This week, the WNBA announced expansion to three cities, Philadelphia, Cleveland, and Detroit after the exponential growth of the league and the massive growth of women’s sports, especially basketball of the course of the past several years.

However, not everyone is a fan of expansion, at least not to two of the three announced cities.

Tuesday, Indiana Fever star Sophie Cunningham spoke out about WNBA expansion ripping the decision to expand to Detroit and Cleveland questioning “how excited people are to be going to Detroit or Cincinnati” which she later clarified that she meant to say Cleveland.

“I also think that you want to listen to your players, too,” said Cunningham who has gone viral recently for defending star Caitlin Clark on the cout, “Where do they want to play? Where are they going to get excited to play?” she said in an interview posted to Yahoo Sports’ X account on July 1.

“I don’t know how excited people are to be going to Detroit or Cincinnati,” she later added (though she likely meant to say Cleveland instead of Cincinnati).

Detroit Free Press

On the backend of Cunningham’s comments, she suggested expanding to Kansas City, Miami and/or Nashville, Tennessee which is simulateously hilarious when you consider just how awful of a sports city Miami is. On top of that, Detroit is a top-15 market which is the reality of expansion instead of the feels that Cunningham is throwing out there. And just so it’s stated, Miami is the 18th biggest market and again a horrible sports city when it comes to support, Cleveland is 19th, Nashville is 26th, and Kansas City is 34th which I’m sure that 34th ranking is incredibley attractive to the WNBA…

Ironically too, Indiana ranks in at 26 but I continue to digress.

Cunningham’s comments also caught the eye of the City of Detroit Twitter admin to dropped some facts on Cunningham’s clownish remarks.

The silver lining here is we’re already seeing a rivalry fueled despite Detroit not beginning play until 2029. It’s too bad things can’t get started sooner.