During March Madness, we witnessed incredible individual and team performances all the way through the championship game.
The nation marveled over the greatness of Caitlin Clark while also celebrating LSU’s first NCAA basketball title.
Yet in that title game, the hypocrisy and racism that live in sports were exposed through a part of the game that has always existed.
Talking junk.
Every competitor talks smack in their own way. It’s part of the game and if you’re prepared to back it up or suffer the consequences, then it’s basically all good.
In the Elite Eight and Final Four, Clark did just that.
Against Louisville, she hit the Cardinals with John Cena’s “You can’t see me” expression. Against South Carolina, she disrespected the Gamecocks’ backcourt by flicking her hand in dismissal of their shooting ability.
But most impressively, she backed it up and neither team had an answer for college basketball’s star player.
She dropped a 41-point triple-double on Louisville (41, 12 assists, 10 rebounds) and almost duplicated it with a 41, 8 and 6 performance on the Gamecocks in the Final Four.
For that, she had every right to talk smack. She more than backed up her antics, and that’s perfectly fine. It comes with the territory and no one criticized her, which was fine too.
Yet on Sunday afternoon, the tables were turned for this time, the smack talk was done by LSU’s Angel Reese and she unleashed it directly at Caitlin Clark.
And that’s when the swords, unsurprisingly, were unsheathed.
“Absolutely classless move by Reese.”
“Awful sportsmanship.”
“What a classless move by Angel Reese. Doing WAY too much to taunt Clark,” tweeted ESPN’s Danny Kanell.
And then there was Keith Olbermann.
“What a fu**ing idiot,” he tweeted Sunday night. “Doesn’t matter the gender, the sport, the background – you’re seconds away from a championship and you do something like this and overshadow all the good. Mindless, classless, and what kind of coach does this team have?”
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