TUCSON, Ariz. — If she’s being honest, Adia Barnes’ first instinct was to deny it, to tell a bit of a white lie. Say: No, you didn’t actually see what you thought you saw. You misinterpreted. I definitely didn’t flip the bird while saying, “F— everybody,” on national TV.
But then friends and former teammates and coaches who had been blowing up her phone told her, no, that probably won’t work. Watch the video, Adia. You can’t really deny this one.
So, she did. And clear as day, from a camera angle that couldn’t have been better if it were scripted, there was the Arizona women’s basketball coach, gathering her players at midcourt after they had beaten UConn in the 2021 Final Four, revving them up, sticking her middle finger in the air and saying so clearly that even a terrible lip-reader could decipher it: “F— everybody.”
“At first I was embarrassed,” Barnes said. “I was kind of ashamed. That wasn’t meant for anyone else.”
But as she watched it again and again, she moved past the finger and curse word and to what happened immediately after. How players enveloped her in a huddle, how they jumped around together and came in tightly as one. The elation, the emotion, the payoff of that team’s struggles. That’s what mattered to Barnes. Not the…
