The WNBA has spent much of the summer caught in conversations that have had little to do with basketball. For Indiana Fever head coach Stephanie White, that has meant navigating everything from the league’s heated political discourses to backlash over how she handled the Sophie Cunningham-DiJonai Carrington incident.
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So as those conversations continue to spiral, Phoenix Mercury head coach Nate Tibbetts, who is set to team up with White as an assistant coach for the U.S. women’s basketball team in September, has made it clear how he feels about it.
“It really pisses me off. It’s disappointing. This is a great league. We’ve got great players. There are great stories, great rookies, great teams. What (Las) Vegas has done in the last four years. We just spend so much time talking about the wrong stuff, and I don’t know why that happens in our league,” Tibbetts said in his conversation with Annie Costabile, as shared in an X post by Hayden Cilley.
“It’s disappointing. I don’t know who can help change the narrative… There are outside sources that are trying to create division, and at times, it’s not a lot of fun. It’s not a lot of fun for our players. It’s not a lot of fun for our coaches, our organizations, because we are doing great things.”
“Certain coaches in our league have to deal with that on a night-to-night level; that’s bullshit, and I feel sorry for some of those coaches. I love our media. We make it about basketball, but some of the things that (Stephanie White) has to go through- that’s wrong. There’s no other coach in any professional sport that has to go through the stuff that she does, and I think of her a lot. It’s not fair. It’s not fair. She’s hired to coach basketball. They got a great team, and they’re just dealing with stuff that doesn’t really matter, and so that still pisses me off,” he added.
Stephanie White has certainly had plenty to deal with since taking over the Fever. Earlier in the season, speculation surrounding her relationship with Caitlin Clark became a constant talking point. And then more recently, the Cunningham-Carrington controversy pushed her back into the center of the conversation, with some protesters and Indiana Lt. Gov. Micah Beckwith even calling for her firing.
But the disappointing part is that noise has come despite what is happening on the court.
Under White, Indiana owns a 22–12 record this season and leads the WNBA in scoring, establishing itself as a legitimate championship contender. Yet the constant attention away from basketball has clearly taken a toll, something Stephanie White spoke about during an emotional pregame media availability on August 11.
“The hate, the fear-mongering, the divisiveness, the stuff that’s trying to hijack our league will not win. It won’t win. We are united. We are connected; we will not be divided. Every day, these women put their a** on the line. … I stand by them. I will always stand by them. Everybody else can go to hell,” she said.
However, for Tibbetts, the issue is bigger than one coach or one controversy.
With the WNBA producing more compelling basketball and attracting unprecedented attention, he believes the league should not allow everything happening around it to overshadow what is happening on the court. And judging by his comments, Stephanie White is one coach he believes has been forced to bear far more of that burden than she should have.