Caitlin Clark had a gold medal around her neck and about thirty seconds left in her press conference when a reporter asked whether she and Angel Reese were friends now, and she was not having it.
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The exchange happened Sunday at Uber Arena in Berlin, minutes after Team USA beat France 97 to 79 to win the FIBA Women’s Basketball World Cup. Clark was sitting with her teammates wrapping up media when the question came in at the very end. She told him they had always been friends and said twice not to try that. Then she got up and walked out. Then she came back, pointed at him, and told him something was wrong with him for framing it that way. The clip was everywhere before the confetti was swept up.Cindy Brunson, the veteran ESPN studio host, posted that Clark’s response was the second best thing to come out of Berlin behind the gold medal itself. Most of the online reaction ran the same direction, with people pointing out that the rivalry framing has been imposed on these two for three years by coverage that wanted a feud more than either player did.
The timing is what made the question land so badly. Clark and Reese had just spent ten days as teammates, and the moment that actually went viral during the final involved the two of them working together. France built a 14 point lead in the second quarter and looked like the team finally capable of ending the American run. Jackie Young picked up a loose ball and found Clark, who hit a three with four seconds left before halftime to cut it to 43-45. Reese, sitting on the bench directly behind her, came up screaming. That clip circulated for a full day before the press conference clip replaced it.
Both players came off the bench in Berlin, and both mattered. Clark finished the final with 12 points, three assists and a rebound in just over 13 minutes, shooting 4 of 5 from the floor. Reese added three points, three rebounds, a block and a steal in nine minutes. Across the tournament, Clark averaged 7.1 points and 5.8 assists, and Reese averaged 8.0 points and 5.4 rebounds. Paige Bueckers, another first-timer, had given them a nickname in training camp, calling the group the young and turnt, and it stuck through the whole run.
The rivalry goes back to April 2023, when Reese and LSU beat Clark and Iowa for the national championship, and Reese’s celebration became a week-long argument on every sports show in the country. They came into the WNBA the next year as the two most talked-about rookies in the league, and the coverage has treated every interaction between them as evidence of something ever since. Both have said repeatedly that they are competitors who respect each other. Clark told the Associated Press before the quarterfinals that they are both fiery competitors who want to win, and that it is one of the things she admires about how Reese plays.
The game they won was the more remarkable story. Team USA came into the final having won four consecutive World Cups, and France had every reason to believe this was the year. The Americans beat France 67 to 66 in the 2024 Olympic gold medal game in Paris, a game decided when Gabby Williams hit what would have been a tying shot with her foot on the line. Berlin was a rematch, and for a quarter and a half, France was winning it.
Breanna Stewart brought it back. She led all scorers with 22 points and pulled nine rebounds, and she was named tournament MVP when it was over. The United States outscored France by more than 30 in the second half. It was the 12th World Cup title in program history and the fifth in a row, a stretch that now runs back to 2010.
What makes the run more impressive is who was not there. A’ja Wilson and Kelsey Plum, two of the biggest names in the sport and both central to the 2024 Olympic gold, missed the tournament with injuries. USA Basketball filled the roster with Aliyah Boston, Bueckers, Sonia Citron, Clark, Napheesa Collier, Kahleah Copper, Chelsea Gray, Rhyne Howard, Kiki Iriafen, Reese, Stewart and Young. Collier was coming back from surgery on both ankles and had not played in the qualifying tournament. The group had barely played together, and it still went undefeated, beating China, Italy, Czechia and Hungary before handling Spain 76 to 66 in the semifinal. Spain took bronze by beating host Germany 81 to 58. Belgium’s Emma Meesseman led all scorers in the tournament at 21 points a game.
For Clark, Reese and Bueckers, it was a first senior global championship. For Stewart, it was another line on a résumé that already had almost everything on it. And for the reporter who waited until the end of the press conference to ask about a feud, it was a reminder that the two players at the center of it have been saying the same thing for three years.
