“It’s absolutely egregious and utterly disrespectful,” Fever Coach Stephanie White said after the June 24 Flagrant Foul against Caitlin Clark by Mercury veteran Alyssa Thomas. Since then, the incident has snowballed into online threats against Thomas. While White has condemned the harassment, analyst Jemele Hill expressed her disapproval of White’s initial reaction.

“I didn’t like it how she initially came out…. What made her initial response even more disappointing is the fact that she coached Alyssa Thomas for years. She knows the type of player she is. She knows the type of person she is,” Hill said on the ‘Flagrant And Funny’ podcast.

“Again, I get it. It’s competition. I’m not saying that you have to be Mrs. Nice, but you can’t feed narratives that are ultimately going to do a different level of harm to the other player,” added Hill. And this comes at a time when Clark herself broke her silence on the flagrant foul.

“I did think it was a flagrant foul and our reffing just needs to be better. It’s tough. Obviously, the refs are in a really difficult spot. It’s one of the hardest jobs in the world, in my opinion,” Clark said around the same time Hill’s podcast episode went live.

However, Hill believes that White’s lack of “self-awareness” during that initial response didn’t do Thomas any favors.

Interestingly, White has praised both DeWanna Bonner and Alyssa Thomas in the past when coach with the Connecticut Sun for two years. “I think because of our leadership with those two in particular, our versatility and the pieces around them, we’re a scary team,” White said back in 2023.

Meanwhile, Mercury boss Nate Tibbetts also called White out on the same lines. Tibbetts shot down any implications that Thomas’s hard contact was intentional, saying White “knows what [Thomas] stands for and what she’s about… The people in this league know who (Alyssa Thomas) is. She’s a competitor, she’s a winner, and she’s tough. The one thing she is not is cheap,” Tibbetts said.

After the immense backlash and the toxic response to Thomas, with phone numbers and addresses being leaked, White backed the Mercury player.

“It is absolutely unacceptable. Most of this coming from the online community,” she said. “Most of this, in my heart of hearts, I believe [is] not coming from WNBA fans, Indiana Fever fans.” 

Now, the next step is to move on. Off-court narratives have dominated the conversation regarding the WNBA for the last two weeks, even eclipsing the Commissioner’s Cup, where the New York Liberty defeated defending WNBA champions Las Vegas Aces.

Clark’s team takes on the Aces on July 5, and the guard has confirmed that she will sit the clash out as she recovers from a back injury. On the other hand, the league will need to continue working on its player safety.