The WNBA suspended Brondello for one game<\/a> after she was overheard calling Reese a “protected species” during the Dream’s 111-92 win over Brondello’s Toronto Tempo at the weekend.<\/p>\n“First, I appreciate Sandy’s apology, but I also appreciate the love and support that I’ve had for the last 48 hours,” Reese said before the Dream played the Chicago Sky on Monday (AEST).<\/p>\n
“It has been very overwhelming with a lot of love and also other things. But I am grateful that the league did take action.”<\/p>\n
Brondello’s comment about Reese was picked up by the broadcast after Toronto player Nyara Sabally went down with an injury and was called for a foul following contact with Reese.<\/p>\n
Brondello apologised on social media and Reese posted “ARE WE SURPRISED?!” after the game, tagging Brondello’s account, followed by a clown face emoji.<\/p>\n
The “protected species” phrase is used in Australian sports to express frustration for a lack of calls against a player. However, in the US, the phrase suggests that someone isn’t human and could be seen as derogatory toward Black people.<\/p>\n
“There is no place for discrimination or hate in this league from anyone \u2014 from fans to coaches to players,” Reese said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“I’m just grateful that we are able to move on from the situation and just play winning basketball. The WNBA is supposed to be positive and we are going in a great light right now, so I just want to continue that and move forward.”<\/p>\n
AP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Angel Reese has accepted Australian coach Sandy Brondello’s apology for an inappropriate comment about the Atlanta Dream star.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":811462,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[56200,726,43,44,18498,41,39,42,40,5941],"class_list":["post-811461","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-angel-reese","tag-basketball","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-sandy-brondello","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-wnba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/811461","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=811461"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/811461\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/811462"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=811461"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=811461"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=811461"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}