“I Couldn’t Avoid It” : Christine Brennan Breaks Silence on Dijonai Carrington’s Bold ‘Black Eye’ Claims

Game 1 of the playoffs for the Indiana Fever was a hyped one. Caitlin Clark was in her first postseason as a professional player with a team that hadn’t been there in the last 8 years. Then CC clashed with Dijonai Carrington near the basket, with the Connecticut Sun player’s fingers poking Clark’s eye. Ouch, a painful one!

The Fever rookie had a black eye afterward, automatically enraging her fanbase. But another squabble began when journalist Christine Brennan asked Carrington about what actually transpired.

Although the Sun guard told Brennan that she didn’t even know she had hit Clark, the reporter didn’t believe her. When the WNBPA released a statement slamming Brennan, she naturally responded that she was doing her job as a journalist and would continue doing so. Expanding more on the Good Game with Sarah Spain podcast, Brennan says, “Dijonai Carrington, here she comes over to talk to us… And I then of course ask her a question that I would ask a hundred times out of a hundred and have. Thousand times out of a thousand or more of any athlete.”

Brennan elaborates on the situation defending her original viewpoint, “An issue in the news, give them a chance to respond, to talk about it. It’s a conduit for them to take it and run with it, to deal with an issue that is out there. And clearly this was in the news. I’m not even on Twitter that much and I couldn’t avoid it as looking at all kinds of people, not tweeting it at me but just in general replays.”

Post that game, the video making the rounds on the internet shows Carrington’s response to Brennan’s question of asking her to talk about what happened. After the Sun player establishes it wasn’t intended and didn’t even know she had hit the Fever rookie, Brennan asks her if she and her teammates chuckled about it later.

The USA Today journalists explain to Sarah Spain on her podcast, “There were also pictures and videos of some laughter of Carrington and Marina Mabrey. And you know what you do as a journalist? You ask the question and you give them a chance to take it and run with it. And that’s exactly what was my intention, that’s exactly what I did. It’s Journalism 101 for me, Sarah.”

Brennan detailed having similar inquiries to other sports personalities like Michael Phelps and Tiger Woods. She reiterates that her only intent was to get to the bottom of the situation by giving the athlete themselves to explain the controversial situation.

Incidentally, Carrington was recently involved in another quarrel vs. the Lynx.

Marina Mabrey physically holds back Dijonai Carrington

The Minnesota Lynx and the Connecticut Sun are both putting everything on the line for a championship trophy this year. The semifinals are now tied with each team with a win in the best of 5 series. But yesterday, Kayla McBride hard fouled Dijonai Carrington as the Sun guard went for the basket. Understandably upset, she had some words to say to the Lynx player, but teammate Mabrey held her back.

Later, Carrington told ESPN, “We all kind of have to keep each other calm and focused on the goal ahead. We know that whoever we’re playing, they’re going to try to test us, whether it’s with hard fouls, whether it’s chirping. We just have to stick together and make sure that [we stay] focused on the goal, so that’s really what you saw there.”

This particular game was full of clashes between the two teams, as Mabrey also tangled with Napheesa Collier in the second quarter. Given the rough nature of the sport, some unseemly contact is warranted. But it might be proving harder for the Most Improved Player of the year as she goes through the postseason battling one controversy after another.