a former wnba player had one note for white players with opinions on trans athletes: "nobody wants to hear your opinion." we're framing it.

Photo: Lorie Shaull, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

via the Unsupervised with Syd & TP episode, the New York Post and BroBible

Sydney Colson did not whisper it.

On the Oct. 8 episode of Unsupervised, the podcast she hosts with fellow former WNBA player Theresa Plaisance, Colson had a message for a specific slice of her old league. We went through the episode's captions. "For real, for real, for the white white players in the league, when you don't say [expletive] and even worse, when you say things that are harmful, you talking about the trans [expletive], nobody respects you," she said. Then, twice: "Shut the f--- up." Then: "Nobody wants to hear your opinion. You're freedom of speech, so you can say it, but just know people are just trying to get by when they're dealing with you."

The New York Post, which calls her an ex-Fever star, BroBible, The Blast and Breitbart all attribute the lines to Colson.

what sydney colson actually said

The setup matters. Just before, the hosts were remembering 2020, when WNBA players turned on an Atlanta Dream co-owner, and how, as they told it, she ended up selling her stake and losing her Senate seat. Colson's point was about teammates: "if you never speak up about a damn thing when you know it's impacting the people that you claim to love," she said, "they don't respect you." And: "Y'all ought to be ashamed to act like you're cool with people, to act like you care about sisterhood."

the name she did not say

She named no player. The outlets supplied one anyway: Sophie Cunningham, her Indiana Fever teammate in 2025, who told ESPN in July, as the Post and BroBible quote her, "I want to protect young girls in a locker room, or young girls in sport who shouldn't have to go against biological men." A clip account's caption saying Colson told Cunningham to shut up is where that framing took off, and BroBible's headline runs with it. On the tape it is a category, not a person. If the shoe fits, that is between the shoe and the locker room.

The same episode also took on Fever GM Amber Cox, who said at her season-end press conference that "the attacks on our fanbase have no basis in reality," per the Post. Colson's reply, as both the Post and BroBible quote it, was that the environment "is not discouraging people from showing up and being hateful, racist, homophobic, sexist."

A league whose fans and stars are famously, gloriously gay, and which we last covered when a congresswoman called its commissioner job every middle-aged lesbian's dream, does not need its players freelancing on who counts as a woman. Colson said so with fewer syllables.