Former WNBA Star Liz Cambage has never shied away from the spotlight or withholding her thoughts. Whether it's been because of her performance on the floor or situations off of it, Cambage tends to grab headlines from her actions.
Cambage recently sat down with Taylor Rooks of Bleacher Report to discuss her journey and situations that have stained and derailed her basketball career. During the conversation Rooks brought up the situation between Cambage and the Nigerian women's national basketball team.
In July 2021, Cambage reportedly got into an altercation with the Nigerian women's national basketball team while she was suiting up with Australia in preparation for the Olympics in Tokyo. The scrimmage heard around the world quickly flooded the web as reports of racial slurs being thrown around and physical altercations occurring were leaked out of the closed-door practice. In an initial report from an Australian outlet, news.com, Cambage allegedly called the Nigerian players "monkeys'' and told them to “go back to your third-world country.”
Nigerian players verified the allegations in an interview with the outlet, claiming “she definitely did use monkeys or monkey.” Cambage immediately refuted the allegations in a now-deleted Instagram post saying she "unintentionally" fouled a player on the court and called the reports "inaccurate" and "misleading."It’s worth noting that Cambage is half-Nigerian from her father's side, and Nigerian players admitted that made the situation worse.
“Although she’s Australian, we knew she was half-Nigerian so before then it was like she was one of us,” a Nigerian player told The Telegraph. “That was another thing to cut deep, for her to do that and not show any remorse at all.”
Following the incident, Cambage stepped away from the Australian national team prior to the Olympics and has not returned to play for them.
In the interview with Rooks, Cambage continued to refute that she used any racial slurs in the incident, which reignited the debate. She added fuel to the fire when she also mentioned that she was in talks with the Nigerian national team to suit up for them in the next Olympics. Promise Amukamara, a guard for the Nigerian national team, immediately jumped on Twitter to call out Cambage. Amukamara said both of Cambage’s statements were false.
Several Nigerian players took to social media to refute Cambage's claims. Sources close to the situation tell Complex that the Nigeria Basketball Federation has never reached out to Liz Cambage about playing for Nigeria and would not consider her for any future competitions. Days after the commotion, a full video of the scrimmage leaked on social media.
The full footage shows Cambage aggressively elbowing and throwing cheap shots at Nigerian players, antagonizing them to the point of retaliation. Eventually Aisha Mohammed, a veteran on the Nigerian team, took it into her own hands and charged at Cambage. She landed a punch that knocked Cambage to the ground and eventually ended the scrimmage. The video could not confirm or deny if Cambage called the Nigerian players “monkeys,” but there were several moments of Cambage exchanging words with Nigerian players with tensions running high. Cambage released a statement after the video was released to the public.
The Nigerian scuffle was the first of two viral moments from the Rooks interview. Cambage also spoke about her exit from the Los Angeles Sparks and the WNBA entirely. Cambage stepped away from the Sparks mid-season in July 2022 and later announced that she planned to step away from basketball to focus on “healing and personal growth.” While retelling the story to Rooks, Cambage opened up and attributed her struggles to the way she was treated by her teammates and the team’s “toxic” environment. She took a shot at her teammates' ability to pass the ball to her in the statement while condemning them for yelling at her.
Jordin Canada, a teammate of Cambage with the Sparks, responded to the excerpt of the interview by hinting that Cambage was twisting the true account of the story.
Liz Cambage has had issues with the WNBA over her career. She was drafted by the Tulsa Shock in 2011, a franchise she was reportedly vocal about not wanting to play for.
“I don't want to play at Tulsa, I've made that clear,” Cambage told the Herald Sun. “They want to make me a franchise player, but I'm not going to the WNBA for that.”
After the 2012 Olympics, where Cambage led Australia to bronze, she sat out the rest of the 2012 WNBA season with the Shock because of “exhaustion.” She would return to the Shock in 2013, only to leave the WNBA for five years after that season to play in China. Cambage returned to the WNBA in 2018.
