Liberty players wore their traditional warm-up shirts with the team’s logo Thursday, but Charles wore hers inside out during the shootaround and a pregame ceremony in which she received the WNBA player of the month award for June.
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All three teams were fined $5,000 and each player was fined $500 as the shirts violated the league’s uniform policy.
The Indiana Fever, New York Liberty and the Phoenix Mercury were the three teams that got fined. The WNBA rules state uniforms can’t be altered and that’s technically what the players did. The Minnesota Lynx wore shirts with the words “Change starts with us, justice and accountability” for one game-prompting four off-duty police officers working the game to walk out.
President Lisa Borders indicated that she is proud of WNBA players expressing their voices and support to the victims of the shooting but she cleared that the fine is not directed to the issue, but merely on the uniform violation.
“We are proud of WNBA players’ engagement and passionate advocacy for non-violent solutions to hard social issues”, league president Lisa Borders told the Associated Press on Wednesday, “but expect them to comply with the league’s uniform guidelines”. WNBA rookies like New York’s Adut Bulgak make roughly $40,000, so the fine is about 1/80th of a first-year player’s salary.
“What we’re saying is black lives matter too“, Liberty player Tina Charles said.
Fever forward Tamika Catchings also confirmed her team would not answer questions about their 82-70 game win or the sport itself.
“We’re sick and exhausted of waking up every morning and seeing something like this (shootings) happen”, Mystics player Ivory Latta said after her team played its final game before the Olympic break. The players who took part in the silent protest were each fined $500.
Players from the Liberty and Fever boycotted their obligatory post-game news conference Thursday night at Madison Square Garden in New York City and recorded their own.
As Liberty star Kiah Stokes pointed out, the players purposefully used Adidas shirts to deliver their messages so as to align with WNBA sponsorships, but that wasn’t taken into account. However, it is not bad to show support to a certain issue that greatly affects the society but players must be mindful to the rules and regulations set by the league.
“I am absolutely in favor of players speaking out and speaking from the heart about whatever issues are important to them”, he said last week in Las Vegas. January said even though the teams won’t be playing they will continue to actively engage in the social discussion.
“I think it’s sick that we are being punished for supporting a matter that affects majority of us personally…”
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“If they’re trying to silence us on our platform wearing our t-shirts, then we can use [the media] as a platform and just use you guys to try to force this matter”, she told reporters.
