An explosive lawsuit against the Phoenix Suns includes a salacious nugget about a WNBA player and a current executive — an allegation that the team strongly denies.
According to ESPN, the beleaguered Suns (the franchise has faced four lawsuits from members of the organization brought against them in the last seven months) was sued in the U.S. District Court in Arizona on May 13.
The lawsuit was filed by Gene Traylor, the Suns’ director of safety, security, and risk management, who had been in the position since the start of 2023.
Traylor’s job was to assess all manner of risks for the franchise — ranging from the expected safety and financial concerns, to the more abstract, like reputational risks.
In 2023, he gave the team a presentation outlining a trio of critical risks he had assessed, including a theft, a photo-op incident, and the time Phoenix Mercury center Brittney Griner was “harassed” at an airport in 2023.
(The ownership group that owns the Suns also own the Mercury.)
Traylor claims that this presentation apparently incensed Suns management, who retaliated against him by demoting him a year later, while he was allegedly discouraged from taking protected leave after a cancer diagnosis.
Interestingly, ESPN notes that the Suns’ first response to this lawsuit was to discredit one of the lawyers representing Traylor.
It wasn’t until a different bit of information surfaced from the whole situation that triggered a much more forceful response from the Suns.
As the New York Post noted, Traylor claims he also informed Suns and Mercury CEO Josh Bartelstein that a different employee, vice president of security and risk management Cornelius Craig, was spreading rumors that Bartelstein was sleeping with former Mercury star Sophie Cunningham.
“When Bartelstein asked Plaintiff to reveal what Craig was saying, Plaintiff explained that Craig had been telling others, ‘Josh Bartelstein is f***ing Sophie Cunningham,’” the lawsuit read.
That part of the lawsuit quickly gained traction, especially on social media.
Fever guard Sophie Cunningham has been named in the latest lawsuit against the Suns.
She’s accused of having an AFFAIR with the team’s CEO… who’s still married. 😳
A thread 🧵 pic.twitter.com/tF2AAPZPPi
— Kicks (@kicks) May 19, 2025
The Suns found nothing funny about the now-viral claims regarding the team’s married CEO.
“The recent reports concerning Josh Bartelstein and Sophie Cunningham are entirely false and morally reprehensible,” Suns senior vice president of communications Stacey Mitch told the Post.
Cunningham denied these allegations, as noted by the Post, but it’s not the only recent controversy she’s found herself entangled in — seemingly through no fault of her own.
The Mercury, the team that drafted and signed her, traded Cunningham to the Indiana Fever in February.
That meant Cunningham was a part (she did not play as she is nursing an injury) of the Fever’s 93-58 rout of the rival Chicago Sky on May 17.
That game, bizarrely, has somehow become embroiled in a “racism” controversy.
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