{"id":31624,"date":"2025-07-02T04:09:15","date_gmt":"2025-07-02T04:09:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/31624\/"},"modified":"2025-07-02T04:09:15","modified_gmt":"2025-07-02T04:09:15","slug":"sophie-cunningham-is-no-fan-of-wnbas-plans-to-add-teams-in-cleveland-and-detroit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/31624\/","title":{"rendered":"Sophie Cunningham is no fan of WNBA&#8217;s plans to add teams in Cleveland and Detroit"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"story-text \" data-index=\"6\">The league already had plans to add franchises in Toronto and Portland next season. The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wnba.com\/news\/wnba-expansion-cleveland-detroit-philadelphia\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">three new teams<\/a> will play in Cleveland (2028), Detroit (2029) and Philadelphia (2030), giving the league 18 teams.<\/p>\n<p class=\"story-text \" data-index=\"7\">Cunningham, a seven-year veteran who spent her first six years in Phoenix, expressed skepticism over the latest choices, two of which \u2014 Cleveland and Detroit \u2014 have already seen WNBA franchises come and go.<\/p>\n<p class=\"story-text \" data-index=\"8\">\u201cYou want to listen to your players, too. Where do they want to play? Where are they going to get excited to play and draw fans? I do think that Miami would have been a great (location). Nashville is an amazing city. Kansas City, amazing opportunity,\u201d said Cunningham, who played in college at Missouri.<\/p>\n<p class=\"story-text \" data-index=\"10\">\u201cI\u2019m not so sure what the thought process is there, but at the end of the day, you want to make sure that you\u2019re not expanding our league too fast. I think that that\u2019s also another thing. It\u2019s kind of a hard decision-making situation. But man, I don\u2019t know how excited people are to be going to Detroit or (Cleveland).\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"story-text \" data-index=\"12\">Cunningham scored 13 points to help the Fever, who were missing star Caitlin Clark because of a groin injury, beat the league-best Lynx. She did not speak to reporters after the game.<\/p>\n<p class=\"story-text \" data-index=\"13\">All five expansion franchises will play in markets with NBA teams, and Fever coach Stephanie White said she sees that as an advantage.<\/p>\n<p class=\"story-text \" data-index=\"14\">\u201cI think it&#8217;s a positive thing,\u201d White said. \u201cHaving built-in fan bases, shared expenses &#8230; and the way that we&#8217;re filling NBA arenas. We are at a point where we&#8217;re outgrowing some of the smaller, independent ones, and opportunities to play in those arenas is big-time.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"story-text \" data-index=\"15\">___<\/p>\n<p class=\"story-text \" data-index=\"16\">AP WNBA: <a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/wnba\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/wnba<\/a><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/T6AWZBAN6SVXGQBYNBQJEHVKQE.jpg\" alt=\"Indiana Fever guard Sophie Cunningham, right, works the floor against Dallas Wings guard Paige Bueckers during the first half of a WNBA basketball game Friday, June 27, 2025, in Dallas. (AP Photo\/Julio Cortez)\" fetchpriority=\"auto\" width=\"600\"\/><\/p>\n<p class=\"photo-credit-text\">Credit: AP<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.ajc.com\/news\/2025\/07\/sophie-cunningham-is-no-fan-of-wnbas-plans-to-add-teams-in-cleveland-and-detroit\/[object Object]\" class=\"image-expand\" alt=\"icon to expand image\"\/><\/p>\n<p class=\"photo-credit-text\">Credit: AP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The league already had plans to add franchises in Toronto and Portland next season. The three new teams&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":31625,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[49],"tags":[62,67,132,68,232,26719,26720],"class_list":["post-31624","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wnba","tag-sports","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us","tag-wnba","tag-wnba-hoop","tag-wnba-logo"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114781681283403612","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31624","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31624"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31624\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31625"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31624"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31624"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31624"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}