J-Speaks: Reigning WNBA MVP's Opt-Out Denied

As the start of the Women’s National Basketball Association’s (WNBA’s) 23^rd season at IMG Academy in Bradenton, FL is just 10 days away, there is a serious dark cloud hanging over them because of the ruling on whether the reigning league MVP is healthy enough to play.

On Monday, a panel of three physicians approved by the WNBA and the Women’s National Basketball Players Association (WNBPA) denied a medical opt-out request for the upcoming season to reigning WNBA MVP Elena Delle Donne of the reigning WNBA champion 

Washington Mystics. A decision that the 30-year-old said is conflicting with the advice she was given by her own personal physician the star forward and her agent Erin Kane told ESPN on Monday.

“The independent panel of doctors the league appointed to review high-risk cases have advised that I’m not high risk, and should be permitted to play in the bubble,” Delle Donne said in a statement that was released by ESPN on Monday.  

She also said of the decision on her Twitter page De11eDonne late Wednesday morning, “The league I’ve given my blood, sweat and tears to has basically told me that my doctors are wrong and I’m wrong for believing them,” Delle Donne, 30 said on her Twitter page.

The Mystics are already without two starters from last year’s squad in guard Natasha Cloud, who opted out of this season because she wants to be on the front lines in the fight for social justice and forward LaToya Sanders, who has anemia.

There is also the possibility that the Mystics could be without All-Star and 2012 league MVP Tina Charles, who was acquired from the New York Liberty during the offseason as she awaits a decision from the medical panel about if she is at “higher risk” for Coronavirus.  

Delle Donne two-time WNBA, six-time All-Star and five-time All-WNBA selection has been vocal about her battle with Lyme disease, which she was diagnosed with her senior year at Ursuline Academy in Wilmington, DE 12 years ago after being bitten by an infected tick on the property of her family’s home in Delaware.

When asked on the Wednesday’s edition of ESPN’s “Sportscenter” whether here status as the reigning league MVP and one of the WNBA’s most prominent players played a role in the medical panel’s decision, Delle Donne said, “I’m not sure and I really hope it didn’t.”

She added, “I hope they would treat me as ‘Player X’ and they see that I’ve been treated for something for nine years. They’ve seen my blood work; I’ve submitted everything.”

“So, I really hope that wasn’t the reason why this happened. I hope its doctors just still being unaware of Lyme disease and not having Lyme-literate doctors on that panel, because I don’t want to believe that’s what happened. Unfortunately, it might be what happened.”

Kane told ESPN that the Mystics’ team physician, Dr. Anne Rettig did send a letter to the medical panel advising them that her client was cleared to play but noting that she should be considered” higher risk.”

Even Delle Donne’s personal doctor wrote a letter to the panel detailing her painful battle, but it was of no help to her case.  

Delle Donne has yet to travel with her Mystics teammates to the IMG Academy where WNBA players, coaches and support staff live under a series of strict medical and housing protocols.

While the 2013 WNBA Rookie of the Year has spoken about her battle with a disease, whose symptoms consists of fever, headache, and tiredness, she feels that it has not been enough.

So, Delle Donne wrote a letter published in “The Players’ Tribune that gave revealing detail than ever before on her daily battle with Lyme disease.

In that letter, Delle Donne revealed how she takes 64 pills a day to keep her conditioning in check but added she feels like she is slowly killing herself and if it is not killing her “directly” that she acknowledged that this regimen is “really bad for me.”  

To put this medical regimen into clearer context, Delle Donne takes 25 pills before breakfast, another 20 after breakfast, another 10 before dinner and another nine before she goes to sleep at night.

“Long term, taking that much medicine on that regular of a regimen is just straight-up bad for you. It’s literally an elaborate trick that you play on yourself---a lie that you tell your body so it keeps thinking everything is fine,” Delle Donne said in her letter. “It’s never-ending, exhausting, miserable cycle. But I do it anyway. I do it anyway because I have Lyme disease.”

She added to The Philadelphia Inquirer on Wednesday that taking that high volume of medication, “It’s the only way to keep myself healthy enough to play the game that I love-healthy enough to do my job and earn the paycheck that supports my family.”

By being denied her opt-out request, which cannot be appealed because all decisions are final, Delle Donne has to decide to either risk her health by opting in the upcoming WNBA season or forfeit her $215,00 salary for the 2020 season, the first under her new four-year, $898,480 deal she signed under the new Collective Bargaining Agreement that was done this offseason.

On Thursday though, it was reported that the Mystics plan on paying their franchise player's salary, which they say was never in question. Kane though is still skeptical that the Mystics will not honor that decree. 

  

It is hard to fathom a league MVP, a two-time league MVP as previously mentioned being in this position, especially after having a WNBA season for the history books in 2019 becoming the first player in the league’s history to register the ultimate efficiency line of shooting 50 percent from the field, 40 percent from three-point range, and 90 percent from the free throw line (50-40-90), won as mentioned her second MVP trophy and led the Mystics to their first WNBA title in franchise history when they defeated the Connecticut Sun in five games. 

