Reese, who played a crucial role in Chicago Sky women\u2019s basketball team, has made no secret of her ambitions. However, after being sidelined by an injury during a crucial stretch of the season, Reese believes her chance at earning the title of Athlete of the Year was dashed. In a heartfelt and emotional statement, Reese shared with her followers, \u201cI am so devastated right now. I could have been Roty, I could have been Athlete of the Year if I hadn\u2019t got injured.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"Angel](\"https:\/\/people.com\/thmb\/FPD0mWilgOnwv49e7Fk4ZzcW2_Y=\/1500x0\/filters:no_upscale():max_bytes(150000):strip_icc():focal(772x180:774x182)\/Angel-Reese-basketball-090924-tout-791f1029aa42427b8126db170d07d3e8.jpg\")
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Angel Reese\u2019s sentiment isn\u2019t just rooted in her personal achievement but is heavily tied to the season\u2019s larger narrative\u2014a story of two of the most dominant figures in women\u2019s basketball today.<\/p>\n
WNBA owner questions why Caitlin Clark was named Time Athlete of the Year, suggests it will cause racism<\/strong><\/p>\n The executive\u2019s team broke an attendance record by moving its game against Clark to a larger arena this year<\/p>\n Will Cain is joined by Senator Markwayne Mullin to discuss the internal workings of the confirmation process for President-elect Trump\u2019s cabinet picks. Also, Will breaks down Caitlin Clark giving into \u201cWoke,\u201d and Mark Lucas defends Pete Hegseth.<\/p>\n \n Johnson even suggested the decision to give\u00a0Clark the honor\u00a0would incite feelings of \u201cracism\u201d within the league.<\/p>\n \u201cWhy couldn\u2019t they have put the WNBA on that cover and say, \u2018The WNBA is the league of the year,\u2019 because of all the talent that we have,\u201d Johnson said. \u201cWhen you single out one player, it creates hard feelings, so now you\u2019re starting to hear stories of racism within the WNBA, and I don\u2019t want to hear that.\u201d<\/p>\n Johnson went so far as to claim that Clark\u2019s attention and the minting of the term \u201cthe Caitlin Clark effect,\u201d which has been associated with the attention she has brought to the league, is because of race.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s the way media plays out race,\u201d Johnson said. \u201cI feel really bad, because I\u2019ve seen so many players of color that are equally as talented, and they never got the recognition they should have.\u201d<\/p>\n Iowa guard Caitlin Clark, left, looks to pass the ball against Louisville guard Morgan Jones, center, and forward Olivia Cochran during the first half of an Elite 8 college basketball game of the NCAA Tournament, Sunday, March 26, 2023, in Seattle.\u00a0(AP Photo\/Stephen Brashear)<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The owner also griped about the fact that Clark got a $28 million endorsement deal with Nike in April, which was the richest sponsorship contract for a women\u2019s basketball player.<\/p>\n \u201cThey would like to get the same kind of recognition. It all started with the whole Nike sponsorship that Caitlin got,\u201d Johnson said. \u201cThere are other players saying, \u2018What about us?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Johnson is the Vice Chairman of Monumental Sports & Entertainment, which also owns the NBA\u2019s Washington Wizards and NHL\u2019s Washington Capitals. Her Mystics directly capitalized on Clark\u2019s popularity to net historic ticket sales at the end of the regular season this year.<\/p>\n The Mystics\u2019 season finale against Clark\u2019s Indiana Fever was moved from the Mystics\u2019 home venue, the Entertainment and Sports Arena with just 4,200 seats, to the Wizards\u2019 venue, the Capital One Arena, which has a maximum capacity of 20,356 for basketball games. As a result, the Sept. 19 game between the Fever and Mystics was the\u00a0most-attended\u00a0WNBA regular season game in history, with 20,711 fans in attendance.<\/p>\n The Las Vegas Aces pulled off a similar move when they hosted the Fever at the larger T-Mobile Arena for a July 2 game instead of playing in the relatively smaller Michelob ULTRA Arena. For that game, 20,366 fans showed up, representing the\u00a0highest\u00a0regular-season single-game attendance since 1999.<\/p>\n Still, Johnson opted to publicly denigrate and undermine the attention that Clark gets in the CNN interview. Johnson also suggested that the WNBA\u2019s increase in popularity was also because of other WNBA rookies from the 2024 season, including Chicago Sky star Angel Reese.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cIt has taken the WNBA almost 28 to get to the point where we are now, and this year something clicked with the WNBA, and it\u2019s because of the draft of the players that came in, it\u2019s not just Caitlin Clark, it\u2019s Reese,\u201d Johnson said. \u201cWe have so much talent out there that\u2019s so unrecognized, and I don\u2019t think we can just pin it on one player.