Let’s talk about what happened at the Fever vs. Sparks game on August 5.
In the second quarter of the WNBA game, per CNN, a spectator threw a green sex toy onto the court, appearing to hit player Sophie Cunningham in the leg. And this was the third such incident in the past week. As a matter of fact, Cunningham herself had tweeted about the misogynistic new trend just days before she became its latest target.
“Stop throwing dildos on the court…you’re going to hurt one of us,” she wrote on August 1. After the August 5 incident, she quote-tweeted herself, writing wryly, “this did NOT age well.”
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At least one of the people who threw a sex toy onto the court at a WNBA game has been arrested and charged, according to CNN, but the person who disrupted the Fever vs. Sparks game does not appear to have been identified yet.
After the game, Los Angeles Sparks coach Lynne Roberts emphasized safety concerns when speaking to reporters, per CNN. “I think it’s ridiculous, it’s dumb, it’s stupid,” she said. “It’s also dangerous and players’ safety is number one. Respecting the game. All those things. I think it’s really stupid.” Neither Roberts nor Cunningham mentioned the other obvious fact staring us all in the face: Nobody is throwing dildos on the court at men’s basketball games.
The popularity of women’s basketball has skyrocketed recently. In 2025, WNBA viewership on ABC is up 20 percent from last year’s season average, per ESPN. In 2024, the NCAA women’s basketball championship game drew a bigger audience than the men’s for the first time in history. Cunningham, Angel Reese, and Caitlin Clark, as three of the WNBA’s biggest current stars, have become world famous. All of this is an unqualified good for society, and hopefully a harbinger of more respect (and money) being afforded to female athletes in the future.
