbert has come under increasing fire from WNBA stars who have expressed their public disapproval of her leadership, including Cunningham and Minnesota Lynx forward Napheesa Collier.
Her Wednesday comments do not mark the first time Cunningham has called out Engelbert. In an October 2025 episode of her podcast, Cunningham spoke on the state of the WNBA at this “pivotal point” in the league’s history.
“There’s millions and millions of new fans, and at the end of the day, she’s worried about her. In all of her statements, it’s like, ‘I got us here’ and ‘I should…’ – Cathy, no one cares,” Cunningham said last year. “Literally, no one cares.”
For her part, Cunningham is no stranger to public backlash. She has been the subject of heavy pushback ever since she touched in an ESPN profile published in late July on the ongoing debate surrounding transgender women’s future in women’s sports leagues.
“I got a lot of negative feedback about me hating trans. And I’m like, ‘I never once said that,’” Cunningham told ESPN. “I think that I am here to extend love. But I also think with that love is truth, being honest. And I want to protect young girls in a locker room, or young girls in sport who shouldn’t have to go against biological men.”
Her comments have inspired political protests outside of Indiana Fever games and gained her the support of certain, conservative political activists, including former collegiate swimmer Riley Gaines, who attended a recent Fever game in support of Cunningham.
