Rebecca Lobo's Past Sophie Cunningham Dirty Player Debate Take Resurfaces

One quarter later, Sheldon was driving to the basket when Cunningham grabbed her by the neck and threw her to the ground. This sparked a brawl that ended with both Cunningham and Sheldon getting ejected.

While Cunningham was praised by many for acting as Clark's enforcer and retaliator in the aftermath of this, many called her out for endangering Sheldon and saying that her actions made her a dirty player.

Rebecca Lobo's Past Stance on Sophie Cunningham Turns Heads

Rebecca Lobo is a voice of reason within women's basketball. Her insight and analysis are taken as gospel by many. And a stance she shared about Cunningham from way back in 2019, when Cunningham was still playing college ball at Missouri, has since resurfaced in a September 1 article from Tania Ganguli of The New York Times.

Ganguli's article (which was all about Cunningham's rise to superstardom this season) quoted Lobo saying, "She's physical, she's aggressive, and she's annoying."

While Lobo meant this all in a purely basketball sense, it's still enough to raise eyebrows.

However, Lobo's full quote (which is from the 2019 article from The State, from which Ganguli pulled that excerpt) paints a more complete picture.

“She’s physical, and she’s aggressive and she’s annoying. But none of those things are dirty,” Lobo said of Cunningham in The State article from Greg Haldey in January 2019.

“And I think when you have dirty players sometimes, you see players who flail on every rebound, they flail on every shot, they make contact with a lot of players or somebody’s going in for a layup and they foul them really hard where they could really injure them. [Cunningham's style] stems from competitiveness and aggressiveness. I don’t think she crosses that line," Lobo added.

Lobo's comments from 2019 echo what many believe about Cunningham today.

While this doesn't necessarily mean Lobo feels the same way about Cunningham now as she did in 2019, these comments still speak volumes.