NBA legend Charles Barkley had some choice words for DiJonai Carrington while addressing her foul on Sophie Cunningham and her subsequent “WHITE PRIVILEGE” post.
According to Barkley, Carrington’s controversial collision with the Indiana Fever guard made an already dire situation much worse. To recall, on August 8, 2026, Carrington struck Cunningham in the head while she attempted a fast-break layup. It happened late in the first quarter of the Chicago Sky’s game against Indiana.
During the collision, Cunningham was in the air and landed hard on the court. She ended up with a bloody mouth after the foul. After a video review, officials upgraded the initial call of a common foul to a Flagrant 2. The decision resulted in Carrington’s instant ejection. Crew chief Maj Forsberg confirmed refs found the contact was “unnecessary and excessive to a player in a vulnerable position.”
Carrington then added another layer to an incident that was already causing a lot of controversy by posting “WHITE PRIVILEGE” on Threads and tagging the Fever. During an interview on Michael Smerconish’s radio show, Barkley addressed the social media post as well as the foul. He left little room for interpretation. The NBA Hall of Famer said, “It was a dirty play. Period.”
DiJonai Carrington assessed a Flagrant 2 and ejected after this hard foul on Sophie Cunningham 😳 pic.twitter.com/1AebZMgGUi
— Legion Hoops (@LegionHoops) August 8, 2026
CNN and SiriusXM host Smerconish believes that if the media hadn’t sensationalized Carrington’s post, a blow-up would have been prevented. Barkley didn’t buy that. In his counter, the TNT Sports analyst said that if Carrington had just kept her thoughts to herself, none of the things that transpired after that would have happened.
Barkley explained, “The reason why they made it black and white was when that girl tweeted ‘White privilege.’ That was stupid on her part. That’s what I said: we can’t turn over our world to internet fools.”
Barkley was particularly harsh in his critique of Carrington’s choice to invoke race following her ejection.
He said, “When she tweeted ‘White privilege,’ that was 100% a mistake. It was a dirty play. Period. That would have been the end of it.”
Instead, Barkley contended that the message diverted the focus away from what transpired on the court and generated a brand new debate.
Following her dismissal from the game for clotheslining Cunningham, who was driving to the basket, Carrington posted that message tagging the Fever. The Sky forward seemed to be aiming for Cunningham’s neck rather than the ball, but she subsequently contradicted this.
Carrington said she often makes hustle plays and that she struck Cunningham by mistake instead of the ball. Moreover, she claimed that her post had nothing to do with the Fever guard or her ejection from the game. It was allegedly regarding a grievance she filed with the WNBA over uneven calls around the league. However, her post was already the talk of the town at that point.
Arguing the controversy escalated because of Carrington’s post, Barkley said, “When you turn stuff over to the internet, all the race hustlers start coming out. We have a ton of race hustlers, White and Black, I repeat that, White and Black. But we can never let them (sic) fools win.”
Former NBA center Etan Thomas had a different take on the situation than Barkley. He cited Cunningham’s flagrant foul on Jacey Sheldon in 2025, which was perceived as retaliation for the latter poking her Fever teammate Caitlin Clark in the eye in a prior game.
Cunningham acknowledged that her popularity skyrocketed following the game, even though she was justifiably ejected and praised as an enforcer for it. Referring to Cunningham’s foul on Sheldon, Thomas wrote in his story for The Guardian, “That’s what privilege looks like. When Cunningham fouls an opponent, she’s an enforcer. When Carrington does the same, she’s a danger.”
“White privilege doesn’t require Cunningham to ask for it or be racist. It doesn’t require every referee, journalist, or politician to consciously think, ‘She’s white, so I’m going to treat her differently’. Privilege operates through assumptions, sympathy, and framing – through whose aggression gets contextualized and whose gets criminalized,” the 12th overall pick of the 2000 NBA Draft added.