Cambage must say sorry or risk being a hypocrite

Playing the mental health card can be a way for privileged bullies to become pity heroes. Liz Cambage could be both struggling mentally and also very rude but she should just apologise.

Superstar Liz Cambage should say sorry. That would be more honourable than quitting our Olympics basketball team because, she claims, she’s “struggled with my mental health”.

Playing the mental health card can be a way for privileged bullies to become pity heroes. Just ask Meghan Markle.

Cambage played it perfectly when Basketball Australia announced it would investigate a “breach of the integrity framework” for what she did and said in a physical clash during a game with Nigeria.

It’s widely rumoured that Cambage, who is herself part-Nigerian and has used race politics as a weapon, abused Nigerian players in a way that would probably end the career of any white athlete.

Cambage says people are telling “lies” about the “words exchanged” but won’t admit what she said. Nor has she apologised.

Cambage says people are telling ‘lies’ about the ‘words exchanged’. Picture: AFP

Resigning shouldn’t mean Cambage is excused from apologising for bad behaviour. Picture: Instagram

Instead, she quit, saying she’d been having panic attacks and was scared to go into an Olympics bubble with “no friends”: “Every athlete competing in the Olympic Games should be at their mental and physical peak, and at the moment, I’m a long way from where I want and need to be.”

Everything Cambage says may be true, but it conveniently bought her protection.

Fans rushed to sympathise, journalists backed off and Basketball Australia said it wouldn’t comment on its investigation “as Liz has withdrawn from the Olympic Games due to mental health reasons”.

But two things can both be true. Cambage could be both struggling mentally and very rude. Resigning shouldn’t mean she’s excused from apologising for bad behaviour. I know people with far bigger mental health troubles who are still polite.

I’m sure Cambage would agree if we were talking about almost anyone else. She’s accepted no excuses when denouncing others, even threatening not to play for Australia when promotional shots of our Olympics athletes showed too many whites for her.

Nor did she talk about mental strain and no friends when she announced she’d join the team, after all.

“I’m going to play with my sisters that I’ve been playing with since I was a wee little thing,” she posted.

“I’m going to ball out for all those young brown kids back in Australia watching me, baby.

“I’m going to do it for you.”

But now she’s not, and the example she risks setting is of a hypocrite who can’t say sorry to black women.