New York Liberty's Walt Hopkins sounds off on WNBA refs over 'lack of respect' for young team
New York Liberty coach Walt Hopkins isn’t disagreeing with the call and no-call in the final second that both went the way of the fifth-seeded Mercury, which beat the No. 8 Liberty on Thursday in a first-round single-elimination WNBA playoff game.
Rather, Hopkins said afterward that in general the Liberty got the short end of the stick, both in this game and all season long.
“There are a lot of things I want to say about the officiating in the WNBA and about the lack of respect this team’s gotten all season,” Hopkins said. “But I can’t say that because referees are above reproach. They don’t have to go to a press conference after games. They don’t have to explain the mistakes they made, why they did what they do.
“I don’t know where the accountability’s gonna come from, but it needs to happen. It was a bad season. The way they treated us was bad.”
He added that he thought the treatment of the Liberty by the referees is due to the fact that they have so many younger players.
However the only young player to start in Thursday’s game was second-year guard Sabrina Ionescu. The rest of the team’s starters all have at least five years of experience in the WNBA. Sami Whitcomb and Natasha Howard, who both started in Thursday’s game, each have at least two WNBA championships to their name.
While the final seconds saw two calls in particular that affected the game, Hopkins asserted he was more concerned with others that occurred throughout the game. Thursday night saw the Liberty get called for 22 fouls, while the Mercury were fouled just 15 times.
“There were multiple plays where we didn’t just get calls, a free throw discrepancy … it was 18-7 tonight,” Hopkins said.
“If anyone wants to say it’s because we shoot a lot of threes, well we outscored them in the paint, 34-30. It’s not because we don’t go to the rim. It’s because we don’t get respect because we’re a young team.”