WNBA president supports players' activism 'off the court'
NEW YORK - WNBA President Lisa Borders applauds the league's players for taking an active stance on social issues, she just wishes they would keep it off the court.
Borders spent the past two weeks talking with the union and its executive council, trying to come up with ways that both the league and its players could constructively address the Black Lives Matters movement. Nothing concrete was decided.
''We were making every effort to engage our players,'' she told The Associated Press in a phone interview Friday night. ''We made an effort to support them and we were trying to get them to come to the table to have a conversation. The players have an open invitation with the league. Our players are important to us. We believe in them. We want them to be the people they are and we're proud of them."
Right now the players aren't happy.
On social media and in post-game interviews, players are showing their solidarity after the league fined the Indiana Fever, New York Liberty and Phoenix Mercury players $500 each this week for wearing plain black warm-up shirts that violated the league's uniform policy. The normal fine for a uniform violation is $200. Each team also was fined $5,000.
Washington Mystics players had shirts saying ''Black Lives Matters'' in the locker room after their game Friday night. Seattle Storm and Minnesota Lynx players tweeted out pictures of their teams wearing black T-shirts featuring a Martin Luther King Jr. quote before their game. They didn't wear those shirts on the court to avoid getting fined.
''We're sick and tired of waking up every morning and seeing something like this (shootings) happen,'' Mystics player Ivory Latta said. ''We need change and we have a platform to speak. Don't tell us we have a platform and then you penalize us for our platform for speaking and showing our actions. That's not right.''
Borders, who has been on the job for four months, disagreed with the notion that the league was suppressing its players' voices in the wake of shootings by and against police officers.
The league just doesn't want them to do it on the court if it violates the WNBA uniform rules. The shirts that the players were fined for wearing were the Adidas brand - the official outfitter of the league. WNBA rules state that uniforms may not be altered in any way.
The union felt it was unnecessary for the league to issue a memo this week reminding the players of the uniform policy. Because of that memo, the players and union weren't surprised by the fine. They were just disappointed.
''This isn't about a shirt, but that was the starting point,'' new WNBAPA director of operations Terri Jackson told the AP. ''The players want to blog about (Black Lives Matter), tweet about it, do videos. They want to raise visibility and keep the conversation going. They don't want this to die out.''