{"id":2461,"date":"2016-07-22T08:00:09","date_gmt":"2016-07-22T15:00:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/wnba-fines-3-teams-players-for-shirts-in-wake-of-shootings\/"},"modified":"2016-07-22T08:00:09","modified_gmt":"2016-07-22T15:00:09","slug":"wnba-fines-3-teams-players-for-shirts-in-wake-of-shootings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/sports\/wnba-fines-3-teams-players-for-shirts-in-wake-of-shootings\/","title":{"rendered":"WNBA fines 3 teams, players for shirts in wake of shootings"},"content":{"rendered":"

NEW YORK \u2014 <\/strong>Social activism is coming at a cost for WNBA players.<\/p>\n

The WNBA has fined the Indiana Fever, New York Liberty and Phoenix Mercury and their players for wearing black warm up shirts in the wake of recent shootings by and against police officers.<\/p>\n

All three teams were fined $5,000 and each player was fined $500 as the shirts violated the league\u2019s uniform policy. While the shirts were the Adidas brand \u2014 the official outfitter of the league \u2014 WNBA rules state that uniforms may not be altered in any way.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat\u2019s most upsetting is the way it was handled,\u201d Indiana Fever player rep Briann January said. \u201cYou have a league that is 90 \u2014 if not above 90 percent African American \u2014 and you have an issue that is directly affecting them and the people they know and you have a league that isn\u2019t willing to side with them.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not a race issue, not an anti-police issue, not a black or white issue. It\u2019s a right or wrong issue.\u201d<\/p>\n

WNBA President Lisa Borders said Wednesday night in a statement to The Associated Press the fines were not about the players speaking out on a social issue.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are proud of WNBA players\u2019 engagement and passionate advocacy for non-violent solutions to difficult social issues but expect them to comply with the league\u2019s uniform guidelines,\u201d Borders said.<\/p>\n

Nonetheless, Indiana Fever All-Star Tamika Catchings, who is retiring at the end of the season and is the president of the players union, is also disappointed in the WNBA\u2019s actions.<\/p>\n

\u201cInstead of the league taking a stance with us, where they tell us they appreciate our expressing our concerns like they did for Orlando, we\u2019re fighting against each other,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

The league was quick to give every team shirts in support of the Orlando tragedy in June, which the players wore.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were OK with that, we wanted to support that, but also they can\u2019t pick and choose what initiatives to support and what not to support just because it doesn\u2019t push their agenda,\u201d Liberty guard Tanisha Wright said. \u201cThis is important to us.\u201d<\/p>\n

Typical WNBA fines for technical fouls or such are about half the $500 amount the players were fined for wearing the black shirts. WNBA rookies like New York\u2019s Adut Bulgak make roughly $40,000, so the fine is about 1\/80th of a first-year players\u2019 salary.<\/p>\n

The Liberty have worn the plain black shirts four times, including Wednesday morning against Washington. They didn\u2019t wear them on Thursday in their matinee game against the Fever, opting for their normal black shirts with the Liberty logo. Tina Charles did wear her warmup shirt inside out.<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter seeing the African American male shot three times after helping an autistic person out this morning in Florida, I knew I couldn\u2019t be silent,\u201d Charles said after Liberty lost to the Fever. \u201cKnowing … I am representing this organization, if anybody was going to wear it, it had to be me. I have no problem wearing this shirt inside out for the rest of the season until we are able to have the WNBA support us.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a show of solidarity, the Liberty and Fever chose only to speak after the game about social awareness, politely declining any questions about Thursday\u2019s contest.<\/p>\n

Charles is looking forward to discussing future actions at the Olympics, where she\u2019ll have a chance to talk with her teammates on the women\u2019s national team and NBA players on the U.S. men\u2019s team.<\/p>\n

\u201cBeing able to see how they feel and what they want to do, coming collectively together,\u201d Charles said. \u201cSeeing the other 11 WNBA teams, how we basically just did a media blackout, if they are up for doing the same thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

NBA players previously have taken a stand in support of victims from police brutality without being fined. LeBron James and Derrick Rose wore \u201cI Can\u2019t Breathe\u201d shirts in honor of a Staten Island man who died after police placed him a chokehold in 2014. NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said in a statement after the players wore those shirts supporting the players for their personal views but preferring they adhered to on-court attire rules.<\/p>\n

No NBA players wore the \u201cI Can\u2019t Breathe\u201d shirts after Silver\u2019s statements.<\/p>\n

The WNBA fined players after they ignored a league memo earlier this week to the teams reminding them of the uniform policy. The memo was sent out after Minnesota, New York and Dallas players 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.<\/p>\n

The Lynx only wore their shirts once and said they will shift their focus to addressing the issue in other ways. After wearing shirts with the hashtag \u201cBlack Lives Matter\u201d and \u201cDallas5\u201d for one game, the Liberty reached what the players said was a compromise, wearing plain black shirts bearing only the Adidas logo. For now they are back to wearing their normal warm ups.<\/p>\n

The league will go on a monthlong Olympic hiatus beginning Saturday but January said players will continue to actively engage in the social discussion.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think there\u2019s a lot of people in our league who are very passionate about it. As a player rep we are going to continue having these conversations,\u201d she said. \u201cThe timing of them releasing the statement and giving us the papers was very timely on their part.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

NEW YORK \u2014 Social activism is coming at a cost for WNBA players. The WNBA has fined the Indiana Fever, New York Liberty and Phoenix Mercury and their players for wearing black warm up shirts in the wake of recent shootings by and against police officers. All three teams were fined $5,000 and each player […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":6,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-2461","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2461","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2461"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2461\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2461"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2461"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2461"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=2461"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}