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The backlash against Angel Reese is disappointing, but not surprising.
Trash talk and taunting have been a part of sports ever since the games have been played. I may only be 27 years of age, but I’m still old enough to remember Caleb Love waving goodbye to everyone inside Cameron Indoor Stadium last March, a gesture that made it into Carolina’s pregame hype video this past season. To go back even further, Larry Bird’s on-court antics have become the stuff of legend among NBA old heads.
Or what about during Super Bowl LV, when the Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ Antoine Winfield Jr. got in the face of the Kansas City Chiefs’ Tyreek Hill? Winfield’s taunts were met with a 15-yard penalty, but fans around the league loved it. They may have even felt Hill — a known trash-talker himself — had it coming.
Tampa Bay Buccaneers strong safety Antoine Winfield Jr. taunts Kansas City Chiefs wide receiver Tyreek Hill after a play during the second half of Super Bowl LV on Sunday, Feb. 7, 2021, in Tampa, Fla. (AP Photo/David J. Phillip)
But in the waning seconds of the women’s basketball national championship Sunday afternoon, when LSU’s Reese taunted Iowa’s Caitlin Clark with Clark’s own celebration, the pearls were clutched. Words such as “classless” and other dog whistles began to circulate, the type of rhetoric never used when Bird cussed out opposing players or when Allen Iverson stepped over Ty Lue in the 2001 NBA Finals.
Clark, whose incredible scoring and passing abilities made her the National Player of the Year and the star of the NCAA Tournament, was celebrated for her on-court confidence and swagger. When Reese replicated it, something changed. I’ll let you do the math.
The standard will always be higher for women, particularly Black women, in this regard.
Look no further than earlier in the weekend, when South Carolina head coach Dawn Staley took the mic after her team’s loss to Clark and the Hawkeyes in the Final Four. Staley was asked about outside perceptions of her team — almost entirely Black women — as “bullies.”
“We’re not bar fighters. We’re not thugs. We’re not monkeys. We’re not street fighters,” Staley said. “Some of the people in the media… you’re saying things about our team, and you’re being heard. And it’s being brought back to me… it just confirms what we already know.
“If you really knew them, like you really want to know other players that represent this game, you would think differently. So don’t judge us by the color of our skin… you may not like how we play the game. That’s the way we play. I’m not changing.”
"We're not bar fighters. We're not thugs. We're not monkeys. We're not street fighters. … So watch what you say when you're in public and you're talking about my team in particular."
South Carolina coach Dawn Staley had a message for the media. pic.twitter.com/4Y6WL3T8MX
— The Sporting News (@sportingnews) April 1, 2023
Staley and Reese may be conference rivals on the court, but they are sisters-in-arms off it.
Featured image via Associated Press/Tony Gutierrez
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