Mark Harris
Videos by OutKick
The LSU Tigers winning their first women’s basketball national championship with their blowout victory over the Iowa Hawkeyes isn’t the story of the moment. Instead, it’s LSU’s Angel Reese taunting Iowa’s Caitlin Clark throughout the closing minutes of the contest. Everyone in the media has given their take on the situation, and that group now includes Charles Barkley.
The Hall of Famer believes that Reese’s trash talking took away from the game, which is an opinion that’s hard to argue against.
“Well, I thought it took away from the game,” Barkley said, according to AL.com. “In fairness, Caitlin did that in the game before. I thought it took too much attention away from a great performance. She’s amazing.”
Barkley is referring to Clark doing John Cena’s ‘You Can’t See Me’ gesture during Iowa’s win over Louisville earlier in the tournament. Reese pulled out the same move against the Hawkeyes, but the two situations weren’t the same whatsoever.
Reese sought out Clark every moment she could pointing to her ring finger and doing the ‘You Can’t See Me’ hand motion.
Clark pulled out the taunt as she walks back to her team’s bench against the Cardinals.
Anyone living in reality can see that Clark’s taunting was far more subtle than Reese’s, but Barkley thinks that the media is only seeing it that way because Reese is black and Clark is white.
“You have all these folks on the Internet and on television,” Charles Barkley said. “First, they gonna make it about race, which is part of it. … They deserve to celebrate. I thought it was unfortunate because people are talking more about that than what a great performance (it was).”
Barkley is far from the only one who has brought race into the conversation. ESPN’s Jay Williams insinuated that those that are critical of Reese’s actions and not Clark’s are racist.
WHO CARES. Race has nothing to do with it. GENDER has everything to do with it. This is what every men’s basketball player has done for at least the last 40 years. Hell, UConn guys were trash talking from the bench last night and nobody made a single comment on it, because it is part of the game. I could care less what these two women do in their games.
Race has everything to do with it. Angel felt some type of way about a white girl on a white team having the spotlight and acted accordingly. There’s an underlying jealously and inferiority complex playing out. It would be one thing if Caitlyn was talking shit during the game or released a Connor MacGregor style pre-game rant disrespecting LSU. But none of that happened. The only thing they can point to is the one instance Caitlyn did the celebration vs Louisville. This was about avenging South Carolina’s loss.
This doesn’t happen in the men’s game because if someone did this people would be throwing hands.
I agree with your take. Spot on.