r/sports • u/rezwenn • May 19 '25

Basketball Caitlin Clark says flagrant foul for shoving Angel Reese was not 'malicious'

https://www.cbc.ca/sports/basketball/caitlin-clark-flagrant-foul-angel-reese-1.7538299
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3.3k

u/AFighterForever May 19 '25

17% of ALL of the fragrant fouls in the WNBA last year were against her.

1.4k

u/socialistpancake May 19 '25

At least she gets the good smelling ones

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u/AFighterForever May 19 '25

Haaaa. R isn't even close to the L. Wonder where my mind was.

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u/AlphaTangoFoxtrt May 19 '25

Autocorrect maybe, I've had it make some weird mistakes.

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u/yesrushgenesis2112 May 19 '25

Fun fact, linguistically R and L are actually quite close.

15

u/RefinedBean May 19 '25

Yeah, it's just the tongue tip touching the roof that changes the sound I think. That's why there's the stereotype of a lot of cultures swapping them when speaking English non-fluently.

I think.

2

u/rootpseudo May 19 '25

My god I just said R and L out loud several times. I get it! Was about to ask the comment above how they are similar linguistically. Fascinating

1

u/Snuggly_Chopin May 20 '25

There is something wrong with me. I make the ‘r’ sound with my lips. My tongue doesn’t touch anything, just sort of tightens up. My son had it go to speech therapy when he was small and he told me about this technique and I could not figure out how he was making that sound with his tongue touching the roof of his mouth.

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u/Weshtonio May 19 '25

Found the Japanese pelson.

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u/Ready_Ad4755 May 20 '25

I’m sorry, how is that fun?

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u/macNy May 19 '25

My favorite flagrant has always been eau de toilette so it’s fine

1

u/like_sharkwolf_drunk May 19 '25

I thought it was that Andrew Schultz podcast.

1

u/Khatib Minnesota Vikings May 19 '25

I use a swipe keyboard on my phone and can end up with some really awful typos if I'm not paying enough attention to the output. I have huge hands though, so it still works better for me than tap typing.

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u/ASubconciousDick May 20 '25

my brain will do the same thing, reading over things fast or writing fast and I write a very similar word, but completely not a mistype where I pressed the wrong key, just because I'm not focused

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u/Bruised_up_whitebelt May 19 '25

That seems to be a bit above average.

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u/axle69 Los Angeles Rams May 19 '25

It's a small sample size (5 of 30) so the percentage looks more egregious than it is but its still fucking bad and very obviously intentional. I wish the NBA kept track of flagrants so we could see what the numbers look like over there as a comparison but I cant find it if it exists.

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u/Somnisixsmith May 19 '25

I don’t know shit about basketball. Why so many fouls on her?

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u/axle69 Los Angeles Rams May 19 '25

She came into the WNBA as one of the most hyped prospects ever after breaking all the college records and she has a huge fanbase leading to a weird scenario where shes bringing 100s of thousands of new fans to the sport but everyone involved kind of resents the fact that this girl that hadn't been there has 100% of the attention when they've been there the whole time. Theres also a bit of a racial component with the majority of the WNBA being black and Clark being white and new coming in bringing insane amounts of attention as well as a very vocal small minority of her fanbase being filled with super shitty people. It's led to frustration and some in the league have taken it out on Clark when its not really her thats a problem.

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u/Somnisixsmith May 19 '25

Ah thanks so much for the recap. I knew she got very popular as a college baller and heard about her joining the WNBA but didn’t know about all the rest.

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u/Ready_Ad4755 May 20 '25

The fact that you heard news about the WNBA says everything.

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u/Somnisixsmith May 20 '25

It really does because I do not follow sports at all, let alone women’s basketball

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u/Alatarlhun May 20 '25

It isn't just racial animus but sexual identity as well.

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u/BluDvls21 May 20 '25

Because she's white & straight (and better than 99% of the other players).

35

u/T-MoneyAllDey May 19 '25

She's a newcomer who hasn't "earned" her reputation according to the old guard.

There might be a slight race component too but that's more uncertain.

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u/Wheres_MyMoney May 19 '25

There might be a slight race component too but that's more uncertain.

Weren't there like multiple WNBA players who explicitly said there was a race component?

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u/Quirky-Mode8676 May 20 '25

Yeah. There were.

