Why were so many fouls called on WNBA opening weekend? There may be an adjustment period, but ‘this is what we want’
As the fouls piled up in their season opener, Indiana Fever head coach Stephanie White issued a reminder. This is what we want, she told her team — as well as Wings forward Alanna Smith in a sideline chit-chat — while the league cleans up a game that became too physical over the past couple of seasons. “We need to overcorrect, so to speak, for lack of a better term, so that we have freedom of movement [and] so that it’s a free-flowing offense,” White told reporters following a 107-105 loss to Dallas at Gainbridge Fieldhouse in Indianapolis on Saturday.
Officiating is again the focal point in the WNBA, though this time it’s the sheer number of fouls that forced clunky opening-weekend action. The league made freedom of movement a point of emphasis, and officials are set on limiting the unchecked offensive lineman-level physicality . Indiana Fever head coach Stephanie White wasn't shy last season about speaking up on officiating.
(AP Photo/Doug McSchooler) ASSOCIATED PRESS White was among the coaches who spoke regularly on it, including after a scuffle that ended a Commissioner’s Cup game between the Fever and Sun last season. It became the headliner again in the postseason, culminating in Minnesota Lynx head coach Cheryl Reeve ripping the placement of her semifinals officiating crew as “f***ing malpractice and MVP runner-up Napheea Collier taking aim at the issue days later. WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert announced a “state of the game committee” ahead of the Finals to assess the issue and said last month at the WNBA collegiate draft there would be “more lines being drawn around that physicality as a result of some of the insights we gleaned” from the group.
Change requires growing pains. Players who have spent years in the league playing an (allowed) physical style as the means to an end of winning, as Collier said last week on NPR , are adjusting in real time to fouls being called that previously wouldn’t have received a whistle. “In all of our offseason [conversations], [we] have asked the officials to call everything,” White said.
“The challenge, and the question sometimes, is, is it consistent? So that will be the next growth phase and growth area. But this is what we need to clean up some of the stuff that we saw last year.
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