The WNBA prioritizing the Fever in its initial charter flight rollout plan isn’t going over well

time WNBA All teams announced on May 9th. There will be charter flights this season, but it felt like a problem that had existed for far too long was over.But what some missed in this announcement was that all match charters Doesn’t start until May 21st.

Unfortunately, the season began on May 14th, and the Indiana Fever and Minnesota Lynx were the only teams scheduled to receive charter flights for the opening day, leaving the old policy’s last day somewhat contentious. Ta.

For Indiana, it was a result of Caitlin Clark being a star attraction and having her at the airport raised safety concerns. In Minnesota’s case, Engelbert explained to his players during a town hall meeting that traveling from Minneapolis to Seattle crosses multiple time zones and may require connecting flights. according to Chicago Sun-Times.

But a quick look around the league revealed flaws in that plan. The most obvious example was the Atlanta Dream’s trip to Los Angeles to play the Sparks on the second night of the season. Despite crossing multiple time zones, there were no charter flights.

With no public explanation for this, it quickly escalated to the point where players on Twitter/X began accusing the league of favoritism in subtle and not-so-subtle ways.

Brittney Sykes, a security guard for the Washington Mystics, said the Mystics traveled across the country the day before the charter flight program took effect, so the Clark and Fever ended up flying commercially for more than five hours on a chartered plane. He pointed out that. For short flights from Indiana to Connecticut:

Or there was ace forward Alisha Clark. WNBA begins investigation into $100,000 payment team I was scheduled to receive it from the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Bureau. By asking us to launch an investigation into Mr. Englebert’s choices about who can and cannot fly on charter flights ahead of the new program.

This comes just over a week after Minnesota Lynx head coach Sheryl Reeve also raised eyebrows at the league’s potential favoritism to Clark during the preseason.

It’s hard to watch this at a moment when we should be celebrating a new season and this historic victory for our players. Because if the league had implemented this charter rollout plan better or more clearly, there would have been a better explanation of who it chose to participate in the first place. Alternatively, if all teams had been set to start at the start of the season instead of just a week into the season, the criticism centered around Clark would not have arisen.

Instead, they incited controversy that pitted players against each other with subtweets.

In fact, her level of fame made it risky for Clarke and the Fever to appear in a commercial this season. It makes sense for them to take a charter flight. But last season was dangerous. Brittney Greiner confronted a YouTuber The same goes for airports, and the league didn’t have this program in place until this season, so it’s easy to see why some players seem frustrated.

The league’s final conclusion was They made the right decision that it was time to change their flight policy, but the result is something that would never have happened if the league had treated each team the same from the beginning, or simply started chartering flights for each team. This resulted in criticism and prejudice that would not otherwise have occurred. Instead of this haphazard development, on the 21st.

At the end of the day, it may have been a no-win scenario for the league no matter which option was chosen, but the bright side is that at least the controversy will end soon.

You can follow Jacob on Twitter. @JacobRude.