Charles says she turned her warmup shirt inside out in support of recent shooting victims.
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After the WNBA fined its players for wearing Black Lives Matter T-shirts, which violates the league’s dress code, the association has withdrawn their costly penalties.
In light of this powerful response, the WNBA withdrew the fine, and President Lisa Borders expressed her support for players speaking out.
WNBA president Lisa Borders said in a statement Saturday that the league was rescinding penalties given to the Indiana Fever, New York Liberty and Phoenix Mercury and their players for wearing the shirts – a uniform violation. The players started wearing them to show solidarity after shootings in Minnesota and Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
The normal fine for uniform violations is $200. Tina Charles did wear her warm-up shirt inside-out in honor of a shooting in Florida that morning.
In any case, fining the players had the unintended (though welcome) effect of raising even more awareness, especially as team members protested the fines on social media and staged a media blackout.
“It’s a huge win overall”, Fever All-Star and players’ union president Tamika Catchings told ESPN.
Some police officers covering the games walked off the job because of the shirts.
“We really would appreciate that people stop making our support of Black Lives Matter, an issue that is so critical in our society right now, as us not supporting the police officers”, Liberty forward Swin Cash said Thursday, Sports Illustrated reported. “I think people need to understand that it’s not mutually exclusive”. There has also been public criticism of the fines, including from National Basketball Association star Carmelo Anthony.
‘We commend Lisa Borders for recognizing how the players of the WNBA felt and the sensitive time that we’re living in and being willing to re-evaluate their decision, ‘ New York Liberty President Isiah Thomas said. “Everybody has freedom of speech”.
And it will be an interesting test case to see how the league and players respond to each other in public forums when “hot-button” issues come to the fore the next time around. “A$3 majority of the league is made up of black women, so this is something that directly affects us, and we want to use our voices”, Tanisha Wright, a guard for the New York Liberty, told the press.
The WNBA has suspended play until August 26 for the Olympics, and Borders said the league plans to use that time to work with the players on how they can “make their views known to their fans and the public”.
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