DiJonai Carrington is attempting to clear the air after cleaning out Sophie Cunningham with a hard foul during a game this past weekend.
And the Chicago Sky star also is claiming that her “WHITE PRIVILEGE” post on social media had nothing to do with the incident.
Carrington was assessed a flagrant foul after clobbering the outspoken Indiana Fever guard on Saturday, leading to the Sky player being ejected from the matchup.
As Cunningham went for a layup on a fast break, Carrington’s left arm hit her in the face and knocked her to the ground.
When speaking to reporters about the incident on Monday, Carrington said it “was never intentional.”
“It was unfortunate that I made contact with her in the way that I did, but it was never intentional,” she said, according to the Chicago Sun-Times. “And, look, it might happen again. That’s just how I play. I’m gonna always go all out. I’m not gonna just let an open layup happen.
“But like I said, I’m never intending to hurt anybody, regardless of the outside noise or whatever the situation may be.”
What did Carrington post on social media?
However, as much as the hard foul had some critics fired up, Carrington drew even more heat for her post on social media afterward.
Shortly after returning to the Sky locker room after her ejection, Carrington posted “WHITE PRIVILEGE” on the social media site Threads and tagged the Indiana Fever’s account.
When asked about the post, Carrington didn’t elaborate and gave a cryptic response.
“I already spoke with people who potentially will have the agency to create the change that I’m hoping comes about from not just this incident, but ones in the past and that are obviously going to be coming up in the near future, probably,” she said.
But while Carrington didn’t address the post with reporters on Monday, she did respond to a clip by podcaster Emmanuel Acho, who had called her out on Sunday.
“I’ve never once claimed that the assessment of the foul was white privilege (that was your assumption),” Carrington posted on X. “Try exercising your critical thinking skills, I know you studied psych. Furthermore, I’m the LAST thing from ignorant or asinine when it comes to speaking on ‘white privilege,’ do ya research on that one.”
What did Dave Portnoy say about the incident?
Another pundit who wasn’t the least bit thrilled by the incident was Dave Portnoy, the founder of Barstool Sports and self-proclaimed “Indiana Fever expert.”
During Monday’s episode of Wake Up Barstool, Portnoy spoke for roughly eight minutes about the incident, while also calling out sports networks like ESPN for failing to mention Carrington’s post.
“Maybe the story ends there if Carrington doesn’t go to the locker room and pick up her phone and tweet ‘white privilege,’ which is insane,” Portnoy said. “An absolutely insane thing to say. Now, if you go watch other networks, I’m not gonna say it on Fox, but like ESPN is filled with absolute morons.
“They have a panel of morons sitting there discussing this play and talking about whether it was the right call and things of that nature. They don’t even mention the fact that she said ‘white privilege.’ That is the story. The story isn’t that she got kicked out.
“It’s that she tweeted out ‘white privilege’ because Sophie Cunningham is white and that’s somehow how she got kicked out. They go on to defend her: The story, the narrative that she’s not a dirty player, she makes plays like this all the time.”
Portnoy added that he believes Carrington to be a “dirty” player and also shared clips of her allegedly attempting to gouge the eyes of Caitlin Clark with her long fingernails.
“Where this thing gets absolutely bananas is when you start making it into a race and culture war, and the people talking about it are not mentioning 99% of the time that she went back and tweeted ‘white privilege.’ White privilege how? You made a dirty play,” he said.