Advertisement

Protest against WNBA fines grows as Washington Mystics refuse to take questions about basketball

WASHINGTON — Just as the New York Liberty and Indiana Fever did before them, the Washington Mystics refused to talk about basketball on Friday following their 95-75 loss to the Los Angeles Sparks.

Instead, as a protest to the fines levied against three teams for wearing warm-up shirts that supported Black Lives Matter, they would only talk about the issues going on in the world.

“We definitely wanted to show our support for those teams that did get fined for wearing just plain black Adidas shirts,” Mystics guard Natasha Cloud said. “We’re allowed to wear whatever we want to the games, to and from the games, so if they’re going to take away our right and our voice to advocate for something so important to 70 percent of the league which is African American, we’ll find other ways to do it and other ways to do it is to wear our shirts to and from the game and use the media to (express ourselves).”

The Liberty and Fever were the first teams to refuse to talk about basketball following their game on Thursday. Cloud said her team would continue to refuse to talk about basketball “until we get support.”

Photo by Nina Mandell

Photo by Nina Mandell

The Mystics weren’t the only one to continue the protests. Before their game on Friday night, Seattle Storm and Minnesota Lynx players tweeted out pictures of their team wearing black t-shirts with a Martin Luther King Jr. quote. They tagged the WNBA’s account in the tweets, which seemed to imply their own protest of the fines.

“This league is behind (our cause), so we’re not sure where this hesitation lies,” Cloud said. “We understand, we’re not bashing our league at all but we would just like a little support. The league was quick to jump on the Orlando (mass shooting) and we fully supported that but we’re kind of frustrated that we’re picking and choosing which events we want to support and which we don’t.”

Mystics center Stefanie Dolson said that the team had considered wearing warm-up t-shirts to support Black Lives Matter before games as a number of other teams had done, but declined to do so after receiving a league-wide memo from the WNBA warning they could be fined for violating the league’s uniform policy.

“We had planned to wear them before a game and we were told not to,” she said. “We did sadly what we were told, but I think looking back I wish we would have done the black shirts as well. We had an early game though so we couldn’t go out and get the shirts.”

The Los Angeles Sparks didn’t stage any protest, but did not rule out doing something in the future. The WNBA is going on a break for the Summer Olympics beginning next week as a number of the league’s players will be in Brazil representing their countries.

“I don’t think it’s going to go away,” said Sparks star Candace Parker of the activism. “Every two or three days, there’s something else on the news about something, so we’re not worried about it going away.”

And the discussion among players, she said, isn’t over.

“I think for sure that’s something we’ll communicate and talk about as a group across the board in the WNBA.”

UPDATE: WNBA president Lisa Borders announced on Saturday that the fines have been rescinded.

More WNBA