Skylar Diggins-Smith Told Jazmine Jones To ‘Shut Tf Up’ And Called Out The Liberty In A Twitter Dust-Up

There may not be any WNBA games on Monday night, but that didn’t stop the spice from filling the air. After a video of Skylar Diggins-Smith breaking the ankles of New York’s Didi Richards went viral on Twitter over the weekend, Jones decided to toss a bomb in Diggins-Smith’s direction and bring up the fact that despite the highlight, the Mercury had lost the game.

That was a mistake. Diggins-Smith took issue not only with Jones’ criticism but also of the Liberty’s entire publicity strategy, rolling up a whole attack on WNBA marketing into a pretty savage tweet back at Jones.

In addition to telling Jones to shut up, Diggins-Smith is of course referring to 2020 No. 1 overall pick Sabrina Ionescu as the “one person” whom the Liberty tend to hype up. This is something Diggins-Smith has commented on for a while, dating back to a firestorm online that began last college season when hoops trainer Alex Bazzell commented that UConn phenom Paige Bueckers would be a top-five point guard in the WNBA if she was in the league already.

The main point that Diggins-Smith seems to be getting at is that the basketball media is quick to anoint white players but not usually Black ones. Diggins-Smith is saying that rather than Jones attacking for getting featured by Bleacher Report, or complaining that teammate Betnijah Laney (who had a double-double in New York’s win) doesn’t get enough attention, that Jones should look internally at how her own team markets its players.

Diggins-Smith backed up her perspective with a subsequent tweet calling out Jones’ “crabs in a barrel a** mentality.”

The Mercury and Liberty next play on Aug. 25, and it’s anyone’s guess what happens that night, as Jones followed up with some not-so-coded allusions toward letting physicality do the talking the next time these two face off.

Jones seemed to get the last word in by retweeting a video of her own game-winning bucket against Phoenix from the very same game:

Between one second-year guard fighting for respect in the league and an established superstar who feels she’s already earned that respect, this is not a surprising fight to flare up, but it admittedly got far more amped-up than most would expect.

Maybe it’s just having a little extra time on a day with no games. That time off also meant players (and teams) from around the WNBA were all also on Twitter to chime in on the budding beef.