Brittney Griner Faces Backlash After WNBA Skills Challenge

On Friday night, Phoenix Mercury center Brittney Griner was the lone representative of the bigs in the WNBA All-Star Skills Challenge.

This WNBA All-Star Weekend event is a basketball obstacle course where players showcase their shooting and passing.

Griner was joined in the contest by Sophie Cunningham (Phoenix Mercury), Allisha Gray (Atlanta Dream), Marina Mabrey (Connecticut Sun) and Kelsey Mitchell (Indiana Fever).

Griner finished the first round with a final time of 46.3 seconds, eliminating her from the next round. Gray wound up beating Cunningham to take home the title.

The last challenge of this event involved executing a simple layup while dribbling the ball from mid-court to the hoop.

The 6-foot-9 Griner chose to go with the easy layup rather than throwing down a dunk, which she is very capable of doing.

WNBA fans expressed disappointment with Griner's decision not to attempt a dunk and voiced their criticisms on social media.

Over her career, Griner has dunked a total of 26 times, which is a WNBA record by a long shot. The former Baylor Bears star is also the only WNBA player ever to dunk more than twice. Only eight players in league history have ever recorded a dunk, which makes this ability of Griner's all the more impressive.

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