The Las Vegas Aces and Los Angeles Sparks played for the fourth and final time of the regular season Sunday, but it was the first meeting since Dearica Hamby filed a lawsuit against her former team and the WNBA.
After the game, Aces head coach Becky Hammon, who was the subject of several of the complaints Hamby alleged in the lawsuit, addressed the situation. As she did last season after the original league investigation in 2023 — when Hammon was suspended two games for violating workplace policies — Hammon insisted that her behavior was above board.
“It just didn’t happen, … the bullying,” Hammon said after the game. “I spoke with her every day. If she wanted to practice, she practiced. If she didn’t, she didn’t. Over-the-top care, actually.”
She also asserted she has kept a clean track record through an extensive Hall of Fame career.
“Here’s some facts. I’ve been in either the WNBA or the NBA for now, 25 years. I’ve never had an HR complaint, never not once. I still didn’t actually, because Dearica didn’t file any,” Hammon. “She didn’t file with the players union. She didn’t file with the WNBA. Those are facts. It’s also factual that nobody made a call about trading her until Atlanta called us in January.”
During the game, in which the Aces won 87-71, Hamby was also booed by Las Vegas fans, to the point that it was audible on the television broadcast.
Hamby learned she was pregnant in July 2022, while playing for the Aces. She later missed a month of the regular season and the start of the playoffs with a right knee bone bruise, but returned to play a pivotal role for the Aces off the bench in the franchise’s first title run. Hammon lauded Hamby as her “biggest, baddest beast” after Game 1 of the 2022 WNBA Finals when she was a plus-seven in 10 minutes off the bench.
Hamby announced her pregnancy at the championship rally, at which point, she says her relationship with the franchise deteriorated. Upon being traded to the Sparks in January 2023, Hamby detailed the abuse she had suffered at the hands of the Aces on social media, prompting the league to launch an investigation.
In May 2023, after her suspension was announced, Hammon said she didn’t recall her “relationship with Hamby being anything but on the up and up.”
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(Photo: Rich von Biberstein / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