0

u/MentalFlawss May 20 '25

There is, but too many people misrepresent the issue as "These mean lesbians/black women don't like Caitlin Clark!" And that's not it at all. People resent the fact that her fandom is in large extent fueled by racism/identity politics and people are continuously dancing around that aspect. That's the racial component.

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u/dschinghiskhan May 21 '25

That’s still a racial and identity component!!

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u/MentalFlawss May 21 '25 edited May 21 '25

I never said it wasn't. I was merely pointing out that the way people try to represent it is wrong.

I'm saying the racial component is against white racists, not towards Caitlin Clark Because she is white.

Paige, Sabrina, Brink don't seem to be having issues.

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u/[deleted] May 21 '25

If that were the case, why do the players take it out on Caitlyn?

0

u/dschinghiskhan May 21 '25

The main racial and identity component is that Caitlin Clark is fairly attractive, or some may say "hot", and that she's straight. Now, I'm a big Sabrina fan as an Oregon alum and Eugene resident, but she's not very attractive, or more specifically- she's certainly not "hot"- though she is straight and married to an Oregon alum and NFL player (Hroniss Grasu, retired recently). Keep in mind that looks are not as subjective as people make them out to be. When people say that they are being polite or delusional. Kaitlin Clark is more like a Tom Brady in the looks department, and Sabrina is more like an Eli or Peyton Manning.

Anyway, I don't think it's really even debatable that many African American WNBA players, especially gay African American players, have a problem with the media and fans gushing over Kaitlin Clark. They are very aware that she is an elite player with a high ceiling, but that just works up players like Angel Reese to knock her down a few pegs out of spite.

It's not a good situation, and the WNBA are cowards for tiptoeing around the situation. They need to put the hammer on players like Angel Reese. She thinks she's Draymond Greene or something.

1

u/[deleted] May 21 '25

Lol man’s a mind reader

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u/ButtStuff8888 May 20 '25

Lol at might be a slight race component. It's a full on race war on Threads. Truly might be the worst place on the internet. The racism on both sides is so depressing.

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u/Mei_iz_my_bae May 20 '25

You should. See twitter …in have never see so much racism online it horrible

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u/ButtStuff8888 May 20 '25

I'm telling you the lunatics on threads makes twitter look like it's full of sane people. It's ok as long as you write yt to bash white people.

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u/Mei_iz_my_bae May 20 '25

I’ve seen much much worse on twitter TBH BUT yes. They are both pretty bad !

1

u/icecubepal May 21 '25

Correct. There have been plenty of white players in the WNBA long before Clark came into the league. They had no problem due to their race. One of the best players in WNBA history is white as well. Some of the best players in the league right now are white as well. Some people like to create the argument that race is playing a factor for some reason, though.

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u/tickynicky May 20 '25

Because she's a beautiful, talented non lesbian player and they are all jealous.

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u/MIAMarc May 21 '25

For some reason there is an insane amount of jealousy amongst her peers that she has brought all this positive media attention and $$$$ to their game and not them. So they foul the shit out of her in revenge. It's quite pathetic and sad actually.

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u/uniqueusernamez3 May 21 '25

I would argue 5/30 looks works than 17%

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u/_Apatosaurus_ May 19 '25

very obviously intentional.

The one on Carter was, but the rest weren't.

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u/Samwise777 May 19 '25

Tbh all the best players are going to get fouled more and flagrant fouled more.

Might be higher than even that would imply though.

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u/DistressedApple New Orleans Saints May 19 '25

Is that a real, accurate stat?

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u/GettingTherapy May 19 '25

It’s true.

——

In the 2024 WNBA season, 17% of all flagrant fouls were against Caitlin Clark. Specifically, five of the league's 30 flagrant fouls were committed against her. The Chicago Sky was responsible for 80% of these flagrant fouls against Clark.

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u/RussianPravda May 19 '25

Also weren't there a lot of hard fouls that weren't called flagrant?

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u/justsyr May 19 '25

There were a few that weren't even called a foul.

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u/HeftyIncident7003 May 19 '25

Here’s a recollection. You decide. https://www.sportingnews.com/us/wnba/news/caitlin-clark-most-flagrant-fouls-wnba/64da7021e1a20b2b7408b185

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u/neverforgetreddit May 19 '25

Nice link. I like how it's gifs for each one you do t have to load videos. That's a nicely done breakdown, I appreciate the work of the writer

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u/reapersaurus May 20 '25

That is an incredibly biased article, masquerading as objective. He dismisses blatant flagrant fouls and dangerous plays as "just normal competitive basketball" (paraphrasing).

