{"id":812375,"date":"2026-07-20T14:29:15","date_gmt":"2026-07-20T14:29:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/812375\/"},"modified":"2026-07-20T14:29:15","modified_gmt":"2026-07-20T14:29:15","slug":"angel-reese-accepts-brondellos-apology-after-protected-species-comment-lands-ban-wnba","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/812375\/","title":{"rendered":"Angel Reese accepts Brondello\u2019s apology after \u2018protected species\u2019 comment lands ban | WNBA"},"content":{"rendered":"

Angel Reese has accepted Toronto Tempo coach Sandy Brondello\u2019s apology for an inappropriate comment about the Atlanta Dream star.<\/p>\n

The WNBA<\/a> suspended Brondello one game for being overheard calling Reese a \u201cprotected species\u201d during the Dream\u2019s win over the Tempo on Friday.<\/p>\n

\u201cFirst, I appreciate Sandy\u2019s apology, but I also appreciate the love and support that I\u2019ve had for the last 48 hours,\u201d Reese said before the Dream played the Chicago Sky on Sunday. \u201cIt 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

\u201cThere is no place for discrimination or hate in this league from anyone \u2013 from fans to coaches to players. And I\u2019m 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

Brondello\u2019s 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 apologized on social media and Reese posted \u201cARE WE SURPRISED?!\u201d after the game, tagging Brondello\u2019s account, followed by a clown face emoji.<\/p>\n

Brondello, who is in her first season with the expansion Tempo, is Australian. The \u201cprotected species\u201d 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\u2019t human and could be seen as derogatory toward Black people.<\/p>\n

\u201cHave a ton of respect for her, but I wanted to make sure that [she knows] it was an emotional statement,\u201d Brondello said on Sunday. \u201cIt\u2019s a statement that\u2019s very common in Australia, it wasn\u2019t directed at Angel. I\u2019d never do that to any kind of player. That\u2019s not the kind of coach I am or player back in my day. It was just unfortunate. I was pretty emotional with Nyara, her being injured again. I made a comment that, Australians, we say all the time.<\/p>\n

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\u201cUnfortunately, I should have took a breath and realized where I am in America because I know racism is such a big issue here. I\u2019ve been in this league for 27 years and, obviously, I never had any issues like this because these are all my teammates and I\u2019ve learnt so much from the Black players that I\u2019ve coached and that I\u2019ve had on staff.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Angel Reese has accepted Toronto Tempo coach Sandy Brondello\u2019s apology for an inappropriate comment about the Atlanta Dream…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":812376,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[574],"tags":[64,63,726,85],"class_list":["post-812375","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\/812375","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=812375"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/812375\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/812376"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=812375"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=812375"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=812375"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}