How Clark-Reese rivalry is making WNBA games appointment TV

Without rivalries sports is just sweat, not likely to fill arenas nor to fuel sports talk shows, and lord knows we have too many of those, nor to carry a column from word one to wherever this one ends. We’ll see how it goes.

I am speaking, of course, of Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese, but isn’t everyone?

Here’s how nutty this is. Here at the semifinals of the NBA season the two most prominent names in basketball are two women at the beginning of a season. Interest in them is more than in any player on teams in the NBA playoffs, the names of which will come to me by and by. I think one of those teams is from Indiana.

I confess I do not know Obi Toppin from Karl-Anthony Towns or the Thunder from the Timberwolves, but I do know that Clark got a flagrant foul on Reese that caused quite the stir in places where stirring is what is done.

Did you see that? If not, easy to catch. It has been replayed more often than “The Simpsons.” There is Reese going in for an easy layup and there is Clark whacking her hands and maybe shoving her to the floor. Reese jumps up, Clark walks away, general turmoil ensues, peace is restored and social media goes nuts. (It really should be called anti-social media).

In most sports, such a thing is nothing, part of the game. In the world of Reese and Clark, it is Hamilton and Burr, the O.K. Corral, Ali and Liston.

How is it possible that someone named Tyrese Haliburton can hit a game winner against the Knicks and all that matters is if Caitlin Clark saw him do it? (Yes, she did and she was quite happy about it).

Even when the two women are not playing against each other they are judged by who played worse than the other. Caitlin didn’t hit a three all night. Oh, yeah, well Angel didn’t even make a basket.

Because their rivalry goes back to college when Reese and LSU won the title over Clark and Iowa — reminiscent of Magic Johnson at Michigan State and Larry Bird at Indiana State — the two will be linked, like it or not.

It is possible to admire each of them, remarkable as one but a hot ticket as two, inseparable for now, and for those who can’t wait, barely two weeks away at the United Center, a bigger stage than usual. It is anticipated that the game will set a WNBA attendance record, although seats do remain.

This is the Caitlin Clark Effect, the moving of her games from the generally modest arenas of women’s basketball to the larger showrooms of the NBA. How long this lasts depends on market whims and fan fickleness, but for now a courtside seat is credit card crushing.

And Clark-Reese or Caitlin-Angel, however the posters have it, elevates a routine basketball game into appointment viewing, more Clark than Reese for the moment and neither team, the Sky or the Fever, more appealing than either of them.

A real rivalry thrives on the prize at stake and nothing much really matters here save egos and images and expectations. The Magic-Bird rivalry, as noted, more often than not involved championships.

Michael Jordan never had a single rival, save the whole Detroit Pistons team for a while, and the same for Tiger Woods, who had to chase the Jack Nicklaus legend.

Team rivalries are not the same as individual challenges and tennis had two of the most enduring, Nadal-Federer and Evert-Navratilova, but these were very civilized. Connors-McEnroe might be closer but the stakes were always higher.

Maybe Clark and Reese will get there, but this seems a bit premature. We are asked to believe we are at the beginning of evolution, that women’s basketball is the next great thing, you know, like soccer and sabermetrics.

But the itch is there, no doubt about it. And it is entertaining, save the senseless fan intrusion that spews from time to time.

Apparently the WNBA is looking into a racial taunt of Reese after the foul by Clark, such idiocy an unwished for burden for both women to endure and for the rest of us to decry.