Indiana Fever guard Sophie Cunningham clarified her reasons for frustration after signing a new deal to remain teammates with friend Caitlin Clark.
Cunningham put her signature on a $665,000 contract to stay with the Fever after an MCL injury sidelined her late last year.
In an episode of her ‘Show Me Something’ podcast, Cunningham commented that she wasn’t entirely happy with the deal she signed.
‘I’m not even gonna lie… it’s a little, kind of, frustrating,’ she said on the podcast.
While fans believed Cunningham may have been upset with her compensation, the Missouri product took to X to clear the record.
‘I’m gonna shut this down right now,’ Cunningham posted to her X account.
Sophie Cunningham set the record straight about her unhappiness with her new contract
Cunningham signed a one-year, $665,000 deal to stay in Indiana alongside Caitlin Clark
Cunningham, 30, maintained that her issue came from how short the length of her deal was
‘I’m not mad about the money…. I just wanted more years because I love it here. I wanted to get a house so I could bring my dog and donkey to Indy with me.
‘That’s it. That’s the truth. I think we have something very special here in Indiana!!’
On Tuesday morning, Cunningham further clarified her comments to reporters after practice.
‘Twitter kind of blew up last night about a comment I made on my podcast, but… that’s not what I meant at all. And I think if you listen to the full clip, you really understand that I just wanted to be somewhere for more than one year,’ she further explained.
‘I’m almost 30 years old. I wanna have a home. I wanna kind of get established and I would love to get established in a place like Indiana. We had such a great time.
‘And you know, when you find a group of girls who really make you fall in love with basketball again and you enjoy it, you enjoy them, not only on the court but off the court, like you want to hold on to that. And so that’s what I meant by that.
‘I think all of them this morning, they’re like, we know exactly what you meant. The internet’s doing what the internet does and trying to stir things up, but it made me sound snotty and ungrateful, and that is the last thing I ever want. I am so grateful.
‘I know I’m coming off a pretty big knee injury, and so it was never about the money, it was just about the years because I wanted to be with them. And God forbid, a girl loves her teammates, you know what I mean?’
Cunningham says she loves playing in Indiana: ‘God forbid, a girl loves her teammates’
Cunningham’s first season with the Fever in 2025 ended with a poorly timed knee injury
Cunningham was traded to the Fever before the 2025 season even began when she left the Phoenix Mercury – the team she spent her entire career with before then.
In her first season, Cunningham played 30 games and started in 13 of them – averaging 8.6 points, 3.5 rebounds, 1.2 assists and one steal per game.
But she suffered the aforementioned MCL injury that ended up seeing her sidelined for the rest of the season.
But Cunningham has made a full recovery and is likely to feature in the team’s first game of the season against the Dallas Wings on May 9.
