The WNBA fined both Indiana Fever head coach Stephanie White and Las Vegas Aces head coach Becky Hammon on Monday for their comments in support of Minnesota Lynx head coach Cheryl Reeve.<\/p>\n
The WNBA doesn\u2019t disclose fine amounts, and neither coach revealed how much they were fined by the league. According to The Athletic<\/a>, though, both coaches were hit with fines of $1,000. Reeve’s fine was $15,000.<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n Both coaches spoke out in support of Reeve, who was suspended for one game last week after she was ejected in Game 3 of their semifinals series with the Phoenix Mercury and then erupted on the officiating.<\/p>\n \u201cI think she made a lot of valid points,\u201d White said of Reeve\u2019s comments on Sunday<\/a>. \u201cI think at some point there has to be some accountability.\u201d<\/p>\n Hammon followed suit.<\/p>\n \u201cFrom what I heard, she did not tell a lie,\u201d Hammon said on Sunday. \u201cShe said the truth.\u201d<\/p>\n The Aces and Fever are tied up 2-2 in their series. They\u2019ll square off next in Game 5 on Tuesday night with a trip to the WNBA Finals on the line.<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n What happened to Cheryl Reeve?<\/p>\n Reeve went off during the final minute<\/a> of the Lynx\u2019s 84-76 loss to the Mercury on Friday night. She came running out onto the court to berate the officials after star Napheesa Collier was hurt on a steal, and was so outraged that she had to be held back by multiple coaches and players as she tried to charge toward the referees.<\/p>\n Reeve was very quickly ejected, and she even started berating Mercury fans in the Arizona arena on her way out.<\/p>\n She then continued in her postgame interview<\/a>, and called the officials \u201cf***ing awful.\u201d<\/p>\n “This is the look that our league wants, for some reason,\u201d she said. \u201cWe were trying to play through it, we tried not to make excuses. One of the best players in the league shot zero free throws. Zero, and she had five fouls. Zero free throws. Got her shoulder pulled out and finished the game with her leg being taken out, and probably has a fracture. And so this is what our league wants. OK. But I want to call for a change in leadership at the league level when it comes to officiating. It’s bad for the game.<\/p>\n \u201cThe officiating crew that we had for tonight, for the leadership to deem those three people semifinals playoff worthy is f***ing malpractice. I can take an L with the best of them. I don’t think we should have to play through more than what they did. We’ve got players \u2014 [Maria Kliundikova’s] on the glass and gets f***ing cracked, and there’s no call. And all of them decided ‘It wasn’t my call, I don’t know, I didn’t see it that way.’ They’re f***ing awful.\u201d<\/p>\n Reeve and two of her assistant coaches were later fined, and Reeve was suspended<\/a> for their Game 4 loss<\/a>. That sent the Mercury into the WNBA Finals for the first time since 2021.<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n Reeve is the winningest coach in WNBA history. She\u2019s been with the Lynx since 2010 and won four championships with the franchise. Reeve also led Team USA to an eighth consecutive gold medal in the Paris Olympics last summer.<\/p>\n Reeve is far from the only coach or person in the WNBA to call out the officiating this season. Hammon and the Aces did after their loss to the Fever<\/a> in Game 4. The league\u2019s officiating isn\u2019t set up like the WNBA\u2019s either. Officials are part-time, many are then hired into the NBA, and there is no \u201clast two-minute\u201d report or a centralized review center. With the way the WNBA has grown in recent years, it\u2019s been clear that the officiating system has lagged<\/a>. The players, White said, \u201cdeserve growth in that area\u201d too.<\/p>\n “Every part of our league has gotten better, and [officiating] has lagged behind, for whatever reason,\u201d White said on Friday, via ESPN. \u201cOftentimes it’s infrastructure… We all know that when you are trying to invest in an area of business or of sport or whatever, it comes down to resources.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The WNBA fined both Indiana Fever head coach Stephanie White and Las Vegas Aces head coach Becky Hammon…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":178757,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[629],"tags":[8133,49,48,25358,2803,3460,88558,736,729,16602,3461,82,2807,630,15457],"class_list":{"0":"post-178756","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wnba","8":"tag-becky-hammon","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-canada","11":"tag-head-coach","12":"tag-indiana-fever","13":"tag-las-vegas-aces","14":"tag-maria-kliundikova","15":"tag-minnesota-lynx","16":"tag-napheesa-collier","17":"tag-officiating","18":"tag-phoenix-mercury","19":"tag-sports","20":"tag-stephanie-white","21":"tag-wnba","22":"tag-wnba-finals"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178756","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=178756"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178756\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/178757"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=178756"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=178756"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=178756"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}