WNBA guard Sophie Cunningham doesn’t think a one-on-one game against comedian Theo Von would be close.
“I can’t help it. I think I’d cook his a**,” Cunningham said on the latest episode of “No Hesitation,” the podcast she hosts with basketball trainer Drew Hanlen. “I think I’m winning. I think I’m skunking him.”
The episode covered her recent appearance on Von’s podcast “This Past Weekend,” a weekend at the Formula One race in Austin, Texas, and a trip to see “Dancing with the Stars” live. Cunningham and Hanlen also broke down the Golden State Valkyries’ Game 7 victory over the Atlanta Dream in the WNBA Finals.
Cunningham said the show will now release a new episode every Thursday and will mix basketball talk and film breakdowns with a look at the hosts’ lives away from the court.
“Drew and I, we get to do really cool things in life, and we want to bring you along with us with our lifestyle, with the events and the people that we get to meet and the things we get to do,” she said. “We’re still going to talk ball, but we’re also going to bring you in on our lifestyle as well.”
“This is why we started it,” Hanlen said. “We wanted it to be all about basketball. We also wanted to have fun with it. And people love you.”
Theo Von and the one-on-one challenge
Cunningham said her appearance on Von’s show had been in the works since the WNBA season. The two texted for months before settling on Austin, where both were attending the race, and she said the taping was the first thing she did after landing.
“We actually shot for d*** near three, three and a half hours,” she said. “They cut it down to under two. But the stuff that they cut out, man, funny.”
When Hanlen asked for an outtake, Cunningham teased him. “Well, it didn’t air for a reason, you dingus,” she said.
She said Von is the same person off camera as he is on it. “That’s how he is 24/7,” she said.
“He has such a good heart, and he’s funny. He’s a very nice guy,” Cunningham said. “He just kept coming back to lesbians, and I’m like, dude, there’s so much more to our league than that. And so that’s what we started to kind of hit on.”
“He doesn’t mean any harm by anything,” she added. “His intent is just funny and good, and he loves people.” She and her friends attended one of his comedy shows later that night.
On Von’s podcast, Cunningham said he would score zero points in a WNBA game. Von countered that he could score eight. Hanlen asked her why so many men who never had success in basketball believe they could step into the league.
Cunningham recalled an Uber driver who recognized her. “He’s like, ‘I would break your ankles,'” she said. “I’m like, OK.”
Hanlen said he hears the same thing in NBA facilities. “We’ll be like, ‘Yo, if you played in the W, what would you do, man?’ ‘I’d be the MVP. I’d average 30 and 20.’ And then we’re like, ‘All right, go make a left-hand layup, but you’re not allowed to land inside the paint.’ And they can’t do it,” he said.
Hanlen acknowledged there is a gap between men and women, something Cunningham has said publicly. “It’s just more so the s***ty players that have no success,” he said. “They’re like former JV players that think that they could just jump onto the WNBA and be successful. I’m like, ‘No, you can’t. You have no idea how talented some of these girls are.'”
“I think Theo was joking. I’m pretty sure,” Cunningham said. “But the other guys that you’re talking about, I’m just like, there is no way in h*** that you were going to be doing any of that. You can just tell by the form of them running and the way they dribble. … They’re just full of [expletive].”
As for a game to 11, make it, take it, Cunningham joked about the comedian’s smoking. “He’d probably need to take a cig break every time someone scores,” she said. Hanlen predicted an 11 to 0 final.
“That would be a hilarious game,” Hanlen said.
“We should make it happen,” Cunningham said. “That would be a cigarette in his mouth the whole time we’re playing, too.”
“He might be down just because he loves content so much,” Hanlen said.
A weekend at Formula One
Cunningham spent Friday through Sunday at the track in Austin and said she went in expecting little.
“I was like, you know, it’s just another car going left, whatever,” she said. “It was seriously probably one of the best weekends of my entire life, and I don’t even know why. It was just freaking awesome.”
She attended with boot company Tecovas and said she spent time with podcaster Joe Rogan and his wife, along with team owners, including people tied to the Cadillac team whom she said are from Indiana.
“I’m not kidding. I probably met over 200 people that were probably kind of bigwigs, and I had no idea who these people were, but I had the best time of my life,” she said.
She said she was struck by the hospitality, including from the track’s owner, whom she identified as Bobby. “Sometimes people with big money or a platform, they’re just not so great to be around. And this was the absolute opposite case scenario,” she said. “Everyone was so friendly and so welcoming. I was just shocked. I loved it.”
