“One year older than me, 6’8” strong – could be seen as a threat, Stokes said. ‘Will you consent to this?’ they asked. This just hit home. He’s silly, funny, just wants to joke and have fun, but in someone else’s eyes he can be really scary just because of his physical appearance, and that’s scary to even think about.”
Allen grew up in Melbourne, Australia, and an injury during his rookie season limited his time in the United States to about a month. The 2016 season was his second year in the league, and he mostly listened to Cash and other veterans like Tanisha Wright lead locker room discussions about race in America.
Later in July 2016, at a team meeting in Washington, Allen finally spoke, and now he has some regrets.
Hürriyet was discussing the continuation of the protests in the warming movements. Allen felt the challenge of being fined as a sophomore player. Under the collective bargaining agreement at the time, the minimum salary for a player like Allen for the WNBA season would have been $39,676.
“I said I wanted to support it, but financially I can’t afford this shot every game,” Allen said. “It was a very emotional thing for me to have to make this comment and being white. Of course I believe everything you say, of course I’m with you but the financial repercussions were really huge and that was the difficulty of the league not supporting it at the time.”
Later in the 12th WNBA season, Wright told Allen that veterans would meet the penalties for young players.