For a few people, the question of who should be this year’s WNBA Rookie of the Year is a debate. For most, the answer is obvious.
On Sunday, WNBA legend Lisa Leslie took to X to say that not just Caitlin Clark but both Clark and Chicago’s Angel Reese deserve to win this year’s Rookie of the Year Award.
Leslie’s suggestion was met with extreme derision on social media.
Had Leslie posted this suggestion six weeks ago, before Clark became the best offensive player in the game and people had done a deep dive into the ugly numbers behind Reese’s double-double record, the backlash wouldn’t have been as extreme.
However, there’s simply no excuse for holding this view now.
Caitlin Clark is one of the top two players in the WNBA. Only Las Vegas’ A’Ja Wilson is even in the discussion. Her scoring and passing are off the charts, and she is almost the sole reason for her team’s turnaround and current four-game win streak.
Reese, on the other hand, has been exposed.
As has been pointed out at Breitbart Sports, Angel Reese is only collecting a record-high number of rebounds because she is rebounding her own missed shots. The overwhelming majority of these are point-blank missed shots that fall back to her. She has unilaterally done what was thought impossible: She has wholly devalued the double-double statistic in the WNBA.
The tell-tale sign of this is Reese’s shooting percentage.
In her last five games, Reese has made only 20 of 63 shots from the field. That is less than 33%. It’s an absolutely atrocious number, especially for a big who takes over 80% of her shots from within six feet of the basket.
Yet, she averages 13.3 points per game and 13.1 rebounds per game. Why are the points and rebounds numbers so close together? Ding, ding, ding, you guessed it: She’s rebounding her own bricked lay-ups.
The reality—evident to all, including Lisa Leslie—is that Angel Reese is not only not a Rookie of the Year candidate but barely even a good player.
And if Lisa Leslie and Angel Reese were white, and Clark were black, Leslie would be accused of the blatant racial reasoning she is using to try to justify splitting an award that so obviously belongs to Caitlin Clark and Caitlin Clark alone.
