Entering Tuesday’s WNBA action, the Indiana Fever sat tied atop the Eastern Conference standings at 20-12 on the year. The team also happens to lead the league in points scored per game with the two-headed monster of Kelsey Mitchell and Caitlin Clark leading the charge.
Overall, things should be pretty great for Fever head coach Stephanie White and her squad with the WNBA playoffs in sight.
In reality, the situation in Indiana is completely unsettled, and White was reminded of that on Tuesday night when some fans booed her during pregame introductions ahead of the Fever’s home contest against the New York Liberty.
FEVER COACH STEPHANIE WHITE LAUNCHES FIERY DEFENSE OF HERSELF AFTER SOPHIE CUNNINGHAM HIT
Clark addressed the boos her head coach received during her postgame press conference following Indiana’s 106-92 win, and she was none too pleased.
“I hated that our fans booed her before the game,” Clark explained. “That made me a little sick, to be honest. We’re going to ride for her, and we’re always going to have her back,” Clark continued. “That’s never going to tear our locker room apart.”
White hearing some boos while being introduced in her own team’s building came shortly after she delivered quite the pregame rant about Indiana’s Sophie Cunningham and the hard foul she took over the weekend from Chicago’s DiJonai Carrington, and the overall boiling tensions around the league.
White explained Tuesday that she didn’t, in real time, get to see replays of the foul that left Cunningham with a bloody mouth and Carrington being ejected from the game before going directly to her postgame press conference.
“Was it egregious? Absolutely,” White said. “When you have a chance to watch that over and over and over on replay, you can see that. I didn’t have that in real time.”
CAITLIN CLARK, KELSEY MITCHELL POWER FEVER PAST LIBERTY, LIFT INDIANA ATOP EASTERN CONFERENCE
White then took offense to anyone suggesting that she didn’t have her players’ backs and addressed the “online community” that she accused of creating what she believes are false narratives.
“The hate, the fear-mongering, the divisiveness, the stuff that’s trying to hijack our league will not win,” White said. “It won’t win. We are united. We are connected. We will not be divided.”
White closed out her pregame presser on Tuesday by saying critics can “go to hell.”
“Love will win, grace will win. Humility will win, and kindness will win. I stand by them, I will always stand by them. Everybody else can go to hell,” an emotional White said.
While White admitted that she wasn’t able to see replays of Carrington’s Flagrant 2 foul on Cunningham from the Fever’s game against the Sky on Saturday, that didn’t stop her from essentially defending Carrington during her postgame press conference following the contest on Aug. 8.
“Yeah, I mean, look, it was a hard foul. I don’t think that DiJonai intentionally came out to get her across the neck like she did. But it did happen, and I thought it was the right call,” White said.
“But you know, one of the things about Nay is that she’s gonna play her butt off, man. She’s gonna compete. Nobody’s gonna go walking in for a layup. And so, I don’t oppose the hard foul. But I also don’t think that she intentionally went for the neck.”
Over the span of about 72 hours, White failed to stand up for her own player in Cunningham following the foul, walked back her initial comments about Carrington’s foul while admitting she didn’t replay the play in real time yet came to a conclusion, and told critics they could go to hell.
Fever fans feeling a sense of frustration with the head coach is understandable.
