Why Fever Are Unlikely to Protect Sophie Cunningham in WNBA Expansion Draft
It would be hard for Indiana Fever fans to part ways with Sophie Cunningham.
While the 29-year-old veteran only spent the 2025 season with the Fever and missed a solid chunk of games with an injury, she did many things to endear herself to Indiana's loyal fan base. Perhaps the two most important were being a spark plug and serving as star guard Caitlin Clark's enforcer, which earned her notoriety from the women's basketball community and admiration from Fever fans.
However, the harsh reality is that the WNBA is a business. And as much as everybody wants Cunningham back in Indianapolis, the Fever are between a rock and a hard place right now.
Why Fever Protecting Sophie Cunningham Doesn't Make Sense
The rules for the upcoming WNBA Expansion Draft for the Toronto Tempo and the Portland Fire were revealed on March 25. As expected, teams will be allowed to "protect" five players. The first four players are obvious for Indiana: Caitlin Clark, Aliyah Boston, Lexie Hull, and Kelsey Mitchell.
Most agree that the fifth option should be between Cunningham and Makayla Timpson, who was a rookie in 2025. However, a wrench in the expansion draft rules is that Toronto and Portland can only select one upcoming unrestricted free agent, and since there are over 100 veterans who will become free agents, this limits their options.
Also of note is that the Fever can only give one "core" designation to a veteran this offseason, and will almost certainly use that on Mitchell. Therefore, if one of the two expansion teams were to use their pick on Cunningham (and thus give her the veteran "supermax" contract, as per the rules), she'll surely take that because she won't be able to get that much from the Fever or any other team in free agency.
Lexie Hull and Sophie Cunningham arrived to Fever-Mercury in matching fits 🤠
— Yahoo Sports (@YahooSports) August 8, 2025
(via @IndianaFever) pic.twitter.com/jgr4QqgAYv
Since Cunningham most likely won't be cored by the Fever, she could also leave Indiana in free agency even if they did decide to protect her. This means the Fever would be protecting somebody who they essentially can't control, regardless of whether she's selected by an expansion team. That's a risk Indiana's front office would be wise not to take.
Especially since Timpson is still under contract with the team and would surely be selected if left unprotected.
One optimistic potential outcome is that neither expansion team selects her (they can only select one unrestricted free agent, after all), and Cunningham then decides to return to the Fever in free agency.
But that hope likely won't ease anxiety for Indiana fans come the expansion draft.
Grant Young covers Women’s Basketball, the Indiana Fever and the New York Mets for Sports Illustrated’s ‘On SI’ sites. He holds an MFA degree in creative writing from the University of San Francisco (USF), where he also graduated with a Bachelor’s Degree in Marketing and played on USF’s Division I baseball team for five years. However, he now prefers Angel Reese to Angels in the Outfield.
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