Mark J. Rebilas-USA TODAY Sports
Reportedly flirtatious and frisky Fox Sports 1 host Joy Taylor uncorked the latest absurd take about Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese, claiming that the latter is responsible for the fame of the former.
Despite the fact that Caitlin Clark was the highest-scoring player in the history of college basketball, the #1 pick in the 2024 WNBA Draft, and the WNBA Rookie of the Year last season, there are some people out there such as Joy Taylor who genuinely believe Angel Reese has played a role in Clark’s popularity.
According to Taylor, it “upset white men that a strong, winning, unapologetic black woman” such as Angel Reese got in Clark’s face (Taylor is referring to the 2023 NCAA women’s basketball tournament, which saw Clark and Reese face off in the finals.
“The Magic Johnson, Larry Bird Moment for the WNBA,” Taylor said on the Joe Budden Podcast. “Like this is great. I’m a storyteller. I think storylines are so [expletive] important. I think you need villains, I think you need heroes. You need [expletive] to sell. You gotta sell a fight. Like brand all of this. And it was…It upset white men to watch this strong, winning, unapologetic black woman…be in Caitlin’s face. Yeah, and they still cling to it.
“And it’s now spun to this whole thing where like Caitlin’s better than Angel and blah blah blah. I just said we would not be talking about Caitlin Clark the way we do if it wasn’t for that moment with Angel Reese. And I will die on this hill.”
“We would not be talking about Caitlin Clark the way that we do if it wasn’t for that moment with Angel Reese.”
(Via Joe Budden Network)
— NBACentral (@TheDunkCentral) June 23, 2025
While Taylor’s logic is flawed on so many levels, we can start here: what she is essentially saying is that Isiah Thomas is responsible for the legend of Michael Jordan because they had some famously scrappy matchups.
Sure, he was a PART of the story, but the greatness of MJ meant he would have been a legend regardless what happened in his career and who he encountered along the way, whether he faced off agains the Bad Boy Pistons or not. The same is true for Caitlin Clark.
Sure, her rivalry with Angel Reese is a PART of the narrative, but the reason she’s so popular is that she absolutely dominates and rains threes from all over the court: nothing more, nothing less.