DiJonai Carrington ejected after hard foul on Sophie Cunningham as Sky fall to Fever 3%
By Alissa Hirsh54%
8/8/2026, 5:12:27 PM
BS Summary: This article contains 7 faulty reasoning types, including Negativity Bias, Hasty Generalization, and Availability Heuristic, with Fundamental Attribution Error as the most egregious example at 5.7% saturation with 44 hits. Analysis detected 148 faulty-reasoning hits from 768 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 8.3% and a BS Rank of 3% (29,573 of 30,337 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 97.50% of the article peer group.
It was a jumbled affair at the United Center, even by the standards of this Sky season.
Outside the arena, dueling protests had formed around Fever guard Sophie Cunningham’s recent comments opposing transgender women participating in women’s sports.
Inside, a game moved from Wintrust Arena to accommodate a bigger crowd felt more like Gainbridge Fieldhouse West than a home game for the Sky.
And in the middle of it all, the Sky lost another close one, 90-86.
The Fever gave their traveling fans plenty to cheer about early.
Caitlin Clark put on a show, making all the right reads and hitting 5-of-6 from deep.
The Sky looked sluggish, missing layups and offering little resistance.
Then DiJonai Carrington checked in.
Carrington, who missed the first half of the season recovering from foot surgery, has changed the Sky’s energy since returning.
She did it almost immediately Saturday, scoring eight points in three minutes and helping turn an early deficit into a lead.
Cunningham broke free in transition, and Carrington chased her down from behind.
Carrington went for the block but caught Cunningham across the head and neck, sending her hard to the floor.
Cunningham popped back up and gave Carrington a little shove.
Words followed before teammates and security separated them.
After review, Carrington was assessed a Flagrant 2 and ejected.
Cunningham was not given a technical.
Officials later said they “deemed her reaction to the severity of the contact to be acceptable.”
Minutes later, Carrington posted “WHITE PRIVILEGE” on Threads and tagged the Fever.
Neither coach thought the foul was intentional.
Fever coach Stephanie White, who coached Carrington in Connecticut, and Sky coach Tyler Marsh both said they saw Carrington making a play on the ball.
Cunningham took the opposite stance.
She said she “absolutely” believed Carrington fouled her intentionally, adding that she has “no beef” with Carrington but believes she has “some pent-up stuff.”
“So, get your s— off,” Cunningham said.
“That’s fine.
I can take it.”
There is some history here, although not directly between Cunningham and Carrington.
One of the moments that helped build Cunningham’s reputation as Clark’s “enforcer” came last season against the Sun.
After Clark and current Sky guard Jacy Sheldon, longtime Big Ten rivals at Iowa and Ohio State, tangled earlier in the game, Cunningham later put Sheldon in a headlock during a fastbreak.
Cunningham acknowledged the parallel, but balked at Carrington getting involved.
“I did that last year.
Yeah, it’s intentional, but [Carrington] wasn’t even on the team,” Cunningham said.
“She has no reason to be doing any of that… Good way to get her kicked out.”
“I do know when people play the Fever, we’re nationally televised, there’s a lot of eyes on us,” Cunningham said.
“People just want attention.
That’s her just trying to get attention.”
Asked about Carrington’s “WHITE PRIVILEGE” post, Cunningham dismissed race as a factor.
“This has nothing to do with race,” Cunningham said.
“Last year I did the same thing.
I got kicked out, as I deserved to be kicked out.
There’s no reason to even play that card.”
The exchange only added to the controversy already swirling around Cunningham, whose comments about transgender women in sports had followed the Fever from city to city.
“I want to protect young girls in a locker room, or young girls in sport who shouldn’t have to go against biological men,” Cunningham said in a recent ESPN interview.
She has since called that position “common sense.”
Her comments have spurred rallies outside Fever games from groups such as XX-XY Athletics, which argues that it is “unfair and dangerous to allow males to compete in girls’ and women’s sports.”
There was also a counterprotest in support of transgender athletes outside the United Center on Saturday.
Marsh said none of it gave the Sky any more “juice” than usual.
With their playoff chances dwindling, he said their focus remains on basketball.
“We’re just locked in on hoops, really,” Sheldon said.
“We come to every game kind of the same, locked in on the scouting report, what we want to get done and ultimately try to win and play good basketball.
So that was just our focus.
There was no conversation outside of that.”
One thing that kept the Sky from playing their best basketball was losing Carrington early.
They were already without leading scorer Sydney Taylor, sidelined by a groin injury.
Then they lost one of their best perimeter defenders and most aggressive shot creators after three minutes.
In a game decided by four points, that hurt.
Speakers
2speakers29%attributed speech549writer words
Selected voice
34%flagged-word coverageSophie Cunningham
167 attributed words76% of attributed speech13% writer coverage
Attribution is sentence-level. Pattern percentages are calculated only from words assigned to that voice.
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