On the final day, she was asked to wave the checkered flag. “In my head I’m like, there are people way more famous here that probably people would want to see, and they chose me, and I was like, h*** yeah,” she said.
The flag was bigger than she expected. “It is a massive flag. It’s probably as long as my legs,” Cunningham said. “I was like, ‘Oh, OK. I only have to do this for like 30 seconds.’ So I was going one arm and then all of a sudden I was going for like two minutes and so I had to use two arms because my arm was getting so tired.”
Asked whether she has ever driven one of the cars, she said, “No. No. No,” adding that they are too expensive to let just anyone behind the wheel.
“It’s also probably dangerous as h***,” Hanlen said.
Cunningham said she grew up a NASCAR fan and that former driver Carl Edwards grew up about 10 minutes from her. She said F1 is a different world financially.
“I’m pretty sure someone said that it costs like a billion dollars a year to run an F1 car for the whole season,” she said. “But I also could be completely wrong on that, but I’m pretty sure I’m right.”
Life in the spotlight
Hanlen pointed to Cunningham’s earlier comments about dealing with 20 stalkers and the FBI and asked how the attention has changed her daily life. He said he gets hateful messages himself just for doing a podcast with her.
“Dude, I’m still a dweeb,” Cunningham said. She said many online critics are “just so unhappy or just honestly psychotic” and have “so much hatred in their heart.”
“Hey, if you got to take it out on me, fine. I’m the one who can handle it,” she said.
She said recognition now follows her everywhere. “Now it’s like it doesn’t matter what state, what city. It’s everywhere,” she said. “I’ve definitely hired security, and they’re going to start traveling with me actually next week 24/7.”
“It’s gotten crazy the past, I would say, four or five months,” she said. “Right when you say yes to one person, I’m not kidding, it’s like a revolving door. It is nonstop.”
She said the attention has cut into time with her family. “I just spent four days at home, and I didn’t even get any good quality time with my parents or my sister or the kids,” Cunningham said. “I would say the boundaries is probably the biggest thing that you have to learn.”
Hanlen, who trains NBA stars, recalled landing at an airport in China where fans rushed his group and the airport had to be closed. He said some players rent out entire venues to avoid crowds.
“I’m like, ‘Hey, you want to go to Topgolf?’ And they’re like, ‘Yeah, if I do, I have to rent out Topgolf after hours,'” he said.
He said the worst moments for players come at private dinners. “Somebody comes up, and the first thing they start with is, ‘Hey, I don’t want to bug you, but,'” Hanlen said. “If you know you’re bugging me, just wait.”
Cunningham said the attention has a sweet side, too. Fans sent photos of her Halloween costumes, including one from the mother of a 10-year-old named Charlotte.
“There were so many little girls who dressed up as me, which I just think is so funny and just the cutest thing. It warms my heart,” she said. “But I will also say the amount of adults that did it was probably even more insane.”
Some fans recreated entire scenes with costumed referees and opposing players. Cunningham said her family shares the photos in a group text. “When I see them, I comment, like, repost them because it’s fun and I want them to know that I see them,” she said.
Hanlen told of his nieces and nephews meeting LeBron James outside a locker room after a recent NBA game in Indiana. “One of my nephews was like, ‘Hi, LeBron James.’ And he’s like, ‘What’s up, little man?'” Hanlen said. His niece then asked whether injured Pacers guard Tyrese Haliburton could sit with them: “Can Tyrese just sit with us since he’s not playing?”
“You are with the best NBA athletes of freaking all time, and you’re just like, ‘Oh yeah, there’s LeBron,'” Cunningham told him. “But to everyone else, I’m like, ‘It’s LeBron James.'”
Hanlen said he invites hardworking users of his training app to workouts and games. This summer, one worked out with Tyrese Maxey and Haliburton and spent time with Kyrie Irving. He said the WNBA should create more access like that.
“If I was the next WNBA commissioner, I would get more young fans involved in the W where they feel more connected to the athletes,” Hanlen said, calling for more camps and clinics. “I do think that you guys have a good product. It’s just there’s got to be more connection.”
Cunningham said she wants to host a live workout so young players can see the intensity firsthand. “Sometimes people just don’t know. You don’t know what you don’t know,” she said. “You don’t realize that all the little things matter.”
Hanlen said he opens every camp by asking players whether their current work will get them the scholarships they want. Most hands drop.
