For the second straight year, there’s a lot of media discourse about an on-court interaction between Angel Reese and Caitlin Clark. Last year, that came in and after the NCAA national championship game, where Reese’s use of the “You can’t see me” gesture Clark had used before became a talking point for weeks (although Clark herself said she didn’t have a problem with it). This year, the NCAA Elite Eight clash between those teams wound up controversial for different reasons. But Reese and Clark met again for the first time in the WNBA Saturday, and created another furor there.
That discussion started around a hard foul on Clark from Reese’s Chicago Sky teammate Chennedy Carter. (Ruled a common foul initially, it was upgraded to a flagrant by the WNBA league office Sunday.) Many pointed out Reese seemingly celebrating that on the Sky bench, and also a separate foul from Reese on Clark.
And there wound up being a significant media dimension to this. That included how ESPN’s SportsCenter largely avoided the Clark-Carter-Reese drama in its coverage of the game (a 71-70 win for Clark’s Indiana Fever, their first home victory this season) 5 p.m. ET edition (three hours after the game) before focusing on it much more in the 6 p.m. ET edition. It also included how Carter said “I ain’t answering no Caitlin Clark questions” in her post-game press conference.
But, as many noted, Carter’s non-answer there is all she’s obligated to provide. And a no-comment approach like that has been used by many athletes before, including Marshawn Lynch. What actually violates media policies and gets players and teams fined is refusing to appear and provide that no comment. That’s what Reese did, and that led to a fine for her and the team from the WNBA Sunday.
Per the #WNBA:
Angel Reese has been fined $1,000 for failing to make herself available to the media for interviews following the game yesterday
In addition, the Sky organization has been fined $5,000 for failing to ensure that all players comply with WNBA media policies. pic.twitter.com/QpTAhozGrD
— Meghan L. Hall (@ItsMeghanLHall) June 2, 2024
Fines for players and organizations over athletes’ non-appearances are far from uncommon. For one, Kyrie Irving has picked up several of those over the years. (And it should be noted that while those fines of $25,000 and $35,000 are much higher than the fine for Reese here, they’re a much lower percentage of his salary of more than $38 million this year than a $1,000 fine is of Reese’s $73,439 rookie salary; that’s before endorsements are factored in for either, though.)
And this shouldn’t come with a moral condemnation for either side. Players can choose not to appear before media at all if they want (rather than appearing and no-commenting). But fines are generally an appropriate way to respond to that and make sure that the media covering a game can talk to most players.
The clash here and its aftermath also isn’t unprecedented for women’s basketball. As Lyndsey D’Arcangelo wrote at AA recently, this is elite competition with just as much animosity as shows up in men’s sports:
“It may come as a shock to some, but the WNBA isn’t some big Kumbaya circle where everyone gets along and holds hands. And it shouldn’t be. There’s this misconception that women athletes have to act ladylike and “behave.” They can’t talk trash. They can’t swear. They can’t get heated in a moment of fiery competition. They can’t push or shove or pound their chests. If these kind of things makes you clutch your pearls, then perhaps the WNBA isn’t for you. There’s going to be heated rivalries. There’s going to be players who don’t get along. There’s going to be yelling and chest-pounding and swearwords and physicality and staredowns and confrontations and technical fouls.
It’s all part of the game, as it should be.”
And as filmmaker Kristen Lappas told AA about her Full Court Press docuseries on Clark, Kamilla Cardoso (who played her first game of the season for the Sky Saturday), and Kiki Rice, conflict is accepted and normal in women’s sports:
“I think women’s sports is kind of painted always as female empowerment, like we’re all friends, and we’re all content, and nothing goes wrong ,and there’s zero conflict.
“That’s just kind of my guiding light in all of the storytelling that I do personally. I do a lot of documentary filmmaking on women’s sports, and it’s just pushing to make sure that people understand that it’s as intense. They are cursing in the locker room, their coaches are reaming them out when they do something wrong, there’s conflicting personalities, teammates are not always best friends.”
An interesting element of this fine is how it once again may shift focus to Reese and Clark, though. That’s been a notable discussion for quite some time. And it really blew up last year around that “You can’t see me” gesture.
And Reese and Clark both drew tons of coverage this college season, Reese for her early absence from the LSU team (and head coach Kim Mulkey’s refusal to address what that was about), her return to lead them to a successful season and an Elite Eight clash with Clark’s Iowa, and her emotional comments after that loss, and Clark for her breaking of women’s basketball records and her run leading the Hawkeyes to the national championship game (where they lost to South Carolina). And they’ve both drawn a lot of attention so far in the WNBA as well, and Reese has even chimed in to criticize Charles Barkley’s praise for Clark and the attention she’s brought to the league.
With all that in mind, this game was flexed to ESPN and billed as Reese against Clark. And some even drew comparisons to how Magic Johnson and Larry Bird faced off in the NCAA ranks and then in the NBA ones. And maybe we do wind up seeing something like that with Clark and Reese over the long term.
But it’s worth keeping in mind that the real hard foul incident here under discussion came from Carter, not Reese. And while Clark has been huge for WNBA ratings so far, the league is about more than just her. So while Reese’s fine for avoiding media after this is notable and significant, it’s more of a coda to the Clark-Carter incident than the main story.
Hopefully this won’t spark as many bad takes as we saw with the Reese-Clark clash last year, and with some of the anticipation for this year’s NCAA clash. The Clark discussion often goes off the rails, as Nick Wright and Elle Duncan both noted recently. And the conversation in the wake of this foul certainly has the possibility to do that as well.
[Meghan Hall on X/Twitter]
