Former WNBA star Candice Wiggins made waves in the sports world this week by claiming the league’s culture is hostile towards “heterosexual and straight” players.
Wiggins, who won the 2008 NCAA Wade Trophy as the nation’s top women’s college player before spending eight successful years in the WNBA, told the San Diego Union-Tribune Monday that her career was ended two years early because harassment by lesbian players was too “toxic.”
“Me being heterosexual and straight, and being vocal in my identity as a straight woman was huge,” she told the newspaper. “I would say 98 percent of the women in the WNBA are gay women. It was a conformist type of place. There was a whole different set of rules [that other players] could apply.”
Wiggins, who won a championship with the Minnesota Lynx in 2011, said that opponents would “deliberately” try to injure her on the court.
“I had never been called the B-word so many times in my life than I was in my rookie season,” she said. “I’d never been thrown to the ground so much. The message was: ’We want you to know we don’t like you.’”
League officials said they would not comment on the interview “for now” when contacted Wednesday by ESPN, but one former player disagreed with Wiggins’ claim.
“I know Candice as a sweet, intelligent young lady,” two-time WNBA champion DeLisha Milton-Jones, now an assistant coach at Pepperdine University, told ESPN. “I don’t want to take anything from her experiences while in the league, so I can only speak for what I experienced firsthand. And it’s in complete contradiction of what’s been stated by Candice.”
• Douglas Ernst can be reached at dernst@washingtontimes.com.
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