Mystics coach Mike Thibault apologized via social media to the Minnesota Lynx and coach Cheryl Reeve soon after feedback he produced about their travel troubles in obtaining to Sunday’s sport in Washington, D.C.
Thibault reported he was “exhausted of listening to” about WNBA vacation delays and that he failed to truly feel sorry for the Lynx.
“My apologies to @LynxCoachReeve and @minnesotalynx for my reaction to the problem asked of me at my pre-video game press conference today,” Thibault wrote on Twitter. “It really is not who I am and I really should have just answered the concern devoid of the further dramatics.”
The Lynx played back-to-back again online games on Thursday and Friday in Minneapolis and Indianapolis, and then they experienced flight challenges on Saturday that delayed their arrival till midnight for Sunday’s 3 p.m. tipoff. They shed to the Mystics 70-57.
Reeve reported she contacted the league in advance of Sunday’s activity when the challenges very first began Saturday, but no one at first responded. She claimed when the league ultimately did respond to the team, it was to counsel choice flights, which the Lynx had already figured out.
“I have been in this league a extensive time, and if you do this long enough, you are heading to be in these circumstances,” Reeve explained. “I imagine when it arrives down to the worries that occur, it really is all about management and your capacity to collectively get the job done via that situation. Probably the better disappointment was the deficiency of response. From our standpoint, there was no communication with the Minnesota Lynx. It was an epic fail.
“It was leaked to me later on there was communication with Washington. I alerted the league that we likely had a challenge brewing since I didn’t want them to uncover out on social media. I never feel it can be satisfactory that I really don’t get a response. I can not management how other men and women handle us … I assumed we deserved more respect than that. We are not satisfied that there was no thing to consider presented to us.”
Thibault also was questioned about WNBA vacation delays prior to Sunday’s game.
“I am weary of hearing about them,” Thibault explained, while pantomiming rubbing tears from his eyes. “I am fatigued of listening to about it on Twitter. It comes about to each and every group. And I get it. Every single workforce would like to get in experience completely refreshed. But they bought right here previous evening. They did not perform yesterday. I know it is a very long day. But everyone goes via that.”
Thibault then recounted his 1st calendar year in the league, 2003, when he was the mentor at Connecticut. The Sun had a game at Cleveland that was canceled by a blackout that afflicted a lot of Jap states. The Solar took a bus back again to Connecticut, and the following early morning, they took yet another bus to New York for an afternoon sport at Madison Square Garden.
“Nobody felt sorry for us. … and we received,” Thibault mentioned. “We just did not converse about it with our gamers. Which is just existence. I’d like to feel sorry for [the Lynx]. But I am sorry, I will not.”
Asked about the league contacting Washington about possibly transferring the sport to Sunday night, Thibault explained, “We have near to a sellout nowadays, and it is not like they ended up arriving this morning. I know it was a extended journey day we’ve all experienced them. We definitely weren’t in a situation to accommodate them except if there was a considerably extra mitigating circumstance than there is appropriate now.”
Immediately after the activity, however, Thibault built the article on Twitter that he was sorry for the remarks, and Reeve tweeted back again declaring there had been no tough feelings.
“All fantastic, Mentor,” she wrote on Twitter on Sunday evening. “We have many years of regard at the rear of us — this situation will not likely alter that.”
Journey challenges have grow to be much more prominently and often mentioned by WNBA players and coaches in recent a long time. The WNBA flies professional for regular-period video games. The New York Liberty were fined $500,000 for chartering flights to away online games during the 2021 year, as it violated league guidelines.
Charters commonly are not authorized because of to the concern it would build a aggressive benefit for groups whose owners can pay for them. Nevertheless, the league in 2019 extra charters for playoff online games where groups would be crossing several time zones with only a day amongst video games.
WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert also introduced prior to the July 10 All-Star Recreation that the league would constitution all flights for the WNBA Finals commencing this yr.