On August 8, the officials ejected DiJonai Carrington from the Indiana Fever vs the Chicago Sky game after she committed a Flagrant 2 foul on Sophie Cunningham. The Sky guard sent Cunningham crashing to the floor after making contact with her around the head and neck area as the Fever guard went up for a layup. This play was initially called a Flagrant 1, but after a review, the officials upgraded it to a Flagrant 2 and ejected Carrington from the game. And WNBA reporter Annie Costabile believes it was the right call, as she pointed to a concern that went beyond Carrington’s intentions.
“I’m not saying this was intentional necessarily. But again, it got upgraded because there was significant contact made to the head and neck area. Sophie was sent to the ground, again, midair, and the risk of injury was very real. And so that was the right call,” Costabile said in the August 11th episode of No Offseason.
The play’s potentially dangerous nature would have already brought its fair share of backlash, but she found support from an unlikely ally in the Fever’s head coach Stephanie White.
DiJoonai Carrington had played under White when she was the head coach of the Connecticut Sun during the 2023 and 2024 seasons. So, White was familiar with how the forward played and believed that she didn’t intentionally hit Cunningham.
“It was a hard foul. I don’t think that Dijonai intentionally came out to get [Sophie] across the neck like she did, but it did happen and I thought it was the right call,” White told reporters while citing Carrington’s competitive nature, and the Chicago Sky player later echoed that sentiment.
“I’m never gonna let a open layup just be had. You can pull clips from however many seasons of me making that same exact play. It was unfortunate that I made contact with her in the way that I did, but it was never intentional,” DiJonai Carrington said before the Sky’s August 10 game against the Seattle Storm.
But regardless of Carrington’s explanation, Sophie Cunningham has refused to accept that the foul was not intentional, and she made that clear after the game.
“Clearly, I think it was like, unnecessary. I’ve never really spoken to her and have no beef with her, but I guess she has some pent-up stuff. So get your sh*t off. That’s fine. I can take it,” Cunningham said after the game, according to Kareem Copeland.
“It’s intentional. She wasn’t even on the team. She has no reason to be doing any of that. So, good way to get her kicked out. I don’t even know her. She wasn’t even on the team last year when all that was going on.”
With DiJonai Carrington maintaining that she was simply making a basketball play and Sophie Cunningham offering a very different interpretation, the controversy surrounding the foul has clearly extended well beyond the initial Flagrant 2 call, and with several influential voices now calling for head coach Stephanie White’s firing, this discourse is far from over.
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The post “Risk of Injury Was Very Real”: WNBA’s Decision on DiJonai Carrington After Sophie Cunningham Foul Draws Concerning Observation From Journalist appeared first on EssentiallySports. Add EssentiallySports as a Preferred Source by clicking here.
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