“It’s unfortunate that it’s come to this over basketball,” Thomas said.<\/p>\n
“A lot of us – myself included – didn’t even know the play took place until after the game.<\/p>\n
“There’s death threats out on us. It’s really unacceptable. It’s really something that needs to change in this league and I’m just really sick and tired of it.<\/p>\n
“People are sending racial slurs and all types of stuff. The hatred that we’re experiencing over a play that, honestly, was a complete accident…<\/p>\n
“We still have yet to hear anything from Cathy. It’s no surprise. You could see what’s being said on social media. As usual she remains silent. <\/p>\n
“That’s unfortunate when our lives our being threatened.”<\/p>\n
In a statement, Engelbert said the WNBA “vehemently condemns any and all forms of hate” and the league’s top priority is the safety and wellbeing of players. <\/p>\n
Thomas served her suspension on Saturday as Mercury beat the Toronto Tempo.<\/p>\n
Shortly after that incident with Thomas, Clark, who is one of the biggest women’s basketball stars of all time, was fouled during a three-pointer which led to an awkward landing.<\/p>\n
She went off in the second half with a back injury and was ruled out for the rest of the game.<\/p>\n
The officials reviewed the play, but it was for a potential hostile act by Clark for hitting a defender in the face, rather than for a foul on her.<\/p>\n
After the game Fever head coach Stephanie White criticised referees for their “egregious” and “utterly disrespectful” officiating around Clark.<\/p>\n
Mercury and Fever meet again on 9 July in Phoenix.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"“It’s unfortunate that it’s come to this over basketball,” Thomas said. “A lot of us – myself included…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":772260,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[574],"tags":[64,63,726,85],"class_list":["post-772259","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-basketball","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-basketball","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/772259","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=772259"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/772259\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/772260"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=772259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=772259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=772259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}