The WNBA has a racism problem — just not the one they think they have.
Caitlin Clark is the biggest star this league has ever seen. She is a once-in-a-generation talent with looks, charisma, skill, and a non-stop work ethic that has led her to shatter records.
The problem? She’s white.
No, let me correct that: She’s a white heterosexual player with a Catholic upbringing.
Her relentless nemesis, the black WNBA player Angel Reese, has had Clark in her crosshairs for years.
Reese, 23, is the 6’3′ power forward for the Chicago Sky. Clark, also 23, stands at 6 foot tall and is point guard for the Indiana Fever.
Caitlin Clark is the biggest star this league has ever seen. She is a once-in-a-generation talent with looks, charisma, skill, and a non-stop work ethic that has led her to shatter records.
Her relentless nemesis, the black WNBA player Angel Reese, has had Clark in her crosshairs for years. Reese, 23, is the 6’3′ power forward for the Chicago Sky. Clark, also 23, stands at 6 foot tall and is point guard for the Indiana Fever.
Clark – a standout NCAA player at the University of Iowa – was the number one pick in the 2024 WNBA draft. Reese was number seven – and she’s been seething with rage and jealousy ever since.
It’s a degree of antipathy that has transcended the sports world and bled into the culture at large — a resentment that the progressive politics of woke and Black Lives Matter has a lot to answer for, as does corporate America and the league itself.
Robert Griffin III, the black former NFL star quarterback, weighed in on social media last weekend, writing, in part: ‘I know what hatred looks like. Angel Reese HATES Caitlin Clark. Not some basketball rivalry either. Hate.’
Griffin is 100 percent right. Reese hates Clark because she’s everything Reese is not, and will never be: A star.
We all see it.
Yet Clark has made the decision to hold her tongue — when she’s not mistakenly apologizing for being born white, as she did last December after Time magazine named her Athlete of the Year.
‘I want to say I’ve earned every single thing, but as a white person, there is privilege,’ Clark said in her profile.
That was a mistake. She should have never apologized for the color of her skin.
Coming down to Reese’s level — and, frankly, the league’s, which has done nothing to protect its biggest star, one whose ability to generate more fans, eyeballs, headlines, and sold-out arenas than any player in its 29-year history — will not make Clark’s life any easier.
It has only made it harder. We’re seeing that play out right now.
Clark – a standout NCAA player at the University of Iowa – was the number one pick in the 2024 WNBA draft. Reese was number seven – and she’s been seething with rage and jealousy ever since.
Clark has made the decision to hold her tongue – when she’s not mistakenly apologizing for being born white, as she did last December after Time magazine named her Athlete of the Year.
Let’s examine what happened at last Saturday’s game, after Clark received a flagrant foul against Reese, who theatrically flopped hard — a violation in itself.
Reese got away with it, even though Clark pointed it out to a ref.
Next, Reese got a rebound and was moving toward the hoop when Clark blocked her with a standard foul — a perfectly acceptable play.
But after Reese dramatically collapsed on the court — technically called a ‘flop,’ and a violation in itself — she physically went after Clark and had to be held back by a ref and a teammate.
Guess which team won? You got it: The Fever slaughtered their opposition, 93-58.
What a humiliation.
After the game, Clark again played down Reese’s hostility — and Clark has been a major target since joining the WNBA, with other black players fouling her hard enough to cause injury, and standing idly by as Clark absorbs hateful talk and name calling from crowds everywhere.
‘Let’s not make it something that it’s not’, Clark said at Saturday’s post-game presser. ‘I’m not sure what the ref saw to upgrade [my foul], and that’s up to their discretion.’
Yet Reese keeps antagonizing Clark. On Tuesday, she posted a photo of Clark walking away from Reese to TikTok with this caption:
‘White gyal running from the fade’.
Reese — like all bullies, a coward at heart — has since removed the post.
Imagine a white player posting a racial slur against a black player? They’d be cancelled, fired, all endorsements dropped.
Let’s examine what happened at last Saturday’s game, after Clark received a flagrant foul against Reese, who theatrically flopped hard – a violation in itself.
But Angel Reese continues to get away with her abhorrent behavior.
A note to Clark and her team: It’s long past time to fight back.
After all, she’s got significant star power to call upon. No less a legend than LeBron James has been an early, public supporter of Clark’s, and before Saturday’s season opener posted this to Clark on social media:
‘Good luck and DO YOU per usual this season!!!’
Reese must have been dying in her locker room. Just dying.
Other famous Clark fans include rappers Travis Scott and Ice Cube, Eli and Peyton Manning, Tom Brady, and Steph Curry, who called her games ‘must-see TV.’
Brady on Clark: ‘We love witnessing greatness here.’
Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy has weighed in all week long. On Tuesday, he called Reese a ‘jackass’ for her ‘jealousy.’
‘I’m sick of ESPN making it a race issue’, Portnoy said. ‘You have a superior basketball player who constantly has someone below taking shots at them, won’t shut up and then plays the victim. … If [Angel] didn’t have Caitlin, nobody would know who she is. If Caitlin didn’t have Angel, it would be the same popularity for Caitlin.’
Exactly.
This conflict is often cast as a rivalry, which is a misnomer. ‘Rivalry’ implies that two people are fighting against each other.
Only one person is fighting here, and it’s not Caitlin Clark.
In the wake of Saturday’s game, the WNBA announced it was launching an investigation into racial abuse — abuse against REESE, by Fever fans.
Oh my God.
A note to Clark and her team: It’s long past time to fight back. After all, she’s got significant star power to call upon. No less a legend than LeBron James has been an early, public supporter of Clark’s, and before Saturday’s season opener posted this to Clark on social media:
If the WNBA has any spine, any remote self-interest in protecting their lone megastar who remains the sole target of truly racist invective and on-court aggression that could potentially end her career — they would stand up for her.
They’d heed the LeBrons of Clark’s rarefied world.
A world that, frankly, will never extend Angel Reese the invite she so desperately wants.
As Portnoy accurately — devastatingly — put it on X, the league needs Clark far more than Clark needs the league.
‘You know what’s crazy’, Portnoy wrote. ‘If Caitlin Clark just woke up one morning and decided she was sick of the @WNBA s**t and decided to start her own league which wouldn’t be that difficult with her star power she’d put the WNBA out of business in 2 years.’
Exactly right.
