Stephanie White called out WNBA officials for swallowing their whistle on Caitlin Clark.
With the Fever trailing the Liberty by two points at the end of Saturday’s game, Clark didn’t get a shot off as she tried to drive off an inbounds catch against a physical Natasha Cloud.
The horn at Gainbridge Fieldhouse sounded to seal a 90-88 loss as the ball bounced away.
So much for homecooking.
May 24. NBAE via Getty Images
“I thought she got fouled,” White, the Fever head coach, said after the game. “I think it’s pretty egregious what’s been happening to us the last few games: A minus-31 free-throw discrepancy. And I might be able to understand it if we were just chucking 3s. But we’re not. We’re attacking the rim.”
Clark threw her hands in the air, swung a fist through the air and wore a bewildered look as she sought out the officials to find out why she didn’t get the call that would’ve sent her to the free-throw line with a chance to win the game by sinking all three attempts.
When asked about the final play postgame, Clark said, “I don’t know,” and that she hadn’t watched the play back yet.
“The disrespect right now for our team has been pretty unbelievable,” White said. ‘It’s disappointing that it doesn’t go both ways — or it hasn’t gone both ways.”
Cloud said that the way the Fever lined up for the inbounds pass told her to expect something non-traditional and a decoy as Clark came off a screen.
Clark finished with 18 points on 6-of-18 shooting from the floor.
“When she came up, gave her a little bit of pressure,” Cloud told The Post’s Madeline Kenney.
“When she tried to bring the ball up to her shot, I literally just tipped it with my four fingers. I knew she was going to pull it. She wanted a 3. Obviously, you want to go for the win at home, and I knew that she had a little bit of a rough shooting tonight, too, so I knew that she wanted to have that home-run moment.”
The no-call in Cloud’s favor followed up a game-deciding whistle at the other end of the floor.
Sabrina Ionescu drove the lane with the score tied at 88-88 and was bumped in what could’ve been incidental contact.
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A case could be made that Ionescu leaned into defender Lexie Hull and her path was not impeded.
Ionescu made both her free throws with 2.9 seconds remaining.
It sounds like White will be asking for an explanation from the WNBA office as to why her team is on the wrong end of bang-bang calls.
The Liberty were 25-of-32 at the line, while the Fever were 11-of-15.
“There’s a system to making sure that we can send stuff in and communicate our grievances, so to speak,” White said. “I don’t know that I ever feel like the system works. We’re not looking for a change. We’re just looking for consistency.”