Players for the New York Liberty, Phoenix Mercury and Indiana Fever wore altered Adidas warmup T-shirts that included tributes to victims in the Dallas shootings of police as well as the deaths of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile at the hands of police officers. Members of those three teams chose to wore the altered shirts after the league sent out an initial warning to teams against wearing them.
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The teams were fined $5,000, and the players were each fined $500.
“We are proud of WNBA players’ engagement and passionate advocacy for non-violent solutions to difficult social issues but expect them to comply with the league’s uniform guidelines,” WNBA president Lisa Borders told AP in a statement.
The T-shirts initially stoked controversy including four police officers leaving their off-duty jobs as security guards to a Minnesota Lynx game because they took offense to what they felt was anti-police rhetoric. Those shirts also included mention of the Dallas shootings.
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Via AP:
These are the Liberty’s initial T-shirts:
Meanwhile, these came after the WNBA’s warning:
The T-shirts and initial warning from the WNBA office were reminiscent of NBA players wearing “I Can’t Breathe” shirts in December 2014 to honor the death of Eric Garner, who was asphyxiated by a police officer.
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“I respect Derrick Rose and all of our players for voicing their personal views on important issues but my preference would be for players to abide by our on-court attire rules,” NBA commissioner Adam Silver said at the time, and no players wore the shirts before games afterward.