“It’s not, ‘Do you want to play college basketball. It’s, are you willing to do the things that are required to play college basketball,” he said. “All of the things that are required, it still doesn’t guarantee it. It just gives you a chance. But if you don’t do those things, it guarantees you won’t get it.”
‘Dancing with the Stars’
Cunningham, who has said she would like to compete on “Dancing with the Stars” one day, sat in the front rows of a live show with her sister and her agent. She said seeing the dancers in person made her rethink how hard it would be.
“They are such great athletes, Drew. I’m not kidding,” she said. “Have you ever seen dancers, like real dancers? … It’s insane. I was like, ‘Holy [expletive], I don’t know if I can actually do this.’ I want to do it.”
“Everyone was just so fun and loving, and I truly do hope that I can do it one day,” she said. “It gets in the way of our WNBA season, and so that’s kind of my holdup, but it’s not out of the question, and I would love to do it.”
She noted that some contestants have dance backgrounds, including actor Jenna Dewan. “I feel like they should automatically win, right? They’re professional dancers,” Cunningham said. “I also didn’t realize I was like a foot taller than everybody.”
Professional dancer Daniella Karagach, a favorite of Cunningham’s sister Lindsay, told Cunningham she was a fan and invited her back. “She goes, ‘Come be my partner next year. You can lift me up,'” Cunningham said. “That’s not really what I was looking for, but yeah, that’s awesome.”
Hanlen noted that Cunningham was left out of the WNBA’s 3-point contest despite again finishing among the league’s top five in 3-point shooting, and asked which she would rather win.
“I’m gonna get in trouble either way,” Cunningham said. “I think with a 3-point competition, it’s just so clearly political. They’re going to choose random people. So it doesn’t matter how good I do, I probably will never get chosen for that.”
“But I think ‘Dancing with the Stars,’ I have full control over that,” she said. “I know votes matter and whatever, but I have full control over my dancing. And so I think I’m going to go ‘Dancing with the Stars.'”
Breaking down Game 7
Golden State’s Gabby Williams scored 28 of her 30 points after halftime of Game 7, a total Hanlen called a WNBA Finals record for a half, as the Valkyries beat Atlanta for the title.
Hanlen said Golden State became the first team in WNBA history to win a championship without a single player earning All-WNBA honors that season. “They did it by committee,” he said, though he noted the Valkyries shortened their bench late in the series.
Williams went 1-for-4 from the field in the first half and missed both of her 3s. She opened the second half 1-for-5 before scoring 15 straight points and finished the half 9-for-19, including 4-for-6 from beyond the arc and 6-for-6 from the free-throw line.
Hanlen read a text from his mother sent during the game. “Wasn’t Gabby one of the people you guys talked about on your podcast? D***, she’s knocking them down right now,” she wrote. “She has completely taken over this game. If I was the coach, I would literally call a timeout. Anyone else tried to do anything, I would have said there’s a rule that zero other people are allowed to shoot other than her.”
“That’s where you get it from,” Cunningham said.
Hanlen said Atlanta’s usually swarming defense disappeared during the run. “It was almost like Atlanta just got punched in the mouth and didn’t know how to respond,” he said.
Cunningham, who entered the league around the same time as Williams, praised her leadership. “Everyone loves her as a teammate. She leads with such grace and humility. She lets her game do the talking, and she keeps the main thing the main thing,” Cunningham said. “I just love that this is how she ended her season.”
Hanlen said Golden State scored between 64 and 71 points in all seven games, while Atlanta averaged 85.3 points in its three wins and 61 in its four losses, a 24-point swing. He said Atlanta’s five lowest-scoring games this season all came against Golden State.
“I’ve never seen in any sports the highs and the lows be in one series,” Hanlen said.
Turnovers told much of the story. By Hanlen’s count, Atlanta scored 21 points per game off turnovers in its wins, compared with Golden State’s 10. In its losses, Atlanta scored 8.5 points per game off turnovers, while Golden State scored 15.3.
“If it’s a half-court game, it favors Golden State,” Hanlen said of his prediction before the series. “If it’s a transition game and they get sloppy, it’s going to favor Atlanta.”
“Does it just prove that consistency truly does win?” Cunningham asked. “Even in their losses, they were still consistent in kind of what they were doing.”
Atlanta shot 43% from the field in its wins and 32% in its losses. The Dream made 9.7 3s per game at a 38% clip in wins, compared with five per game at 19% in losses.
