{"id":85795,"date":"2025-08-15T22:32:07","date_gmt":"2025-08-15T22:32:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/85795\/"},"modified":"2025-08-15T22:32:07","modified_gmt":"2025-08-15T22:32:07","slug":"kelsey-plum-clarifies-asg-remark-on-team-clark-t-shirt-meeting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/85795\/","title":{"rendered":"Kelsey Plum clarifies ASG remark on Team Clark, T-shirt meeting"},"content":{"rendered":"

Los Angeles Sparks<\/a> guardKelsey Plum<\/a>‘s comments after the WNBA All-Star Game were “a really bad joke,” she told former WNBA star Sue Bird on the “Bird’s Eye View” podcast released Friday.<\/p>\n

Plum spoke with Bird about a variety of topics, including remarks she made in jest after the July 19 All-Star Game in Indianapolis about the players’ decision<\/a> to wear “Pay Us What You Owe Us” warmup T-shirts<\/a> as part of the ongoing collective bargaining negotiations<\/a> with the league.<\/p>\n

Plum, who played for captainNapheesa Collier<\/a>‘s winning team against Team Caitlin Clark<\/a>, said in a postgame news conference, “The T-shirt, just [a] united front, was determined this morning, that we had a meeting for. And, uh, not to tattletale, but zero members of Team Clark were very present for that.”<\/p>\n

Plum was sitting next to Team Clark member Sabrina Ionescu<\/a> of the New York Liberty<\/a> during the news conference. Ionescu joked back, laughing, “That really needed to be mentioned.”<\/p>\n

Plum responded, “I’m trying to make the situation light, OK? But I think it was just all of us getting on the same page before the game. I thought that was a powerful moment and got the point across.”<\/p>\n

Plum’s comments became on topic on social media, as some accused her of taking a shot at Clark and the players who were on her All-Star team. Clark, who was injured, did not play in the All-Star Game. Clark and Collier, who was the MVP of the game, were captains based on fan voting.<\/p>\n

Asked by Bird about the remarks, Plum said she was just trying to be lighthearted in the moment.<\/p>\n

“You were trying to just make a joke,” Bird said. “And it just got twisted.”<\/p>\n

Plum replied, “And I should have — like, hindsight’s 20\/20 — because of the shirts, because of the fans … I should have known it was a way more serious moment than a typical All-Star Game. Because I went into that press conference very, like, happy-go-lucky we won, you know?<\/p>\n

“The questions came in, and it was like, ‘CBA, this, this, this.’ It was like, ‘Hey, Team Clark, they didn’t make it to the meeting.’ I was making a joke that they were hungover, even though our team nickname was ‘hungover.’ So it was like, ‘At least we made it [to the meeting].’<\/p>\n

“Obviously, we’re all on the same page. We all wore the shirts. Like, we’re all unified. And I think, if anything, I was just more discouraged because I felt like it took away from the moment of what we were trying to do.”<\/p>\n

Bird addressed the fact that people sometimes taking players’ comments — even when they’re intended to be sarcastic and joking — and spin their own narratives about them on social media. Plum said it is difficult to even respond to that when it happens.<\/p>\n

“And if you do, you seem defensive,” Plum said. “So you just have to let it go.”<\/p>\n

Copyright \u00a9 2025 ESPN Internet Ventures. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Los Angeles Sparks guardKelsey Plum‘s comments after the WNBA All-Star Game were “a really bad joke,” she told…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":85796,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[59305,17649,352,25688,41410,2839,3029,3,59304,99,434],"class_list":["post-85795","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wnba","tag-59305","tag-clark-caitlin","tag-espn","tag-espnw","tag-espnw-sports","tag-indiana-fever","tag-los-angeles-sparks","tag-news","tag-plum-kelsey","tag-sports","tag-wnba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85795","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=85795"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85795\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/85796"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=85795"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=85795"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=85795"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}