Angel Reese and Caitlin Clark have spent years being compared, debated, and, at times, pitted against each other. This season, however, the two WNBA stars have found another unlikely point of connection. Both reached eight technical fouls, and both ultimately had that eighth tech rescinded.
Watch What’s Trending Now!
That parallel caught the attention of WNBA analyst Sabreena Merchant, who drew a direct comparison between the situations while explaining why an official could have been tempted to make the call on Reese.
“When Caitlin Clark picked up her eighth technical, when she made contact with the referee because she was sort of just like running and her momentum carried her into the referee. By the letter of the law, you make contact with an official, that’s a technical,” Merchant said on the September 1 episode of No Offseason. “They called it in real time, and then within a couple hours they rescinded it. Same thing here. If you see a shove or push, I can understand why an official would be tempted to call a technical foul.”
“You look at the playback with the benefit of hindsight, and you’re like, ‘Okay, well nothing was really happening here. She was responding to a hook from Carla Leite, and no harm. Let’s rescind the technical.’ I also think because in both these situations it was their eighth technical and they’d be facing a suspension. Caitlin’s would have been national televised game against the New York Liberty, I think, and Angel’s would have been a national televised game against the Minnesota Lynx’s. So, big games you don’t necessarily want your biggest faces of the league to be missing those games,” she added.
Angel Reese picked up her eighth tech late in August during the Atlanta Dream’s 101-83 home loss to the Portland Fire, with Portland’s Carla Leite going to the line for the free throw. Under WNBA rules, an eighth technical foul triggers an automatic one-game suspension along with a $1,500 fine.
That initially put Reese in line to miss Atlanta’s upcoming matchup against the Minnesota Lynx. However, the league reviewed the play and rescinded the technical foul just hours later, allowing the Dream star to remain available.
For Atlanta, that decision proved particularly important as they secured an 89-81 win behind her 15 points and 11 rebounds. Without the rescission, the Dream would have been forced to face the No. 1 team in the league without one of their biggest stars.
Clark faced a remarkably similar situation earlier in August. The Fever star had her eighth technical foul rescinded after the league reviewed the play, which spared her the automatic suspension that would have followed. So Clark remained with Indiana for its nationally televised matchup against Breanna Stewart and the New York Liberty, which ended up with a 106-92 win behind her 22 points and 10 assists.
For Merchant, the similarities between the two incidents went beyond the technical fouls themselves. Both calls came in real time, both were reviewed afterward and, perhaps most importantly, both involved the league’s biggest names potentially missing nationally televised games because of an eighth technical.
With the regular season set to resume after the World Cup, Indiana and Atlanta have no remaining regular-season meetings on their schedules, meaning fans won’t see Clark and Reese face each other again before the playoffs. Fans will, however, get to see the two rivals on the same side soon, as both are set to represent Team USA at the upcoming FIBA World Cup.
Beyond the international stage, the Fever and the Dream have already secured playoff berths, meaning Reese and Clark will have another opportunity to make an impact when the postseason arrives.