Fever coach fires back at critics and things trying to hijack our league in passionate pregame speech

INDIANAPOLIS — One day after Indiana Lt.Gov.

Micah Beckwith called for Stephanie White’s job, the Fever coach delivered an impassioned statement in which she said she will ride with her players “10 toes down all the time.” White also denounced “the hate, the fearmongering, the divisiveness” rhetoric around her team during the roughly two-minute speech that she gave in lieu of a typical pregame news conference prior to Tuesday’s game against the Liberty. White directed her message to “an online community that’s trying to create narratives that simply don’t exist, trying to create a fabrication or distortion of who I am, of what I’m about.” “Our players’ success, our players’ health and wellness, our player safety is always a top priority for me,” White said.“One of the things I pride myself on is my relationships with players.” White came under fire for her postgame comment regarding DiJonai Carrington’s hard foul on Sophie Cunningham in Saturday’s 90-86 win against the Sky.

At the time, White said Carrington is “gonna play her butt off” and “going to compete and nobody’s gonna go walking in for a layup.” “I don’t oppose the hard foul,” White continued, “but I also don’t think that she intentionally went for the neck.” Beckwith took issue with White’s response and suggested, “The Fever need to let Stephanie White go.” “No solid coach would ever take the side of the opposing team’s player who committed a flagrant foul on one of your own players,” Beckwith posted to X.“Terrible coaching! The Fever need to defend their players.” White clarified that she didn’t see the play in real time and went straight to the news conference.

At the time, she thought the officials made the right call and was thankful Cunningham was OK. “Was it egregious? Absolutely,” White said Tuesday.“When you have a chance to watch that, over and over and over on replay, you can see that.

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