Allisha Gray shot 47% from 3 in Atlanta’s wins and 18% in its losses. Hanlen said almost all of her makes were catch-and-shoot looks and that he would look for actions to get her in rhythm.
“That 4 for 22 is shocking to me for some reason,” Cunningham said.
“She clearly can still make the shots because she’s doing it in the wins,” Hanlen said. “It’s not a mechanical thing. It’s all a let’s get you in rhythm thing.”
Angel Reese averaged 22 points in Atlanta’s wins and 9.3 in its losses. After scoring 30 points in Game 2 and 21 in Game 3, she had 19 turnovers and made 12 of 42 field goals in Games 4 through 7.
Hanlen struggled with missed layups. “A lot of it was just sloppy play,” he said. “I think that’s something that has to fuel her this summer of like, I have to make these layups.”
“Theo Von would have a freaking heyday with this clip right here,” Cunningham said. “She gets these shots all the time. She is tall. She is strong. … It’s just if the focus is there to finish the shots.”
On the other end, Golden State center Kiah Stokes guarded Reese throughout the series. Hanlen said Stokes won her fourth championship in five years after three with Las Vegas. She averaged 8.5 points in Golden State’s wins and scored two total points in its three losses.
In the final minute of a five-point Game 7, Stokes grabbed an offensive rebound and later cleaned up a miss with a putback, one of her three putbacks in the game.
“That’s a winner,” Hanlen said. “That is somebody that clearly understood that her job is to be a lockdown defender and then on the offensive end be scrappy. … Four championships in five years, it shows you that what she’s doing actually works.”
“She might not score a lot of points, but she is a h*** of a defender against beast post players, and she rebounds the ball well. She blocks people’s shots,” Cunningham said. “If I was on her team and I knew that if I got blown by, I had the confidence I could still do that because I knew that she had my back at the rim.”
“That is why people want to go play at Golden State, because people have a clear definition of their role,” she said.
Hanlen said the series showed that shooting efficiency is not everything. He pointed to Allen Iverson, who he said averaged 30 shots a game and shot under 40% during a run to the NBA Finals.
“Efficiency, I think, is overhyped in the analytic era that we’re in,” Hanlen said. “Shot making was not at a premium during this final series. It was all about defense, turnovers, and ultimately Golden State got the win because they were really good defensively in four of the seven games.”
‘Bring back hard coaching’
Cunningham, who said she is both a passionate fan of women’s basketball and a realist about it, asked Hanlen a blunt question.
“Why do women basketball players, why do we miss so many wide-open layups?” she said. “It’s a joke because it actually happens. What the [expletive] is that?”
“Some of those I have no answer for, to be honest with you,” Hanlen said. He said contested misses come down to athleticism, strength, and physicality around the rim, and he believes the WNBA’s best shooters from 3 are on par with NBA players.
He said finishing will improve as the game evolves. “Back in the day, if you did a Euro step, people were like, ‘Whoa,'” Hanlen said. “In the NBA now it’s such a common theme. … The W’s just so much younger than the NBA, and I think that it will catch up.”
“I do think for some reason we’re always like 10 to 15 years behind on all that stuff,” Cunningham said. “It takes us a while to catch up.”
Hanlen said part of the gap comes from coaching. “A lot of coaches are a lot harder on men when they’re younger than women,” he said, recalling top women players he trained who told him they had never been pushed so hard.
“You’re still a hooper. I don’t care if you’re a guy or a girl. I’m going to train you to my fullest capabilities,” Hanlen said. “Coach them up, because if you do, it’s going to help improve their game, and it’s going to let them separate themselves from everybody else.”
Cunningham agreed. “Bring back hard coaching,” she said. “I promise you that is why all of us pros are where we are, because we had coaches who truly cared about us and loved us and saw our full potential. But with that, they didn’t let us slip.”
“If we did something wrong, they called us out for it. If we weren’t going hard enough, they were on our a**,” she said.
She said athletes have to take ownership, too. “You can’t always listen to their tone. You have to listen to the message,” Cunningham said. “If your coach is on you, that means they see something in you.”
“It’s OK for someone to chew your a** a little bit. That’s part of it, because that’s what makes athletes great,” she said. “That’s my opinion, but what do I know? I know a lot.”
Hanlen said the next episode will lay out the hosts’ plans for the show going forward.
“It’s about you guys,” Cunningham said. “We love you. We’ll see you next week.”
