Sophie Cunningham Says She Was Fined $500 for TikTok Video Critical of WNBA Refs

Indiana Fever guard Sophie Cunningham said the WNBA fined her $500 for a social media post she sent criticizing the league's officiating.

The video included a sample from Sabrina Carpenter's "Manchild" as a way to say some WNBA referees are "useless," among other adjectives:

Salaries in the WNBA are nowhere near those in the NBA. Cunningham is getting $100,000 from the Fever this season. Still, she and others around the league probably have no trouble writing a $500 check in order to voice their true thoughts about the state of officiating.

Cunningham's complaints aren't anything new, either.

New York Liberty guard Natasha Cloud told ESPN's Maria Lawson she believes there's a fundamental disconnect between players and referees.

"I just think that the overall is, we have these meetings before the season where we talk to the head referees, and I truly don't feel like we're ever heard," she said. "I constantly feel like we're being made to be like babies or complainers."

During the WNBA's All-Star Weekend, commissioner Cathy Engelbert said the league is always looking for ways to improve its officiating if necessary.

"We hear the concerns, we take that input, and every play is reviewed, we spend hours and hours on hours," she told reporters. "Obviously, we then use that to follow up with officials training. Obviously, consistency is important … I realize consistency is the name of the game, so I think it's something we definitely look at and evaluate."

Of course, you'd be hard-pressed to find a single sports league in which players are uniformly happy with how the referees are performing. Even youth sports aren't immune to this trend.

But that doesn't mean there isn't room for officiating in the WNBA to improve.