The (fool’s) golden era of women’s basketball

How the WNBA and its media are devaluing competitive women’s basketball
Zafir Nagji, Sports Editor |
Women’s sports are taking over the professional athletic landscape, and basketball is at the forefront of this movement. The WNBA is seeing record attendance and viewership, the college game is gaining more traction and new leagues, like Unrivalled, are bringing flavourful twists to women’s basketball. Many attribute the majority of this growth to the rivalry between Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese, whose college bouts drew millions of viewers. Now, Clark and Reese go toe-to-toe in the WNBA, which has improved the league’s revenue tremendously but has lent itself to a dangerous trend.
Clark and Reese’s rivalry should live on the hardwood, but the WNBA and its media have over-played the beef such that the drama is attracting more viewership than the games themselves. As a result, the so-called “golden era” of women’s basketball is being tainted and turned into fool’s gold, devaluing their highly competitive duels with manufactured drama.
The Clark-Reese chronicles
When most people think of women’s sports today, they think of Caitlin Clark. After a wildly successful four-year run at Iowa University, Clark held all sorts of records for her school, conference and the country. By the end of her collegiate career, Clark had amassed over one million Instagram followers and became the consensus first overall pick in the 2024 WNBA Draft, where she was selected by the Indiana Fever.
However, in 2023, Clark added a new dimension to her larger-than-life persona, as in that year’s NCAA Division 1 Championship Game, which drew a record-high 9.9 million viewers, Clark’s Iowa Hawkeyes had to face Louisiana State University, led by their centre, Angel Reese. In a tooth-and-nail fight to the end, LSU took down Iowa to win that year’s NCAA Division 1 Championship, but the moment that the media immortalized came at the end of the game. Reese flaunted a “you can’t see me” gesture at Clark, a move popularized by WWE legend John Cena and used by Clark earlier in the tournament when Iowa defeated Louisville. Reese also pointed at her finger, gesturing that she won a college championship before Caitlin could.
From then on, the two would be inextricably linked by the media, despite not playing the same position on the basketball court and doing little to play into the rivalry. Reese was drafted to the WNBA in the same class as Clark, being selected seventh overall by the Chicago Sky, and from their regular season clashes against each other to them playing on the same team during the WNBA’s All-Star game, every conversation about Clark had to involve Reese and vice versa. The league also leaned into it heavily, scheduling five matchups between the Fever and the Sky for this season.
Oops, they did it again
The NBA made a similar marketing play in the 1980s, when Magic Johnson and Larry Bird were at the peak of their ascension into fame. Having played college basketball against each other before entering the association, the two were pitted against each other constantly by the media and played against each other in a series of gruelling NBA Finals series.
That rivalry, combined with the impending arrival of the great Michael Jeffrey Jordan, blew the NBA into the limelight and popularized it into the global league we know and love today. So, in theory, it would make sense for the WNBA to follow the same route.
So, what’s the difference?
However, for women’s sports to be taken seriously and seen as high-level competition, the WNBA must dispel any hint of petty drama being more important than the actual product of competitive professional basketball. Johnson and Bird going at each other with physical play and obscene trash talk was good for the NBA, but in the case of the WNBA, casual viewers will associate the WNBA with the stereotype of women being “sassy” or “petty” instead of appreciating the high level of basketball being played.
For example, in their most recent matchup, Clark was accused of fouling Reese with excessive physical force, reaching across Reese’s arms and causing her to fall onto the court. In the NBA, this is considered a hard foul, but reasonable to prevent an opposing player from attempting a high-percentage shot.
Clark was charged with a Flagrant 1 foul, which is stated as contact that is “unnecessary and excessive,” and Reese was awarded two free throws and possession of the basketball for her team. The Fever went on to win the first of their five matchups against the Sky and moved on swiftly to their next scheduled game, but the media clung onto the video replay of the foul.
This is a normal occurrence in clashes between Clark and Reese, with some bringing racial implications into the conversation by questioning Reese’s physical play in regards to the stereotype of an “angry black woman” and others claiming that Clark’s fame comes only from the privilege brought about by the colour of her skin, underrating her transformative game. In their clashes, Reese is seen as the villain, being taller, stronger and playing a more physically dominant role for the Sky compared to Clark, whose smaller frame allows her to be more agile and play a more aesthetically pleasing skill-based style.
The media has also labelled Clark as the future of the WNBA, seeing her as the sole saviour of the league and depending on her to usher in a new era. Her popularity precedes her WNBA career and the skillset she brings to the table breaks the game wide open; as a solo star with the ability to create her own offence with flashy dribbling and shooting, she defies the WNBA’s old-school team-friendly style of play in favour of becoming her team’s offensive engine. As a result, any player opposing Clark is met with real vitriol, with some players even receiving racially charged comments and death threats.
Additionally, because the media is over-promoting her, the rest of her peers have developed a level of animosity towards her, which makes more players want to commit hard fouls on her and initiates a new dramatic arc: Clark against the world.
The issue here is not that the WNBA is trying to ante-up the Clark-Reese rivalry – that’s just clever marketing. Even the WNBA players’ attitudes towards Clark can be seen as good for the league – Clark has been given adversity in the form of physical fouls being inflicted against her and widespread near-hatred of her, so overcoming that and finding ways to be successful at the highest level of women’s basketball will build her legendary story even further.
Where the problem stems from is the media’s ability to blow it out of proportion and make it about more than the game. Instead of watching the two stars change the WNBA with their incredible play on the basketball court, the media covers the league like a dramatic reality show, reinforcing harmful stereotypes that devalue the game and will stunt the league’s growth in the long term.
As a long-time fan of the game, I am excited every time Clark and Reese match up. They may not play the same style or position, but their longstanding rivalry creates palpable tension and leads to the highest possible level of competition. Plus, with a five-game regular season series, Fever-Sky matchups will draw the viewership the WNBA needs to show off its incredible talents to new fans and grow as a league and business. However, if every hard foul between the two is to be played on sports broadcast channels for days after the game and the discourse surrounding the WNBA strays further away from the basketball itself, the league will lose its viewership as quickly as it gained it.