On top of that, only Cynthia Cooper (21.0) has a better career scoring average in the history of the WNBA than the 20.3 scoring average that Delle Donne has posted in the first nine years of her professional basketball career. 

"If she did not go on 'Sportscenter.' If we were not talking about it, they were still trying to figure it out," ESPN NBA analyst Jalen Rose said on the Thursday edition of "Jalen and Jacoby." "When they saw that we were paying attention, 'All we we're going to take care of her anyway.' That is not true." 

Longtime Washington Post columnist and co-host of ESPN's "Pardon the Interruption," Michael Wilbon added to that by saying on Thursday that the Mystics did the right thing so they can keep any friction between them and Delle Donne out of the picture. 

If there is any friction between Delle Donne and the league front office with what has happened, it will half to be settled between them. 

"You put the ball in somebody else's court. You don't let your star player go anywhere near the start of a season, not to mention a bubble being upset with you," Wilbon said. "Is that going to be a solution, I don't know. Only Elena Delle Donne knows how deeply she's been offended and who can solve that. I don't know that." 

"At some point, even the Mystics are gonna have to say to Elena Delle Donne and the league, 'We're out of this.' You guys are got to come to a better place."   

She said of last season’s run to the title, “I love my teammates, and we had an unbelievable season last year, and I want to play! But the question is whether or not the WNBA bubble is safe for me. My personal physician who has treated me for Lyme disease for years advised me that I’m at high risk for contracting and having complications from COVID-19,” Delle Donne also said to ESPN on Monday.

Delle Donne also mentioned in her letter that she played in the 2019 WNBA Finals with a broken nose, that was protected by a clear facemask, a bad left knee and three herniated discs in her back, which she had repaired by back surgery in January. She also said that her feet often swelled up from fitting her 6-foot-5 frame into the coach sections of planes to the point she said in her letter that she almost forgets what the feeling is like to have legs and feet that are not dangerously swollen.

When the news about the pandemic started to spread across not just the country but the entire globe and that immunocompromised people are at higher risk of contracting it, Delle Donne took it very seriously.

She has been told for close to a decade that her condition makes her immunocompromised-debilitates her immune system. Meaning, when she has a common cold, which she has had her immune system spiraled into a serious relapse. In fact, Delle Donne has said she has relapsed after getting a something simple from a doctor as a flu shot.

“There’s just been so many instances where I’ve contracted something that I shouldn’t have been that big of a deal, but it blew my immune system out and turned into something crazy,” she said. “I treated COVID like any high-risk person should: as a matter of life and death.”

When the WNBA began the process of organizing the bubble at IMG Academy, Delle Donne said she paid close attention to the measures that were being put in place to make everything safe.

But she was told, it would be impossible to keep COVID-19 out of the bubble entirely.

When the amount of Coronavirus cases began to rise in Florida and even if the bubble is the safest place in the state, Delle Donne feels if she had to go to the hospital and the hospital were to be overwhelmed, which has begun to happen, what then?

“I still wanted to play, but I was scared,” Delle Donne said. “I talked to my personal physician about what the league planned to do, and he felt it was still too risky.”

As the league began reviewing each players’ case to see if they should be granted a health exemption from the bubble (getting an excused absence by the league from playing but you would still be paid your full salary), Delle Donne think there was no question whether she would be exempted from playing this season or not. It did not take a the three-person physician panel to tell her something that she has played with since being drafted by the Chicago Sky No. 2 overall out of University of Delaware in the 2013 WNBA Draft.

“I’ve played my entire career with an immune system that’s high-risk!!! I LIVE with an immune system that’s high risk,” she said. “But I made sure to follow protocol.”

On the surface, this is not a good look for WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert, who has said in constructing with the WNBPA the particulars of being able to have the 22-game season during the Coronavirus (COVID-19) Pandemic that will keep the players, coaching staffs and employees of each of the 12 teams that will be in the bubble in Florida as safe as possible, especially since the state is one of many experiencing a major surge in COVID-19 cases.

Both sides though agreed to the physician panel too and the goal of ensuring that the players are treated fairly for the most part has gone well.

When they tested 137 players for COVID-19 not too long ago, only seven of those 137 players tested positive.

Also, Lyme disease is not on the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s list of underlying conditions that could put the health at higher risk for severe illness from the Coronavirus.

The Director of Johns Hopkins Lyme Disease Research Center Dr. John Aucott told ESPN on Tuesday that he was not surprised the panel came to the decision they did because, “there’s really only a handful of people in the country who are experiencing this chronic disease.

Plus, Lyme disease was discovered in the U.S. in the late 1970s Dr. Aucott said, adding that of the 300,000 new diagnosed case of the disease each year in our country only five percent and 20 percent of the patient do not get better after treatment but suffer bouts of fatigue, what patients refer to ass “brain fog.”

That means that person has cognitive problems when they are unable to do their work and musculoskeletal pain.

While Dr. Aucott did say with caution he is in no position to make a judgment on Delle Donne’s case as well as saying it is not clear the impact Lyme disease has on the human immune system, he did say that the great weight of Delle Donne’s case should be given to the opinion of her personal physician.

