LAS VEGAS — Jonquel Jones knew she didn’t want to fully answer the question that had just been posed to her. Sitting on the postgame media dais after the New York Liberty’s loss to the Las Vegas Aces in Game 1 of the WNBA Finals, she was asked about what a reporter deemed a “quick whistle” during the contest.
Jones, who recorded her seventh consecutive playoff double-double, smiled and replied, “I already got one fine this playoffs, I’m not getting another one.”
She reserved any public judgments about Sunday’s officials. It was a significant change from the semifinals, when during an in-game interview with ESPN, she looked directly at the television camera and said: “They want the players to be better, the refs got to be better at the end of the day. … They want us to be better; be better, refs.”
Jones is not alone voicing frustration about the WNBA’s officiating this season. Among other recent complaints, Connecticut Sun guard Natisha Hiedeman recently tweeted that she had been fined for post-semifinals comments. She wrote on social media: “refs have been terrible from both sides…not even in the series but the whole season.” Of course, complaints about officials aren’t uncommon in sports. Scan any league during any season, and one is bound to…
