Former WNBA player and ESPN analyst Chiney Ogwumike believes the league caved to online pressure to punish Alyssa Thomas for an incident involving Caitlin Clark on what she believes was a routine play.
Last week, Thomas and Clark dove for a loose ball on the floor where slow motion replays appeared to show the former hitting the Indiana Fever star in the throat with a closed fist. At the time, no foul was called due to the quick nature of the incident.
Internet reaction trended toward outrage as Fever fans and right-wing media viewed this as yet another example of the league failing to protect Clark. Indiana Fever coach Stephanie White called the no-call ‘absolutely egregious’ and ‘utterly disrespectful.’
One day later, the league retroactively assessed a flagrant II foul on Thomas and suspended her for a game. Thomas missed a game against the Toronto Tempo on Saturday night.
While Thomas does have a history of playing tough, Ogwumike believes that the angry mob on social media tipped the scales leading to her suspension and that the two players involved moved on after the play.
‘To me, overall, officiating has been a universal issue this year. And that’s not the goal of any league, but this is the reality,’ Ogwumike said on an episode of WNBA Countdown.
WNBA analyst Chiney Ogwumike believes the league suspended Alyssa Thomas as a result of caving to public pressure after slow-motion footage of her incident with Caitlin Clark surfaced
Thomas and Clark both dove for a loose ball, leading to Thomas hitting Clark in the throat
Ogwumike said her heart was breaking over the vitriol Thomas is getting from the incident
The former WNBA Rookie of the Year added, ‘You’re seeing that there’s an imperative to call more fouls, but there’s still a lack of situational awareness or a lack of control of the game by the refs… You can see one game where one is super physical and one where people are dropping 50. There’s been a lack of consistency and this creates a problem in magnifier matchups.
‘And this is a magnifier matchup when you look back at it. Alyssa Thomas, Caitlin Clark, both dominant players, but Alyssa plays on the edge. I know her. And Caitlin sometimes embellishes at times in certain instances.
‘So when you have a scrum, like you said, there needs to be a hypervigilance. But also this created a position where the league is now forced to be reactive. And instead of having control of not just calling fouls, now the league is reacting and doing something that it rarely does on a non-call and instituting a suspension. And to me, that was unique.’
Ogwumike believes this happened ‘because of the optics,’ adding, ‘I was watching game speed, I didn’t really notice too much because people hit the ground all the time.
‘But when narratives are created based off of a freeze frame, that can create a huge problem. And I do think that’s the league reacting to the optics of that image.’
‘If you’re watching it in real time, both players – who are known to make their issues known – got up and kept going. That was my thing. And so that’s why I have a problem.’
Ogwumike added that the backlash to Thomas ‘breaks my heart’ because of the ‘heightened level of vitriol’ that she is facing.
‘If the league could really handle this better in real time and figuring out how— we want more points, we want more fouls, but how do we keep an eye on these specific matchups so we can avoid the narratives getting out of our control?’ Ogwumike asked.