“I can tell you I care for a lot of patients with chronic Lyme disease and there’s some of those patients I would advise not to put themselves in that kind of position,” Dr. Aucott said.

While the league and the three-person physician panel is not on the side of Delle Donne, her team and peers in the WNBA have said that they are.

“As with all our players, we have and will support Elena throughout this process. The health and well-being of our players is of the utmost importance,” Mystics Head Coach and General Manager Mike Thibault said in a statement to ESPN on Monday.

Cloud said on her Twitter page @T_Cloud4, “It’s [expletive]. @WNBA either play or risk her life…what do we stand for? Cause apparently it’s not the players.”

The panel’s decision has left Delle Donne, who never even spoken to her once or her doctors about with two choices: either risk her life by playing this season or forfeit her salary, which she said has really hurt her.

While she has known that as an athlete you are not supposed to be vulnerable or even express that you are not feeling superhuman. The reality Delle Donne said that feelings are all she really has at the moment. She does not have the kind of bank account that a lot of NBA players have to hire attorneys to fight this for her. Also, she does not have the desire to go to “war” with the WNBA on something that she cannot appeal.

“So really, all I’m left with is how much this hurts,” Delle Donne said. “How much it hurts that the W-a place that’s been my one big dream in life for as long as I can remember, and that I’ve given my blood, sweat and tears to for seven going on eight seasons-has basically told me that I’m wrong about what’s happening in my own body. What I hear in their decision is that I’m a fool for believing my doctor. That I’m faking a disability. That I’m trying to ‘get out’ of work and still collect a paycheck.”

There are times in your life when you feel that you have to take a stand but also come to a realization that you can take that stand unlike a lot of others who are in even worse position that you are.

Having to chose between playing or not, and forfeiting her salary for his upcoming season is the tough pickle that reigning WNBA MVP of the reigning WNBA champion Washington Mystics Elena Delle Donne is in.

While she is still discussing her decision with her personal doctor, her wife of three years this November Amanda Clifton and family of parents Ernie and Joanie, and older siblings in brother Gene and sister Elizabeth (Lizzie), who is blind, deaf, autistic, and has cerebral palsy, this moment has made Delle Donne realize three very important things.

One, that she had use her platform to take a more public role in the battle against Lyme disease, which she had been fighting for 12 years privately.

Second, that while her decision to play or not play this season which is 10 days away is a unique, it is nowhere close to the millions of Americans right now, especially minorities and LGBTQ minorities that are dealing with the loss of a job, family member or friend from this pandemic or the reality and the fact that the blindfold of Caucasian America having a dislike towards minorities at times has been lifted, especially by those in law enforcement.

“My heart goes out to everyone who has had to choose between their health and having an income, and of course to anyone who has lost their job, their home, and anyone they love in this pandemic,” Delle Donne said.

Third, there is so much in the world we do not know, which has really caused this divide not just between the WNBA and one of its shining stars but our world.  

Delle Donne has proven she can be trusted and would not fabricate on a matter of such importance like her health, and Commissioner Engelbert could clean up this kerfuffle by simply excusing Delle Donne from this season and paying her full salary. 

"Elena Delle Donne seems to me to be somebody you would want to be representing your team, representing your league, and representing your brand. And it seems like you're [WNBA] going out of your way to stop her from doing that," fellow longtime Washington Post sports reporter and co-host of "Pardon the Interruption" Tony Kornheiser said about Delle Donne, who has endorsement deals with Nike, DuPont, and Gatorade. 

While having sports in our lives like the WNBA is important, at the end of the day it is just a game. It should not take any precedent over whether someone lives or dies.

“There’s so much in the world that we don’t know. Which means the best that we can do is to listen to each other, and to learn from each other-with as much humility as possible,” Delle Donne said. “I hope that in the future the WNBA can aspire to do the same.”

Information and quotations are courtesy of 6/22/2020 www.espn.com story, “Washington Mystics’ Natasha Cloud, LaToya Sanders To Skip WNBA Season,” by Mechelle Voepel;  7/13/2020 www.espn.com story, “Mystics’ Elena Delle Donne Says Medical Opt-Out Request Denied,” by John Barr and Sarah Spain; 7/14/2020 ESPN news crawl; 7/15/2020 www.espn.com story, “Mystics’ Elena Delle Donne Hopes Denial of Medical Exemption For Lyme Disease Not Based On Her Status In WNBA,” by Mechelle Voepel; 7/15/2020 www.inquirer.com story, “Elena Delle Donne Details Battle With Lyme Disease In Players’ Tribune Letter After WNBA Denies Opt-Out Request,” by Damichael Cole; 7/15/2020 www.theplayerstribune.com story, “A Open Letter About My Health,” by Elena Delle Donne; 7/16/2020 4 p.m. edition of ESPN's "Jalen & Jacoby," with Jalen Rose and David Jacoby; 7/16/2020 5:30 p.m. edition ESPN's "Pardon the Interruption," with TOny Kornheiser and Michael Wilbon; https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cynthia_Cooper-Dyke#Career_statistics; 

and https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elena_Delle_Donne.