At this year’s NCAA Women’s Basketball Championship game, LSU Tigers star Angel Reese and Iowa Hawkeyes star Caitlin Clark caused quite a stir on social media when Reese taunted Clark after the Tigers clinched the victory. It generated a ton of conversation, but NBA commentator and basketball analyst Doris Burke thinks gender had a lot to do with it.
During an interview with Front Office Sports this week, Burke suggested that part of the reason the ordeal caused so much buzz was because the two athletes were women.
“Nobody’s talking about the gender piece of this. If a guy had done it, would we have even blinked at it? I don’t know the answer to it,” Burke told Front Office Sports, according to On3. “But here’s what I think unequivocally. My first thought was I hated that basketball, which was incredible, seemed to become secondary.
“Then I thought, you know what, maybe this isn’t a bad thing. Because if it fosters productive conversation around important topics, that’s probably more important than basketball. Right?”
Regardless, it’s clear that Reese and Clark have made big names for themselves and have brought a ton of attention to women’s basketball as a result.
[On3]