At first, it seemed that the Indiana Fever’s home win over Chicago Sky on Saturday would be just another spicy chapter in the rivalry between Angel Reese and Caitlin Clark. Both players were typically excellent: Clark spurred the Fever to victory with a triple-double, while Reese grabbed 17 rebounds to go with her 12 points.
But it was a moment in the third quarter that WNBA fans will be talking about for weeks to come. Some of them may even do so without resorting to cheap bigotry. With 4:38 remaining, Clark reached for the ball over Reese’s head, made what appeared to be deliberate contact with her arm, and sent her opponent spiraling to the floor. There was a brief confrontation, Clark was hit with a flagrant foul and Reese received a technical. After the game, Clark said she didn’t have cynical intent leading up to the foul, and Reese agreed calling it “a basketball play.”
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Depending on who you ask, the moment was either enthralling or disappointing. Fans may recall conversations about the physicality of the WNBA last season, as Clark was knocked around the court by veterans. It showed that women’s basketball is every bit as tough as the men’s game, and sometimes a foul is just a foul.
A moment like this isn’t always bad for anyone involved, including the players. Many say that these types of exchange drive up engagement, whether online or by attracting fans to WNBA arenas, which have enjoyed record attendance since Reese and Clark entered the league last season.
But there are, of course, different types of engagement. The increase in attention, scrutiny, and discourse can quickly take a downward turn, especially when women are involved. As much as there was plenty of genuine discussion and analysis of Saturday’s game, a lot of the online rhetoric quickly turned racist and sexist, a carryover from last season that fans and players had hoped to leave behind. And the abuse wasn’t just online either.
On Sunday the WNBA announced the league is investigating “alleged hateful fan comments” that occurred at the game. “The WNBA strongly condemns racism, hate and discrimination in all forms – they have no place in our league or in society. We are aware of the allegations and are looking into the matter,” the league wrote in a statement. The league did not mention any specific player in its statement, but the Indianapolis Star reported that Reese, who was loudly booed throughout the game, was subjected to racial abuse from the crowd.
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The WNBA is attempting to address racism with its “No Space for Hate” campaign, which looks to combat prejudice, online and inside arenas. The players are not sold just yet. “It’s nice in words, but we got to see actions,” three-time league MVP A’ja Wilson said on Friday. “Hopefully people can take actions and understand this is bigger than basketball. We’re true people behind it. Any shoe that we wear, any jersey we have on, we’re human. People have to respect that. I hope they pay attention and listen to the words.”
Clark, who is white, has attempted to push back against the racism, homophobia and misogyny that some of those claiming to be her fans have used against players in a league where most of the players are Black and many are gay.
“It’s definitely upsetting. Nobody in our league should be facing any sort of racism – hurtful, disrespectful, hateful comments and threats. Those aren’t fans, those are trolls, and it’s a real disservice to the people in our league, the organization, the WNBA,” Clark said last September.
And it’s not just something fans and players have noticed. A March 2025 study by Rice University and the University of Chicago Illinois suggested racial bias is present – on the part of fans and the media – in the Reese-Clark debate. Researchers looked back to the players’ college days, and the infamous “you can’t see me” exchange between the pair during the 2023 NCAA Tournament. Both players made the same mocking gesture to opponents during the tournament but Reese, who is Black, received much more pushback online and in the media.
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“This wasn’t just social media chatter – this was a real-time reflection of how race and gender shape public perception,” Rice University sociology doctoral candidate Shahill Parsons wrote in the study. “Reese and Clark [both made the same gesture], but the responses weren’t just different, they were completely opposite. That contrast tells us a lot about how bias still operates today.”
A lot of the same discourse is still present today, Parsons said by phone on Sunday, and it hurts both players. The fact that Clark is “an amazing player” is what makes the conversation difficult to this day, he said. “On some level, if the framing of this is Angel Reese is some kind of behemoth, Black, big, disastrous, monstrosity, gorilla, what you have is steeped in sexism and racism, which isn’t going to be beneficial for Clark overall as an athlete.”
Instead, the discourse could end up polarizing one demographic or another, he said. Though the Clark-Reese relationship has been compared to that of Larry Bird and Magic Johnson, public interest in that rivalry was rooted in competitiveness on the court more than race. “If the WNBA can avoid falling into this trapping of pushing a white-Black agenda, the league will be more popular, and it will be more beneficial for the league as a whole,” Parsons added.
Apart from concerns about racism and sexism, the focus on interactions between Reese and Clark threatens to take away from the accomplishments of the rest of the league. The two other WNBA games on Saturday were just as enthralling as Fever v Sky. The Las Vegas Aces, who boast Wilson, played the defending champions, New York Liberty, and Seattle Storm travelled to Phoenix Mercury, who are testing out their new positionless basketball scheme. But stories are overwhelmingly focused on Reese and Clark.
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Parsons agrees. If the season becomes “mired and bogged down by this racial component – if that is the driving primary force behind the whole WNBA season, I wholeheartedly believe we’re not going to be seeing [much of] A’ja Wilson on SportsCenter,” he said.
And that would be a true loss for WNBA fans everywhere.
