Thursday morning, three teams were fined by the Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) for violating the league’s uniform policy. The Indiana Fever, New York Liberty and Phoenix Mercury were fined $5,000 and some of their players were fined $500 each for wearing black warmup shirts in the wake of recent shootings by and against police officers. Yesterday evening, the players showed their displeasure with the league’s move by furthering their protest via post-game interviews:
Following their game at Madison Square Garden, players from the New York Liberty and Indiana Fever, two of the teams that received the fines, refused to take questions about any subject other than Black Lives Matter, and the WNBA’s response to their protests.
“We feel like America has a problem with the police brutality that’s going on with black lives around here, and we just want to use our voices and use our platform to advocate for that,” the Liberty’s Tanisha Wright said according to Deadspin. “Just because someone says ‘Black Lives Matter’ doesn’t mean that other lives don’t matter. People put out this imaginary ‘black lives only matter’ whenever people say, ‘Black lives matter.’ What we’re saying is, ‘Black lives matter, too.’ Period.”
According to league rules the uniforms “may not be altered in any way.” The shirts had the logo of Adidas on them, the official outfitter of the WNBA, but because they were all black they were still considered to be out of uniform.
The league sent out a memo earlier this week to the teams reminding them of the uniform policy. The memo came out after Minnesota, New York and Dallas all wore shirts in remembrance of two men who were shot by police and the five Dallas police officers who were killed in an attack on July 7.
Briann January, the player representative for the Indiana Fever, was kinda ticked off by the league’s decision:
"What's most upsetting is the way it was handled … You have a league that is 90 -- if not above 90 percent African American -- and you have an issue that is directly affecting them and the people they know and you have a league that isn't willing to side with them.”
"It's not a race issue, not an anti-police issue, not a black or white issue. It's a right or wrong issue." January said. "When the thing in Orlando happened the league saw the NBA backed it and we went all in. Nobody had any question. They knew it was a right or wrong issue. This is a very similar thing. It's really disappointing the league isn't having our back on this one."
Earlier this month, four off-duty Minneapolis police officers walked off their jobs as contract security for the Minnesota Lynx. They were protesting the players’ decision to criticize racial profiling in pre-game interviews and to wear warmup jerseys calling for “justice and accountability” in the deaths of Philando Castile and Alton Sterling and in support of Black Lives Matter. The Lynx were not fined by the WNBA, however the head of the city’s police union got in his two cents. Bob Kroll praised the officers for walking off the job, predicted that more officers might do the same in the future and then said the reason it was only four officers working security was because the Lynx were a “pathetic draw.”
That went over well with Mayor Betsy Hodges. She called Kroll’s comments “jackass.” My my ...
After yesterday evening’s game, the New York Liberty’s Tina Charles was given the Player of the Month award. She accepted the award with her uniform inside-out, explaining why in a post on Instagram.
As of this writing, the WNBA has not responded to the players’ actions.