Angel Reese on Caitlin Clark, her impact: 'The reason why we're watching women's basketball is not just because of one person'
The rivalry between Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese drew plenty of eyeballs in college, and that has carried over into the WNBA. The rookies met for the first time in the pros on Sunday when Clark and the Indiana Fever defeated Reese and the Chicago Sky by a score of 71-70.
Things were just as chippy between the two stars in that game with Reese appearing to cheer when Clark was knocked to the ground on a hard foul from Chennedy Carter. Reese followed with an elbow of her own that sent Clark to the ground later in the fourth quarter.
The drama didn’t end when the game did, however, as Reese added more fuel to the fire with comments she made on Monday. Speaking on the increased interest in the WNBA and women’s basketball as a whole, Reese seemed to call out Clark for getting too much credit.
She made sure to add that she was an equal part of the growth.
“We’ve got celebrities coming to games, sold out arenas,” Reese said. “I’ll take the bad guy role and I’ll continue to take that on and be that for my teammates. I know I’ll go down in history. I’ll look back in 20 years and be like, the reason why we’re watching women’s basketball is not just because of one person. It’s because of me, too. I want y’all to realize that.”
Clark and Reese gained major notoriety during the 2022 national championship between Iowa and LSU, which Reese and the Tigers won. That game, which famously saw Reese taunt Clark with a ‘you-cant-see-me’ hand motion, drew 9.9 million viewers.
A rematch in this past season’s Elite Eight saw Clark and the Hawkeyes get their revenge. It also shattered the previous record for the most-watched game in women’s college basketball history with 12.3 million people tuning in. The 2024 national title between Iowa and South Carolina then surpassed that record with 18.9 million viewers.
Angel Reese acknowledged that the rivalry between her and Caitlin Clark contributed in large part to the growth of the women’s game. That being said, she wants people to realize that she played just as big of a role in that.
“It all started from the national championship game and I’ve been dealing with this for two years now,” Reese said. “Understanding that, yeah, negative things have probably been said about me. But honestly, I’ll take that because look where women’s basketball is. People are talking about women’s basketball that you never would think would be talking about women’s basketball.”