\u201d<\/p>\n Johnson\u2019s Mystics did actually play a game against Reese\u2019s Sky at Capital One Arena this year as well, on June 6. However, that game only fetched 10,000 attendees \u2013 fewer than half the number at the game that featured Clark at the end of the season.<\/p>\n Johnson, the first Black woman to have a stake in three professional sports teams, is just one of many figures in sports and media to cite race for Clark\u2019s popularity in a negative light.<\/p>\n WNBA MVP A\u2019ja Wilson has said Clark being White was a \u201chuge thing\u201d when it came to the rookie\u2019s popularity<\/p>\n In May, \u201cThe View\u201d host Sunny Hostins said during an episode of that show that Clark\u2019s popularity was due, in part, to \u201cwhite privilege.\u201d<\/p>\n Journalist Jemele Hill insisted it was \u201cnaive\u201d to say that Clark\u2019s race as a White person, and sexuality as a straight woman, did not play into her popularity in the WNBA, where the vast majority of players are Black and many are lesbian, during an interview with the Los Angeles Times in May. Hill also insisted that Clark\u2019s popularity with those attributes is \u201cproblematic.\u201d<\/p>\n Former FS1 and ESPN host Skip Bayless, who was one of Clark\u2019s harshest critics leading up the start of her WNBA career, admitted that he pretended not to be impressed by her skill out of \u201cguilt,\u201d and not wanting to stir\u00a0racial division. \u00a0He went so far as to suggest that Clark had become a \u201cright-wing symbol\u201d due to the fact that she is a White player excelling at the game of basketball.<\/p>\n Clark has been forced to answer questions about her race and alleged racism by her fans multiple times since coming into WNBA this year, including in the Time magazine profile that Johnson criticized.<\/p>\n \u201cI want to say I\u2019ve earned every single thing, but as a White person, there is privilege,\u201d Clark told Time. \u201cA lot of those players in the league that have been really good have been Black players. This league has kind of been built on them.\u201d<\/p>\n Johnson says she doesn\u2019t believe that Clark had to make the statement, but that she \u201capplauds\u201d the phenom for doing so.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Following Clark\u2019s selection as Athlete of the Year, Reese, who was widely considered a contender for the honor, expressed her disappointment over what she saw as a missed opportunity … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":16722,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16721","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usdailys.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16721","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usdailys.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usdailys.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usdailys.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usdailys.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16721"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/usdailys.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16721\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16723,"href":"https:\/\/usdailys.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16721\/revisions\/16723"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usdailys.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/16722"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usdailys.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16721"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usdailys.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16721"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usdailys.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16721"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"placeholder\"](\"\/\/static.foxnews.com\/static\/v\/all\/img\/clear.gif\")
<\/p>\n![\"Caitlin](\"https:\/\/a57.foxnews.com\/static.foxnews.com\/foxnews.com\/content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/343\/192\/Caitlin-Clark2.jpg?ve=1&tl=1)
<\/picture>\n![\"Clark](\"https:\/\/a57.foxnews.com\/static.foxnews.com\/foxnews.com\/content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/343\/192\/Caitlin-Clark19.jpg?ve=1&tl=1)
<\/picture>Indiana Fever guard Caitlin Clark (22) and Connecticut Sun forward DeWanna Bonner (24) exchange words during the first half in Game 2 of a first-round WNBA basketball playoff series, Wednesday, Sept. 25, 2024, in Uncasville, Conn.\u00a0\u00a0(AP Photo\/Jessica Hill)<\/p>\n<\/picture>June 30, 2024; Phoenix, Ariz.: Indiana Fever guard Caitlin Clark (22) is fouled by Phoenix Mercury guard Sug Sutton (1) during the fourth quarter at Footprint Center.\u00a0(Michael Chow-Arizona Republic)<\/p>\n