Ask any sports fan to name a rivalry that seismically shook an entire league, and you’ll hear the usual suspects: Bird vs. Magic. Brady vs. Manning. Serena vs. the entire field. Rivalries don’t just shape sports – they elevate them.
And now, women's basketball has the rivalry: Caitlin Clark vs. Angel Reese. Two generational talents, two distinctly different backgrounds, two faces of a league on the cusp of something truly game-changing.
But what should’ve been a celebration of competitive fire and rising visibility has already become something else. Something heavier. Something far more complicated.
Because even when both are playing hard, saying the right things, and living up to the hype – only one of them is expected to carry the burden that comes with being great, Black, and unapologetically vocal.
Covers recently spoke with Dr. Tunisha Singleton – a renowned behavioral strategist and Ph.D. in media psychology – to explore how race, rivalry, and responsibility intersect in the most-watched storyline in women’s sports.
Key Takeaways
🔥 Angel Reese and Caitlin Clark are both elite – but only one is asked to “explain herself” after every hard foul or press conference
📣 The media frames women's rivalries as drama instead of competition – reinforcing outdated stereotypes rather than evolving the narrative
📺 The WNBA has a golden opportunity – but it needs a real content strategy, not just viral highlights
🙅♀️ "We can’t keep leaving it to Black women to fix the problems they didn’t create"
The rivalry we asked for – with the baggage we didn’t
This is what we wanted, right?
Two stars. Two styles. Two storylines colliding at exactly the right time. Clark and Reese didn’t just step into the spotlight – they rewired it. They brought new fans to the WNBA, new energy to the culture, and new urgency to a league that’s long deserved this moment.
It certainly helps that both are elite basketball players. Clark averages 16.5 points and 8.8 assists in her second WNBA season with the Indiana Fever, though she's on the shelf with a groin injury and her status for Sunday's return engagement with Reese and the Chicago Sky is in doubt.
Reese, meanwhile, averages just 13.8 points but her 12.5 rebounds-per-game mark is far and away the best in the league. She's also banged up, nursing a back injury that held her out of Thursday's game against the Seattle Storm.
Singleton, who serves as the president of the board of directors for the Black Girls Hockey Club and whose client list includes the NFL, the Peabody Awards and Warner Media, has kept a close eye on the rivalry. And as she sees it, the rivalry stopped being just about basketball the minute other people got involved.
"The competition is real. The talent is elite. But the cultural layers are where things get complicated," Singleton told Covers. "We can’t have anything nice without someone trying to drag it through a tired-ass narrative."
It’s not that rivalries in women’s sports are new – from Leslie vs. Thompson to Taurasi vs. Pondexter, feuds have always been part of the fabric of the game – but this one struck a nerve. It’s generational. It’s racial. It’s TikTok vs. Old School vs. the algorithm. It’s not just Clark vs. Reese: it’s change vs. the people who want to slow it down.
"You’ve got the ‘get off my lawn’ crowd mad because the new wave is getting the attention they helped build," Singleton says. "And you’ve got Gen Z fans who treat these athletes like full-on icons. It’s messy. But it’s also growth."
Why the media still doesn't get it
If Clark and Reese were two men with statlines like these and edge like that, the story would be simple: What a rivalry!
Instead, it’s pressers packed with passive-aggressive questions, think pieces loaded with dog whistles, and a constant attempt to frame Angel Reese – and Black women in general – as "too much."
Singleton doesn’t flinch.
"Media doesn’t want competition. They want a viral moment," she says. "They’ll ask Reese and Kennedy Carter the same question about Caitlin 15 different ways, trying to get a soundbite. And when they don’t give it? Angry Black woman trope. Every. Time."
Singleton calls it performative journalism: lazy and coded.
"Chris Webber calls a timeout he didn’t have, and no one calls him ‘classless.’ But when Angel plays physical, it’s like she committed a crime."
And it’s not just the questions – it’s the absence of questions, too.
"The Liberty just won (the 2024 WNBA title), but you’ll still hear people say New York hasn’t had a championship in years. That erasure? That’s not an accident. That’s what happens when you don’t value women’s sports in your newsroom – you miss the moment entirely."
Clapping back is survival, not drama
Angel Reese doesn’t owe anyone an explanation. But she’s been forced to give plenty.
Every press conference, every highlight, every hard foul – all of it gets spun through a different lens when you’re a Black woman who plays with fire. And for Singleton, that constant pressure to clarify, defend, and respond isn’t about "attitude" – it’s about survival.
"She has to protect her identity every time she steps on the floor," Singleton says. "Black women always have to do more, just to exist. Just to play."
In her academic research, Singleton describes this as a form of “digital resistance.” Reese’s quote-tweets, her podcast, her brand voice – they aren’t tantrums. They’re calculated clapbacks against a media system that’s more interested in framing her than listening to her.
"She’s doing it right," Singleton says. "She’s built a brand by being authentic and unapologetic. That makes her dangerous to people who only know how to flatten women into stereotypes."
Even when Angel calmly deflects baited questions or shrugs off the noise, the reaction is the same: Why is she so angry? The better question, Singleton says, is: Why do we keep making Black women do all the emotional labor in sports culture?
"We can’t keep leaving it to Black women to fix the problems they didn’t create."
What does the WNBA do next?
The Clark-vs.-Reese rivalry has delivered. The attention is here. So now what?
Singleton is emphatic.
"This is a golden opportunity," she says. "But the W can’t just post a highlight and call it a day. They need a strategy."
She compares it to shoulder programming – the kind of complementary content that builds fan investment between games. Features. Behind-the-scenes. Rivalry history. Cultural storytelling. All the stuff the NBA and NFL pump out 24/7.
"The league has to fill that gap," she says. "You want Gen Z fans and old heads to both feel seen? Give them something to follow. Not just clips – a journey."
And don’t make it one-dimensional.
"There’s enough depth here to build a whole ecosystem," she says. "Give the fans more than a foul and a stare-down. Give them the story. Let Angel be Angel. Let Caitlin be Caitlin. And give us the space to see what this rivalry can really become."
Will this actually change anything?
The potential is real. The moment is loud. But will it last?
Singleton isn’t so sure.
"They have everything they need – the talent, the tension, the spotlight," she says. “But unless the people in charge are ready to reframe how they tell these stories, we’ll just keep swapping in new faces and repeating the same old patterns.”
Because here’s the uncomfortable truth: Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese can’t fix this on their own. They shouldn’t have to.
Reese shouldn’t have to clap back just to be respected. Clark shouldn’t have to be the voice of reason on race. And Black women – in sports, in media, in fandom – shouldn’t have to carry the conversation and the culture on their backs.
The rivalry can change the game. But only if the people behind the cameras, behind the platforms, behind the seats at the table are willing to change with it.
So yes – Angel vs. Caitlin is the rivalry we needed. But it’s also a mirror. One that reflects just how far we’ve come… and how far we still have to go.
If we’re serious about elevating women’s sports, then it’s time we stopped asking players to do all the work – and started holding everyone else to the same standard.
