(ThyBlackMan.com) The WNBA has just completed arguably its most successful season ever. The New York Liberty won its first ever WNBA championship after being one of the first original WNBA franchises. There are well-established marketable skilled athletes including A’ja Wilson, Breanna Stewart, and Sabrina Ionescu while also having young, talented fresh faces including Caitlin Clark, Angel Reese, and Aliyah Boston. Of course, few players in the WNBA this season garnered as much media attention as Clark and Reese, who brought their star power and spotlight into the league from college in a similar way that Larry Bird and Magic Johnson did in the NBA several decades ago.
The “controversy” over the “You can’t see me” hand gesture from their national championship game in 2023 is a major part of the link between the two WNBA rookies but they both also performed at high levels during their first year in the WNBA. Clark set assist records while Reese set rebounding and double-double records. It is a credit to Angel Reese that she has already proven that she should have been drafted much higher than she was during the 2024 WNBA Draft, went she fell to the seventh overall pick to the Chicago Sky.
One of the ugly parts of the Clark-Reese link has been some of the worst Clark fans being rude and making inappropriate comments on social media to Reese as she mentioned publicly. Her basketball talent and physical appearance work to make her a target from opposing fans while also making her a marketable athlete as she has taken advantage of in college and now as a WNBA professional. It was a bit of an eye-opening pairing to see Angel Reese partner with Goldman Sachs in 2024. She signed a NIL deal with Goldman Sachs earlier this year to “promote One Million Black Women,” an investment initiative by the financial institution. Goldman Sachs’ One Million Black Women initiative is designed to amplify the voices of Black women to policy makers in Washington D.C. It seems very interesting that Goldman Sachs is doing this initiative given they were famously bailed out by the government during the 2008 housing crash that costed thousands of families in the U.S. their homes and financial resources.
While any professional athlete pairing with Goldman Sachs for any reason would seem to put them parallel to the everyday, working public in America that watches them perform, Angel Reese further separated herself from the U.S. public after her social media video comments about her WNBA salary. During an Instagram Live video earlier this month, Reese stated, “I just hope you know the WNBA don’t pay my bills at all. I don’t even think that pays one of my bills. Literally, I’m trying to think of my rent for where I stay at. Let me do the math real quick. I don’t even know my (WNBA) salary. $74,000?”” She then confirmed that her $8,000 per month rent for her luxury residence in Illinois was more than her rookie contract pays and exclaimed, “I’m living beyond my means!”
In the world of the NBA, NHL, NFL, and Major League Baseball, Reese’s $74,000 annual salary is miniscule compared to the million-dollar contracts even most rookies in those sports make in one year. However, it is completely out-of-touch and head-shaking for Reese to complain about making $74,000 annually at a time when thousands of people are facing loss of houses, savings, and even loved ones during recent hurricanes hitting the U.S. On an annual basis, her WNBA salary is greater than the average American and her earnings are assisted by endorsements from various companies. Reese’s complaints might be a reason for a potential WNBA labor stoppage which is a tough needle to thread in a league that is growing in popularity.
Staff Writer; Mark Hines
