Mercury’s Nate Tibbetts irked by WNBA’s suspension process

Phoenix Mercury coach Nate Tibbetts called out the WNBA and defended his star player, Alyssa Thomas, before his team’s 89-80 victory over the Toronto Tempo on Saturday.

The comments came as Thomas served her one-game suspension for a play earlier in the week involving Indiana Fever guard Caitlin Clark in which Thomas “recklessly [made] contact with her fist to the throat area,” according to the WNBA. Fever coach Stephanie White called the play a “cheap shot.”

No foul was called during the game, but after the league reviewed the incident the next day, it deemed it worthy of further punishment.

“I’d like to hit on my disappointment in the suspension process by our league and our leaders in the W. This was not a thorough investigation in my opinion,” Tibbetts said. He added that no one from the WNBA reached out to him, Thomas or team security to understand the situation from their perspective.

“The people in this league know who AT is,” he said. “She’s a competitor, she’s a winner, and she’s tough. The one thing she is not is cheap.”

After Saturday’s victory, Thomas’ teammates also came out in her defense.

“We’re with AT,” guard Kahleah Copper said. “We just wish it would have been handled the right way. We wish somebody also called her and checked on her and made sure that she was OK. I don’t think it played out how it should have professionally.”

Mercury guard Lexi Held echoed Copper’s point and said it was important for the team to publicly back Thomas because there were “a lot of narratives going on that were false and untrue.”

“We just kind of wanted to show our support and kind of give her a little bit of a voice because there’s just a lot of narratives on the media that aren’t true and aren’t who she is or how she is,” Held said. “So just kind of wanted to be that teammate for her in these crazy, rough times.”

Officiating has been at the center of discussions surrounding the WNBA for the past year. During the offseason, the league put together a committee to help improve in-game officiating, centered on consistent calls and ensuring offensive players have freedom of movement.

Tibbetts, along with White, is part of the task force. After the game Wednesday, which saw Clark exit early with a back issue following a play where she landed on the foot of her close-out defender, White said the no-calls on Clark, who she called a “generational talent,” were “egregious and utterly disrespectful.”

After the league announced Thomas’ suspension, White told reporters she was glad they made that decision but added, “These are things that we can’t miss in real time. We’ve got to be better.”

On Saturday, Tibbetts said he agreed that it is important to “clean up our game” but added, “let’s not base it on generational talent, fanbase involvement, All-Star level players or role players. Let’s don’t base it off veterans or young players, or white players or Black players, or international players. If this is the standard, make this the standard, even if the roles were reversed in this situation.”