Sophie Cunningham and Napheesa Collier are both in the 2026 SI Swimsuit Issue this week, and I don’t think the WNBA has fully clocked what that actually means yet. These are not two versions of the same story that SI happened to shoot on the same island. They’re proof the league finally has more than one road to becoming a big deal.
Two completely different careers landed in the same magazine, in the same class, at the same resort.
Cunningham and Collier were both photographed by Katherine Goguen on Captiva Island at the South Seas Resort, alongside Melissa Jefferson-Wooden, for a reveal that dropped back in April. Cunningham got there on personality. She was the 13th pick by Phoenix in 2019, got traded to the Fever last year, shoots 43.2% from three, and does studio analyst work for USA Network’s WNBA broadcasts, a real basketball résumé that almost nobody brings up anymore because it’s not why she’s in your feed.
Her Instagram following jumped to 3.2 million, passing Paige Bueckers and landing her third in the league behind Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese. She picked up more than 1.2 million of those followers in a single month, and most of that traces back to becoming known as Clark’s enforcer on the floor. That surge has much less to do with box scores than with being the player fans expect to step in when things get physical.
She’s still posting about the shoot like it’s Christmas morning.
https://www.instagram.com/p/DXUzwypGuAQ/
That instinct to step in is exactly what put her in the news last week for a different reason. DiJonai Carrington was ejected after a Flagrant 2 for catching Cunningham in the head and neck on a fastbreak layup during Chicago’s 90-86 loss to the Fever on August 8th, then posted “WHITE PRIVILEGE” and tagged the Fever minutes later. Cunningham called the hit intentional. Fever coach Stephanie White called it a hard foul, not a dirty one.
One ejection and one angry post do not make a rivalry, no matter how many highlight accounts want it to be one.
Collier’s story runs on the opposite fuel entirely, and it’s the one that should actually get you. She tore three ligaments in her left ankle in Game 3 of last year’s semifinals against Phoenix, on top of a right ankle sprain she’d already played through against Las Vegas weeks earlier. She had surgery on the right ankle in January and the left in late March, missed the start of this season rehabbing both, and didn’t get back to Lynx practice until July 1st.
She’s a five-time All-Star and a two-time Olympic gold medalist who still had to grind back from that. SI didn’t try to hide the recovery either — Collier showed up to parts of the shoot on crutches and in a beach wheelchair between takes, and the magazine leaned into it instead of editing it out. “We show what it is to sacrifice, what it is to work hard [and] to achieve your dream,” Collier said about it. There’s footage of both of them together from the shoot floating around, and it’s worth a look.
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DW4l-V5FYH_/
Cunningham’s own teammates flooded her feed with support once the photos dropped, which tells you plenty about how tight that Fever locker room actually is:
https://twitter.com/USATODAY/status/2054622982140465624
None of that support happens for a player nobody respects in the room. That kind of reaction gets earned in practice gyms and film sessions, not manufactured for an Instagram caption.
I’ll give you the cynical read too, because it’s not wrong: SI Swimsuit has always chased whoever’s trending that year, and both of these women were trending for reasons that have nothing to do with a three-point percentage or a surgery timeline. That’s a fair complaint, and I’m not going to pretend it isn’t.
But trending for two completely different reasons, in the same class, is still the point. Cunningham didn’t need Caitlin Clark’s shadow to get here and neither did Collier, and a league that used to have room for exactly one kind of star just proved it has room for both.
My sister’s group chat has already picked a side. I’m staying out of it.
