Angel Reese did little to hide her frustration with Caitlin Clark after receiving the brunt of a flagrant foul.
Since bursting onto the WNBA scene last season, Clark and Reese have had no shortage of tense run-ins. Over the offseason, the pair attempted to downplay their rivalry — with the latter most recently refusing to answer a question about the former.
It didn’t take long, however, for the duo to reignite their feud in the 2025 campaign, which got off to a rocky start once fans had to wait because of a scheduling issue.
With just under five minutes remaining in the third quarter of Saturday’s regular-season opener between the Chicago Sky and Indiana Fever, Reese corralled a loose ball and took one step into the paint. She was promptly met by Clark, who took a swipe at the ball and hacked her opponent’s arm.
As Reese began to crumple to the hardwood, Clark appeared to push her on the way down. The forward did not take kindly to the gesture, as she swiftly sprung up to her feet and went on an expletive-filled tirade.
Upon returning to the bench, Reese still needed to be held back by several Sky personnel while throwing barbs in Clark’s direction. In one closeup shot, she appears to tell her, “You crazy as f—” and “What the f— is wrong with you?”
Once the dust had finally settled on the brief scuffle, Aliyah Boston and Reese were both issued offsetting technical fouls, while Clark was hit with a flagrant one for the initial hit.
Speaking to ESPN’s Holly Rowe during a stoppage in play, Clark defended her foul on Reese — insisting that the move was nothing more than a “good take foul.”
“It’s just a good take foul. Either Angel gets wide open 2 points or we send them to the free throw line,” she explained. “Nothing malicious about it. It’s just a good take foul every basketball player knows that.”
The heated moment did little to slow down Clark, who picked up right where she left off last season in the Fever’s 93-58 win — marking the largest season-opening margin of victory in franchise history.
Over 32 minutes played, she amassed 20 points, 10 rebounds, 10 assists, four blocks and two steals on six-of-13 shooting from the field and 4-of-8 from behind the arc.
Assessing her performance minutes after the final whistle blew, Clark told Rowe: “I think just keep getting better every single night.
“Continue to set my teammates up. I know we put up 93 points and won by 30, but I felt like we could still could have been a lot better. So we go back to work.
“We have hard games coming up. That’s the thing about this league. You have a couple of days. It’s on to the next, on to the next. So how do we keep getting better?”
