Well, that didn’t take long.
One game into the WNBA’s second season of the Caitlin Clark-Angel Reese era, we have a flagrant foul, offsetting technical fouls, and a near fight. And that was just one 42-second clip of the game between the season opener between the Indiana Fever and Chicago Sky.
Clark, last year’s WNBA Rookie of the Year, made headlines with the third triple-double of her pro career, but made a whole lot more with a flagrant on Reese that led to Reese needing to be restrained in order to keep from hitting Clark in retaliation.
With 4:38 left in the 3rd quarter and the Fever up 56-42, Clark was defending Reese under the basket and tried to steal the ball in what could be charitably called an aggressive reach-in.
While the foul was indeed hard, Reese has to be given some credit here; sports-related acting such as hers is usually only seen in an Italian Serie A soccer match. Flailing her arms in the air, Reese fell the court with abandon.
Then, just as quickly, she hopped back up and her hand darted toward Clark’s face; Clark was walking away from the situation, which meant a slap-fight did not ensue. Her Fever teammate, Aliyah Boston, restrained Reese.
Given the rivalry, the foul was unsurprising: “Everyone in the arena had to know this foul was coming,” ESPN analyst Rebecca Lobo said.
“As soon as you saw Angel Reese wide open, you knew Caitlin Clark was going to come in and take that foul.”
Caitlin Clark received a flagrant foul on this play.
Aliyah Boston and Angel Reese received offsetting technical fouls. pic.twitter.com/jzQYEW92TW
— ESPN (@espn) May 17, 2025
Are you a fan of Clark?
Boston and Reese received offsetting technicals for the ensuing extracurriculars. To be fair, it’s probably not as if Boston needed to stick up for her teammate — if her punches are anything like her layups, Reese would have missed by 20 feet — but it’s a sign that the Fever have Clark’s back if Reese wants to turn this even uglier than it is:
As for the rivalry on the scoreboard, let’s just say the Sky have some work to do; buoyed by Clark’s 20 point, 10 rebound, and 10 assist performance, along with Boston’s 19 points and 13 rebounds, the Fever pulled away in the second half to wallop the Sky, 93-58.
Natasha Howard, a star power forward initially drafted by the Fever in 2014 and who was reacquired in the offseason from the Dallas Wings to revamp the team’s roster, chipped in 15.
Reese, meanwhile, finished with 12 points on 5-14 shooting, but managed to haul in 17 rebounds. However, only one other Sky player — Ariel Atkins — finished with double-digit scoring numbers and three of the five starters had a negative-20 point differential or worse. (Center Elizabeth Williams, coming off the bench, also managed a negative-22 point differential.)
However, the opener highlighted — again — the rivalry between Clark and Reese, college rivals who turned the WNBA into must-watch sports in 2024.
The rivalry began in the 2023 NCAA Women’s Division I Basketball Tournament, when Reese’s Louisiana State University squad defeated Clark’s Iowa Hawkeyes in the championship game. In 2024, Clark managed to get revenge on Reese and the Tigers, beating them in the Elite 8, 94-87. (Clark was still denied a championship thanks to the University of South Carolina — led by one of Reese’s future Chicago Sky teammates, Kamilla Kardoso — in the National Championship Game.)
Clark was picked first in the 2024 WNBA Draft while Reese fell to sixth. However, given their rivalry and the interest the duo had sparked in women’s basketball, the two were widely compared to Magic Johnson and Larry Bird entering the NBA and saving the foundering league when they took their college rivalry to the pros in 1979.
Both the Fever and Sky were roughly middle of the pack for most of the 2024 WNBA Season, but after a June 23 meeting which Chicago won — sending them to 6-9 and Indiana to 7-11, the teams went in opposite directions. The Fever finished with a 20-20 record, a marked improvement from their abysmal 13-27 the year beforehand. The Sky, meanwhile, finished … 13–27, 10th in the league and out of the playoffs.
However, if there were any hopes of this being Magic-Bird friendly sort of rivalry, they were quickly dashed, for better or worse, after a number of dust-ups on and off the court last year. That continued into this season, where Reese’s mom complained about the lack of interest in a “homecoming” WNBA game the Sky played at Reese’s alma mater while a Fever game at the University of Iowa — a Clark homecoming — was met with considerably more fanfare.
According to Sports Illustrated, Reese’s mom (also named Angel) posted on social media that LSU had the “championship banners” and made some statements that could be interpreted as racial dog whistles.
Aww that certain fan base looking in the stands celebrating “attendance” while others are looking up in the rafters celebrating championship banners. We ain’t the same. 🤦🏽♀️ Different year same haters 😂 Have a great day 😘
— AngelReese(TheMom) (@awebbreese) May 3, 2025
“Aww that certain fan base looking in the stands celebrating ‘attendance’ while others are looking up in the rafters celebrating championship banners. We ain’t the same. [black woman facepalm emoji] Different year same haters [laughing emoji] Have a great day [kissing emoji],” she declared earlier this month.
Well, yes, apparently the Fever and the Sky are not the same — to the tune of 35 points worth of difference on Saturday night. However, Clark’s foul does prove that the animosity lives deep within both. After all, given her accuracy in that department, why on earth would Clark stop Angel Reese from trying a layup?
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