Riley Gaines has blasted Angel Reese over her ‘distasteful’ social-media post about Caitlin Clark – and claimed the Chicago Sky rookie is jealous of her ex-college rival.
Reese appeared to take a dig at Clark, who has gone 0-5 in the WNBA with the Indiana Fever, in a hastily deleted tweet after Chicago beat the New York Liberty 90-81 on Thursday night.
Wednesday night’s defeat to Seattle Storm continued the Fever star’s torrid start to life in the big league, but it has been quite the opposite for Reese.
The former LSU college sensation, on the other hand, has helped the Sky win two of their first three outings of the season, scoring 35 points in the process.
‘And that’s on getting a WIN in a packed area not just cause of one player on our charter flight. #SKYTOWN,’ Reese wrote in a now-deleted dig at Clark.
Riley Gaines (left) has blasted Angel Reese (second from right) over her ‘distasteful’ social-media post about Caitlin Clark (right)
Reese seemed to take aim at her former college rival with this post before quickly removing it
Despite removing it, Gaines believes Reese’s post is a sign of her ‘jealousy and insecurity’ towards the No 1 Draft pick, hitting out at the Sky forward over her ‘baseless’ remark.
The swimmer said on X: ‘Incredibly disheartening to see Angel Reese attack Caitlin Clark like this. Just entirely baseless and distasteful.
‘The tweet screams jealousy and insecurity.’
Clark has been credited with the surge of interest in the WNBA after being picked first by Indiana in April’s Draft – the same event where Reese was picked by Chicago.
The two were also big rivals at college, with Reese playing at LSU while Clark was at Iowa.
Reese and her Sky team did not have charter flights at the start of the season, but Clark and Iowa did.
As well as Reese, Gaines also took aim at The View co-host Sunny Hostin over her controversial recent comments about Clark.
On Wednesday’s edition of the ABC talk show, Hostin spoke her mind about the ‘privileges’ she believes have played into Clark’s ever-growing popularity.
‘I do think that there is a thing called pretty privilege,’ she said. ‘There is a thing called White privilege. There is a thing called tall privilege, and we have to acknowledge that.’
‘And so part of it is about race because if you think about the Brittney Griners of the world, why did she have to go to play in Russia? Because they wouldn’t pay her,’ she said of the WNBA.’
Gaines followed up the criticism of Reese by concluding in her post: ‘Although, Caitlin Clark probably deserved this given she has white, straight, pretty & tall-privilege. Right, @sunny?’
Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy also slammed Hostin over her ‘privilege’ comments, even branding her a ‘racist’.
On X, Portnoy quoted a Mail Sport story on Hostin’s comments and wrote: ‘Somebody tell this racist all these players are superstars and white and nobody cared till Caitlin Clark. It’s the way she plays.’
He then listed out the players in question: ‘Dianna Turassi – Paige Buckets – Cameron Brink – Sue Bird – Ella Del Donne – Breanna Stewart – Sabrina Ionescu – Kelsey Plum’.