DiJonai Carrington got ejected.Then she posted WHITE PRIVILEGE.
The play was a breakaway. Sophie Cunningham had the floor to herself, one dribble from a layup. Then DiJonai Carrington arrived, swinging for the block. She caught her across the face and head.
Cunningham hit the floor hard. She got up looking for Carrington and had to be pulled away by teammates and staff. The officials went to the monitor with a flagrant 1 and came back with a flagrant 2. First quarter, ejection, per CBS Sports.
That would have been Saturday’s story. It lasted about as long as it took Carrington to reach her phone.
What did Carrington post after the ejection?
Two words, on Threads, tagging the team she had just been thrown out against: “WHITE PRIVILEGE.”
Then a second post. Just a date: “8/23.”
That is the next time the Sky play the Fever, per CBS Sports.
She was not made available to reporters after the game, per the Chicago Sun-Times. Her own coach found out about the post from the press. “I have to get back to you on that because I’m just now hearing about that,” Tyler Marsh said. “So, we’ll handle that.” By Sunday, Carrington’s Threads account was set to private, per Yahoo Sports.
So the record stands like this. A head-high hit that two levels of review called the worst kind of flagrant. An accusation of racial favoritism, aimed at a team, posted before the sweat dried. And then a locked account and a date circled on the calendar.
What did Sophie Cunningham say about it?
The player who took the hit gave the answer the league still has not.
“I think the league is taking care of that. This has nothing to do with race. Last year I did the same thing. I got kicked out, as I deserved to be kicked out,” Cunningham said, per the Chicago Sun-Times.
That is not spin. It happened. Cunningham was ejected last season for a flagrant foul on Jacy Sheldon. She is the one bringing it up. Her argument is the simplest one available: the whistle treated us the same.
She went further, per CBS Sports: “There’s no reason even to play that card.”
Whatever you think of Cunningham, understand what she did there. She was handed a national controversy gift-wrapped in her favor. She pointed at her own rap sheet instead. That is the opposite of playing the victim. The league office should study the technique.
Two whistles, one game. Watch which one moved.
Here is the part nobody at the league office will enjoy reading.
This was the same game where Caitlin Clark picked up her eighth technical. That number means an automatic suspension. Reporters had word the league rescinded it less than two hours after the final horn, per Yahoo Sports. Two hours. On a Saturday night. We wrote that story this morning.
Now run the clock on the other whistle. A player ejected for a head-high hit accused an opposing team of racial favoritism, in public, in writing. The league’s response by Sunday, per the Sun-Times: it “did not immediately respond to a request for comment.” Yahoo Sports, citing a Fox News report, says a review of her social media conduct is expected. Expected. Nothing announced.
The league can move fast. It proved it this weekend, in this exact game. Speed is a choice, and the choice tells you what the league considers an emergency. A star missing Tuesday’s broadcast qualified. This, apparently, can wait.
One piece of history belongs here, told straight. In the 2024 playoffs, Carrington’s fingernail caught Clark in the eye. It left the league’s biggest star with a black eye. No foul was called. Both players said it was not intentional. “I didn’t know I hit her. I was trying to make a play on the ball,” Carrington said then, per Fox News. We are not rewriting that play into a crime. It was not one.
But that is exactly the point. Carrington knows better than anyone what it feels like when a basketball play becomes a character trial. Saturday, she did it to an entire franchise in two words.
The league now owns the question she posted. It can answer it, or it can let the stopwatch keep answering for it.
Either way, she already told you where this goes next. 8/23.