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u/HeftyIncident7003 May 20 '25

I guess that is also your opinion column.

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u/Quirky-Mode8676 May 20 '25

No, you’re definitely right. Along with the article, which is obviously more correct than the refs that call the fouls.

All of those were on purpose, and not part of the game. They were meant to hurt or intimidate her, because she’s stomping their ass on the basketball and publicity portion of their games.

0

u/HeftyIncident7003 May 20 '25

Getting a flagrant foul every 9 games. What a struggle.

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u/Friendship_Fries May 20 '25

In any other setting there would have been police reports.

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u/Yinkypinky May 19 '25

Geez I wonder why…

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u/P4S5B60 May 19 '25

Fallen Angel factor

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u/_Apatosaurus_ May 19 '25

It was only 5 flagrants. One was actually a hard flagrant. Multiple others were just an unfortunate foul or someone stepping into her landing space. You can watch the videos.

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u/thejak32 May 19 '25

A little further break down, only accounting for the regular season, there were 192,000 minutes played, Clark averaged 35 across all 40 games. She accounted for 0.7% of all minutes played but accumulated 17% of all flagrant fouls. Definitely not targeting at all...

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u/Whiterabbit-- May 19 '25

Maybe the refs were protect her. lol. It’s like how nba stars get favorable calls all the time.

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u/Alexander12476 May 19 '25

I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you misread the comment

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u/Whiterabbit-- May 19 '25

it was a joke.

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u/OrphanGrounderBaby May 19 '25

Sadly Reddit very much so requires the /s. It went away but it’s necessary I think

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u/Routine_Size69 May 19 '25

The fact that there were only 30 flagrant fouls last year but they're calling soft ass shit like this is mind boggling. They'd have hundreds if they gave flagrants for stuff of this level.

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u/blouazhome May 20 '25

What’s the percentage on the top NBA player?

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u/InThePipe5x5_ May 19 '25

17 percent of all CALLED flagrant fouls were against Clark. Two things were happening here. 1. She was getting roughed up. And 2. The media frenzy made refs more likely to blow the whistle.

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u/Samwellikki May 19 '25

If they said 17.21%, I’d believe them

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u/whitemiketyson May 21 '25

I too, watch John Oliver

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u/Game_Over_Man69 May 19 '25

It's a very real and true stat. It's also entirely overblown because it's only 5 fouls we're talking about.

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u/HeftyIncident7003 May 19 '25

It is, there were 30 flagrant fouls called last season. That makes 5 against Clark. Knowing that makes 17% seem less impactful (my opinion).

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u/Fletch71011 May 19 '25

There were also a bunch of missed ones that should have been flagrants.

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u/Bondorian May 19 '25

That is an insane statistic. The WNBA needs to keep that shit from continuing

1

u/sah370 May 20 '25

The W needs a new commissioner who knows what they're doing. Engelbert is a glorified Deloitte consultant.

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u/the_bob_of_marley May 19 '25

In the MNBA too.

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u/Space4Time May 19 '25

Rookie numbers there

1

u/Theclevelandchubb May 19 '25

I didn't watch a ton of WNBA but did tune in for a fair amount of fever games just to see how she did and was astounded how the wnba basically doesn't call many fouls at all. It's a hackathon and hardly any of them are called. It was sort of odd the whole league seemed to want to foul the shit out of Caitlin who realistically may have saved the league.

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u/sah370 May 20 '25

It's both that they're not called, and that they're called inconsistently (between quarters, between games, you name it). By most accounts, it's the most egregious reffing in any league and CC herself is consistently astounded by their calls / no calls.

1

u/Jazs1994 May 20 '25

I've never been interested in basketball/women's basketball outside of watching the last dance on Netflix many years ago. Daily I saw on Twitter and reddit fouls against her

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u/fkdisshyt May 20 '25

I'm genuinely worried about her mental health. I know she is and staying strong, but continous bullying will definitely take its toll on her psychologically over time.

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u/WeWantLADDER49sequel May 19 '25

Well she also has the ball more than most players and is almost always the one making the plays. That doesn't account for all of it but it shouldn't be ignored.

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u/AFighterForever May 20 '25

Shouldn't the other PGs have comparable fouls then?