Stephanie White used her news conference Wednesday to directly condemn the death threats, racial slurs, and online hate Alyssa Thomas says she and her family have received since Alyssa Thomas’s Flagrant 2 foul on Caitlin Clark. White called the harassment unac
The first question didn’t get a chance to land.
Before the noise of a news conference could carry her toward basketball talk, Fever coach Stephanie White turned the microphone toward a different kind of damage—the kind Alyssa Thomas says she and her family have been living with since a foul on Caitlin Clark.
White opened her news conference Wednesday by addressing the harassment Mercury star Alyssa Thomas has received after Thomas’s flagrant foul on Caitlin Clark. White had already called the no-call on the play “egregious.” The league later upgraded the foul to a Flagrant 2 and suspended Thomas one game. Thomas has said the contact was accidental.
But the physical argument—whether the play was reckless or accidental—has been swallowed by something harsher. Since the incident, Thomas told reporters that she and her family have received death threats. She said she has been targeted with racial slurs, and that she and her teammates have been “painted as thugs.”.
Standing before Fever practice on Wednesday, White didn’t try to soften it.
“Before we start with questions, I just want to address what’s going on with AT,” White said. “First and foremost, it’s absolutely unacceptable. As a league as a whole, there’s been so much more toxicity, racism, homophobia. Straight-out nonsense. Hate nonsense. It is absolutely unacceptable.“
White said “most of this coming from the online community,” adding that she believed it did not come from “WNBA fans, Indiana Fever fans.” In her words, she believes the people doing it are “using our league, using our players to further divisive agendas.”
“It’s not acceptable,” White said.
She acknowledged that criticism is part of basketball—especially when players and teams are in the spotlight. Fans, she said, can develop a “love-hate relationship” with players.
“But it’s not hard to not be a jerk,” White said. “If you are one of these people who are online doing this, do not call yourself a WNBA fan.”
The statement carried extra weight because of who White is. She played from 1999 to 2004. when the WNBA was still fighting to be taken seriously and lacked the mainstream oxygen it now has. White also noted she might be wrong—she acknowledged that her belief that the hateful rhetoric is not coming from “real” WNBA fans could be privileged or naive.
A veteran’s instinct came through anyway: leadership, White suggested, doesn’t just condemn harm. It creates room for voices closest to it.
Elizabeth Williams—speaking after Sky practice Wednesday—offered a different kind of reassurance, and a warning. Williams, a veteran leader in the players union, said WNBA fans are not immune to the darker parts of the discourse.
“There are definitely W fans that are going to get sucked into these narratives just by the nature of social media,” Williams told the Sun-Times.
Williams agreed, though, that much of the prejudice comes from people outside the league’s actual fan base.
“There are a lot of people that have never watched us play and have come up with their ideas of who we are without actually knowing or watching. ” she said. “I just think it’s very interesting that it’s with us, with a league of mostly Black women. Because I think there are a lot of people that don’t like certain sports. but don’t treat them like they’re ‘less than.’”.
White’s comments also landed in a league shaped by its demographics: a WNBA that is majority Black, female, and very queer, and therefore a target as it becomes more visible in mainstream culture. At the same time, those same demographics have shaped what the league stands for.
“Our league is about inclusiveness,” White said. “Our league is about competition. Our league is about elevating women, elevating marginalized communities and being inclusive of all walks of life. That is what our league has always been about from day one. That is what our league will continue to be about.”.
For once, the message didn’t get buried under anything else—just left there, plain enough for fans to read and players to breathe.
WNBA Stephanie White Alyssa Thomas Caitlin Clark Fever Mercury harassment death threats racial slurs Flagrant 2 suspension