Dearica Hamby & The Price of Pregnancy In the WNBA

By now, you’ve probably read that Dearica Hamby, a three-time WNBA All-Star, has filed a lawsuit against the Las Vegas Aces (formerly the San Antonio Stars) for discrimination and retaliation following the circumstances surrounding her trade to the Los Angeles Sparks. Hamby maintains that she was exiled after having experienced mistreatment at the hands of team leadership. On the surface, this may seem like a petty dispute between a player and her former employers, but this case goes beyond a simple disagreement. Dearica Hamby vs. the WNBA is unveiling the alleged underbelly of a league that seems to have little interest in protecting its pregnant players.  

In 2022, Hamby celebrated her first WNBA championship with the team she had been drafted to seven years earlier in 2015. During the celebration, she announced she was pregnant with her second child. At the start of the 2022 season, she had signed a two-year contract extension, leading many to believe she would end her career with the same organization she began with.

However, on January 21, 2023, she was traded to the Los Angeles Sparks. Hamby later accused the Aces WNBA franchise of mistreatment on social media, claiming she was "lied to, bullied, manipulated, and discriminated against" by the team before being traded. In the months to follow, on August 18, 2024, for the first time since Hamby filed the lawsuit, the Los Angeles Sparks played against the Las Vegas Aces. When she took to the court, she was booed relentlessly by the same Aces fans who once praised her for helping to bring a championship to the organization while her seven-year-old daughter, Amaya, looked on from the stands.

Directly after the Aces' 87-71 victory over the Sparks, her former coach, Becky Hammon, maintained Hamby's trade was nothing more than the business of basketball despite serving a two-game suspension for violating the league's workplace policies in her handling of Hamby last year. If this were an isolated incident in the WNBA's history of accusations of how it handles Black motherhood, one could simply wait to see where the legal chips may fall between Hamby and the Aces. Unfortunately, that is not the case. Hamby's experience is just the latest example of a league that seems to be struggling to properly support the women whose talents it depends on during the most critical time of their lives.

"It [becoming a mom] was frowned upon mostly because of the fear of what would come next if you couldn't return to basketball," Hamby said in a 2023 interview with Yahoo Sports. "It takes a lot of courage."

Hamby, who gave birth to her son Legend on March 6, 2023, and then suited up for the Sparks training camp the following month on April 28, 2023, has never missed a basketball season since being drafted in 2015, despite having had two full-term pregnancies.

Currently, the WNBA estimates that 12 of its 139 players are mothers, though there is no differentiation made between those who have given birth and those who have not. There are also few policies in place to support mothers with prenatal or postpartum needs. Not to mention, with pay disparity being an ongoing issue in the league, many players delay starting families to prioritize their careers. "I have happiness in basketball, and I have happiness at home," Hamby said. "You see a lot of WNBA athletes struggle with that."

And for those athletes who decide to prioritize work-life balance, it can prove an uphill battle. Despite their best efforts to prioritize this notion, the playing field has never been fair, especially for Black women. While there's no denying that the resilience of Black women is unparalleled, Hamby's case is another example of how we are frequently confronted with disrespect and complete disregard. 

Case in point: Skylar Diggins-Smith, who returned to the court for the 2024 season with the Seattle Storm. This was also the first time she laced up her sneakers in more than 21 months following the birth of her second child in early 2023. It marked a fresh start for her as a player with the Seattle Storm, following allegations that her former team, the Phoenix Mercury, had locked her out from their practice facilities during her maternity leave in 2023.

Throughout her WNBA career, Diggins-Smith has proven to be one of the most skilled players in league history. She is one of only four players, including Hamby, to return to the court after giving birth twice. However, her employer treated her like little more than a nuisance. At the time, the WNBA declined to comment on why Diggins-Smith was not allowed to practice as part of her postpartum recovery or why her access to the team's chefs, strength and conditioning coaches, nutritionists, and massage therapists had also been revoked.

Feeling frustrated, and rightfully so, Diggins-Smith took to social media and posted, "It was all good when I was leaving for personal time!! But when I'm leaving because I was having complications and scared of risking my child....while leading the league in minutes [pregnant]. Trade her?"

The six-time WNBA All-Star was never allowed back into the Mercury's facilities and made the decision to walk away from the team during the offseason. "I don't just know my value, I know my worth too," she said of her decision. Still, the alleged mistreatment deepened her anxiety about returning to the game, and she urged the WNBA to create a group for league moms.

"Being one of three or four women who have done it, that's pretty freaking crazy," Diggins-Smith said in an interview. "Not a lot of people have navigated it, so you don't have many to reach out to and say, 'Hey, how did you do this in our sport?' Every day, you learn something new, and you've gotta pump the brakes."

Although the WNBA reached a collective bargaining agreement in 2020 that included incentives like paid maternity leave and an annual $5,000 stipend aimed at eliminating the idea of motherhood being career suicide for the league's athletes, it does not, however, protect players from being traded or benched at their team's discretion. Unfortunately, teams are perfectly within their rights to make these types of decisions without providing any reason or explanation.

"The WNBA is, at its core, a workplace, and federal laws have long shielded pregnant women from discrimination on the job. The world champion Aces exiled Dearica Hamby for becoming pregnant and the WNBA responded with a light tap on the wrist," Hamby's attorneys said in a statement on August 12, 2024. "Every potential mother in the league is now on notice that childbirth could change their career prospects overnight. That can't be right in one of the most prosperous and dynamic women's professional sports leagues in America."

To date, the Aces maintain that Hammon “is a caring human being who forges close personal relationships with her players” and the WNBA has offered no comment on Hamby’s claims other than that they are currently under review by the league.  

So, let's be real: It is impossible to look at the WNBA's treatment of both Hamby and Diggins-Smith without noting the racial implications of a league that is over 60% Black failing to protect women when they are at their most vulnerable. 

Perhaps it is because of the way we're taught to see Black athletes: otherworldly, invincible, strong, heroic. Or the way we've been conditioned to downplay the physical sacrifice of both pregnancy and motherhood. Maybe it is simply another reminder of how often Black women are the bearers of great talent while being the recipients of gross mistreatment. Though the world of sports has expanded to see women as every bit of the elite competitors that their male counterparts are, there are still painful blind spots for what it means to be athletically inclined and take on the tremendous feat of giving birth.

From Serena Williams to Alyson Felix, women athletes are being forced to walk away from the careers they've built for a lack of true support for how their bodies and lives change when they decide to pursue motherhood. In the WNBA, however, a league that prides itself on the power and brilliance of women, there is an opportunity to right their wrongs. It should start with acknowledging that Hamby and other mothers in the league deserve better because they most certainly do.