After the Aces beat the Sparks on Sunday, Becky Hammon addressed the lawsuit filed by Dearica Hamby, denying the claims laid out.
There was certainly an elephant in the room — or the arena, in this case — that was impossible to ignore during Sunday’s Aces-Sparks game.
Less than a week ago, Sparks forward and former Aces player Dearica Hamby filed a lawsuit against her former team, accusing the franchise of a number of things, including discrimination, after she became pregnant in January of 2023.
Sunday’s meeting between the teams, then, came at a very interesting time as the lawsuit was something certainly impossible to ignore. During the game, fans took to booing Hamby throughout the game and while you can’t necessarily say it was directly because of the lawsuit, it certainly felt an awful lot like that was the case.
After the game, Aces head coach Becky Hammon was asked directly about the lawsuit. Rather than take the route likely laid out by lawyers somewhere of responding with a no comment, Hammon full-on denied the claims outright.
“I’ve been in either the WNBA or the NBA for 25 years now; I’ve never had an HR complaint—never, not once. I still didn’t actually ‘cause Dearica didn’t file any. She didn’t file with the players' union.She didn’t file with the WNBA. Those are the facts.” Becky Hammon on lawsuit pic.twitter.com/C0K1cLkpVw
— Khristina Williams (@Khristina) August 19, 2024
I must say, the response of “I’ve never had an HR complaint filed against me” when dealing with a lawsuit is....an interesting approach to say the least.
Right now, what’s clear is that this is a game of he-said, she-said between two parties. Often, the truth is somewhere in the middle.
Hamby’s claims in the lawsuit were plentiful and ranged from promises made during free agency to much more serious ones, many of them dealing with off-court matters.
Among the claims is this one — that the Aces allegedly promised Hamby certain benefits in FA to convince her to sign including covering the private school tuition of her daughter in the form of a "donation."
— Ben Pickman (@benpickman) August 12, 2024
Later, per the lawsuit, Aces execs told Hamby they were "working on it" https://t.co/E4i8mRmfFf pic.twitter.com/HbXMo2VIQS
The lawsuit is full of accusations from Hamby and, again, while we do not know the truth, it’s hard to imagine she just made them all up. I would put it at about a zero percent chance that it didn’t happen, as Hammon claims.
What’s clear, though, is that this probably isn’t going away quietly if this is Hammon’s first public comments on the matter.
Again, it’s worth reiterating that this is a very serious case and will be taken seriously in court, no matter how many HR complaints have or have not been filed against Hammon.
You can follow Jacob on Twitter at @JacobRude.
