Clark and Reese bring a healthy amount in their bags, even when they\u2019re not the ones actively digging into them. There\u2019s a reason this matchup landed in the late afternoon ABC window on the first Saturday of the season. You think the league schedule-makers and media-rights holder ESPN didn\u2019t know what they were doing? They have, mercifully, caught on.<\/p>\n
![\"INDIANAPOLIS,](\"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/6ab48440-3379-11f0-bfce-d56b8d5d7179.jpeg\"\/)
<\/p>\n
Chicago Sky forward Angel Reese reacts after being fouled by Indiana Fever guard Caitlin Clark (22) as Fever forward Aliyah Boston (7) tries to separate them Saturday at Gainbridge Fieldhouse in Indianapolis. (Photo by Brian Spurlock\/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)<\/p>\n
The dialogue will flow this week on sports shows and pages leading into Memorial Day weekend. “Did you see Clark and Reese go at it?”\u00a0observers will ask, grabbing drinks at the cooler. The former\u2019s triple-double. The latter\u2019s standard double-double. Their progression, their growth, their game styles, their futures. If that moment warranted a flagrant, or the offsetting technicals that ensued.<\/p>\n
It\u00a0doesn\u2019t have to be overly serious. It doesn\u2019t have to mean anything in some greater societal conversation. This stuff happens all the time in sports.<\/p>\n
\u201cLet\u2019s not make it anything that it\u2019s not,\u201d Clark said, interrupting an incredulous Boston after learning she drew a technical in the fracas. (Clark said she\u2019d cover the $200 tech penalty, and Boston later doubled down, saying she really didn\u2019t know she got called for a technical in the moment.) Boston grabbed Reese near the shoulder, attempting to keep the Sky forward away from approaching a retreating Clark.<\/p>\n
The chippiness slowly escalated up into the moment halfway through the third quarter and erupted afterward. Clark, beginning to heat up as the Fever built a 14-point lead, already blocked Reese and stripped a potential rebound from her hands a minute prior.<\/p>\n
Reese then pushed Natasha Howard under the basket to bring in a rebound, and Clark, pointing at the missed call on Howard, reached in hard for the ball, smacking Reese\u2019s arm in the process.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was just a good play on the basketball,\u201d Clark said of the incident that will fuel no shortage of debates. \u201cI\u2019m not sure what the ref saw to upgrade it, and that\u2019s up to their discretion after watching the initial whatever happened during the play and then whatever happened after. If you watch a lot of basketball, it\u2019s a take foul to put them at the free-throw line or rather give up two points. I\u2019ve watched a lot of basketball in my life. That\u2019s exactly what it was. I wasn\u2019t trying to do anything malicious. That\u2019s not the type of player I am.\u201d<\/p>\n
Reese went to the ground, immediately jumping up to walk toward Clark and talk as the Fever superstar moved toward the Fever’s bench. The Sky bench emptied to grab Reese and keep her near it.<\/p>\n
\u201cBasketball play,\u201d Reese said. \u201cRefs got it right. Move on.\u201d<\/p>\n
Given who was involved, the refs might have stepped in to quell the heat. There\u2019s too much history between the two that their professional franchises inherited.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s a reason you hate a rival. Clark knows that. For no less than the fourth time in 24 hours, she found a way to answer a question regarding the budding rivalry (to the media and fans, she insisted) between the two WNBA teams separated by 182 miles.<\/p>\n
Clark’s grandfather, Bob Nizzi, coached high school football at Iowa\u2019s Dowling Catholic in the state\u2019s largest prep class. They, of course, had a rival, she explained: Valley. And her entire family knew what that meant.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was taught growing up, if we were driving by the high school, to hold my breath because I couldn’t breathe that air,\u201d Clark said. \u201cI know it’s kind of funny, but rivalry is always a big thing.\u201d<\/p>\n
The fertilizer to Saturday\u2019s dustup was every little watering before it, and there was plenty in an offseason glitzing brighter for the Fever than Clark\u2019s silver-and-red special edition Rookie of the Year Kobe sneakers.<\/p>\n
The Fever, dubbed \u201cShowtime\u201d by so many, owned the league chatter. Clark grew stronger, shown clearly in photos as she watched the Kansas City Chiefs with Taylor Swift, attended the Masters with her family and supported her alma mater in her own Gainbridge Fieldhouse. The front office hired the best coach not available \u2014 Stephanie White and the Connecticut Sun cutting ties seemed destined for her Fever hiring \u2014 and drew free agents with established pedigrees. After all that, the Fever are undoubtedly title contenders.<\/p>\n
The Sky, though trending to be better than a year ago, were washed out in the big picture with less dazzling stars and a first-time head coach in Tyler Marsh. Reese starring in Unrivaled and working with Hall of Famer Lisa Leslie \u2014 an improvement shown in an early 3-pointer Saturday \u2014 didn\u2019t crack the attention.<\/p>\n
By the time the Fever took full control of the game in front of their sold-out crowd of 17,274 with nary a Sky fan to be seen, it all boiled over. They lightly booed the Sky\u2019s entrance and booed Reese\u2019s introduction. The disdain grew after the dustup and as opposing players chirped.<\/p>\n
The participants may never acknowledge it. It took a while for New York and Las Vegas to fess up to the bit. Liberty fans surely relished in watching their first WNBA champions accept their rings with the Aces in town on Saturday.<\/p>\n
Clark and Reese are in Year 3 of dismissing anything between them, often brushing it off to fans feeling a certain way or the media’s portrayal.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs a player, you approach the game at the same every single time, or you should,\u201d Clark said ahead of tip-off. \u201cThat’s how you should approach every single game. You prepare the same way, you come ready to play.\u201d<\/p>\n
They can prepare the same and ride the tired lines. But the words don\u2019t matter as much as the actions.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a rivalry, no questions asked.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"INDIANAPOLIS \u2014 There are people who are going to make it a powder-keg moment. It\u2019s not. The dustup…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":40496,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3724],"tags":[8619,453,7,455,456,3910,3732,7996,459,1638,6073,11601],"class_list":{"0":"post-40495","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-basketball","8":"tag-aliyah-boston","9":"tag-angel-reese","10":"tag-basketball","11":"tag-caitlin-clark","12":"tag-chicago-sky","13":"tag-connecticut-sun","14":"tag-fever","15":"tag-gainbridge-fieldhouse","16":"tag-indiana-fever","17":"tag-kansas-city-chiefs","18":"tag-las-vegas","19":"tag-natasha-howard"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/114526857817885530","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40495","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40495"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40495\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/40496"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40495"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40495"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40495"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}