I had no idea who either of these people were until this week, but let me see if I can get the gist:
- Caitlin Clark was an asshole at times throughout her career, but the general public didn't know this because most of them don't watch women's college bball. She is also a phenom, and white.
- Angel Reese had a tough upbringing and many people in the women's college bball world have called her "too ghetto" and similar things like that throughout her career. She is also one of the best players in the country, and black.
- Caitlin Clark has a signature taunt, which she got from John Cena, a professional wrestler. She did it in an earlier tourney game and casual fans thought it was cool and funny. The clip I've seen made it seem like she was not directing it at any particular person, which could have been the case but could have been the camera angle.
- Angel Reese called out Clark for some of her actions earlier in the tournament and said she was disrespectful. To me it felt like a team grasping at straws for bulletin board material, but whatever, it's sports.
- A huge amount of people tuned into the championship game to see Caitlin Clark because they heard she was a phenom. That included a TON of people who didn't pay attention to the season, didn't know the backstories of the players, thought they were tuning in to watch America's Sweetheart (who they just learned about two days earlier) win a championship.
- After LSU won, Angel Reese did Caitlin Clark's signature taunt move at her, and briefly kinda followed her around pointing to her ring finger because her team won the ring. She also called her out in postgame interviews. The clip got posted allllll over the internet and sports tv.
- Casual fans were immediately turned off and called her classless, undoubtedly a lot of them had no idea of any context or history, and a lot of them were probably somewhat racist too.
- The Internet jumped to Reese's defense by saying people were judging her more harshly because she was black, and nobody had a problem with it when Clark did it.
I think that's a pretty fair summary, right?... My view is that there were obviously some people who went haywire on Reese because they inherently don't like black people, BUT I think many more people are just turned off by taunting in general. There's a portion of fans who think there's no such thing as sportsmanship, and that anything and everything is just part of the game, and the drama is just part of the soap opera of modern sports... but those people are a small portion. The internet just amplifies them. Most people don't like that shit and would rather watch people celebrate a championship with happiness and great vibes, not mocking the losers, even IF "they did it first."
People didn't judge Caitlin Clark as harshly because, simply, very few of them knew she did it. And even when you see both clips back to back, whether it was the camera angle or not, it APPEARS that Reese was following her around and making it more personal, compared to Clark just doing it to the open air.
So yeah, I think people probably went overboard in their criticism of Reese (like that asshole Dave Portnoy from Barstool), but I don't agree with propping her up as a hero for taunting either. There's a reason the Bad Boy Pistons were universally hated in the late 80s/early 90s, it was because they did shit like that all the time. They owned it, and it seems like Clark and Reese both own it too. Embracing the dark side, THAT is part of sports sometimes, and villains can be fun! But it doesn't mean we all have to pretend it's actually "good" and cheer for it.
(Also the fact that the uproar is over women's bball players feels kinda paternalistic, like The Internet feels like they have to protect either of these poor basketball stars from taunting and/or criticism because they're women.)
If I was a women's bball fan, I would be stoked to follow this rivalry into the WNBA! But I'm not, so I probably won't ever hear about them again. Just another day on the internet!
