The Florida Panthers are Stanley Cup Champions, winning a hard-fought Game 7 against the Oilers to win their first title in team history. It comes just after the Boston Celtics won the NBA Championship — and at the center of both teams is a remarkable bond between friends.
Jason Tatum of the Celtics and Matthew Tkachuk of the Panthers are long-time friends, going back to their days at Chaminade Prep School in the suburbs of St. Louis. Tatum, a promising basketball player befriended Tkachuk, who wanted to follow in his father’s footsteps into the NHL (Matthew is the son of the legendary Keith Tkachuk).
The two spent time together, pushing each other, even making goofy videos together — as this assignment Tatum made for school stars Tkachuk briefly.
Tkachuk was drafted by the Flames with the 6th pick in the 2016 NHL Draft, Tatum was picked by the Celtics with the 3rd pick in 2017. Now less than a decade later they’ve both won titles in the same year.
The ongoing saga between Brandon Aiyuk and the 49ers took a twist on Monday when video released was posted on TikTok of a conversation between Aiyuk and Jayden Daniels of the Commanders.
Admittedly this feels a little contrived. Even if you’re going to have this kind of private conversation about your contract situation, why would you allow it to be posted on your own TikTok account? Sure, it might be a way to pressure the 49ers into taking some action and move the extension along — but it could also sour whatever progress has been made.
There’s been a lot of talk about whether Aiyuk will be on the Niners long term. This year he’s playing on his fifth-year option, but after drafting Ricky Pearsall in the 2024 NFL Draft the team seems poised to part with either Aiyuk or Deebo Samuel moving forward.
It’s been reported that Aiyuk is seeking a contract in the ballpark of what other top receivers have gotten, which would put him anywhere from the $30-40M mark in AAV. That’s no necessarily an unfair ask given his recent performance, but it’s unclear if paying a receiver big money meshes with the 49ers philosophy.
Time will tell how this plays out, but it appears this mess is going to get uglier.
INDIANAPOLIS — It may still be very early in their respective journeys, but Angel Reese and Caitlin Clark will be tied to one another no matter what happens over the rest of their careers.
Even before simultaneously entering the WNBA as part of one of the most heralded rookie classes ever, Clark and Reese — and especially the competitive college clashes between their Iowa Hawkeyes and LSU Tigers, respectively — played a huge role in bringing the women’s game to a national audience.
Sunday offered the latest chapter in their rapidly growing rivalry. For the second time in as many meetings against the Chicago Sky, Clark was hit with a hard foul. This time, it was Reese who caught Clark in the head on a block attempt, a play that was eventually deemed a Flagrant-1 foul.
While it likely won’t create the national firestorm the last flagrant foul against Clark in a game against the Sky did, it was a watershed moment between the two in another game that came down to the wire, a recurring theme in matchups between the pair.
Clark had arguably her best game in the WNBA, flirting with a triple-double while finishing with 23 points, 9 assists and 8 rebounds, as well as a couple of late clutch plays — including an assist to NaLyssa Smith and a pair of free throws in the final 30 seconds — that helped seal a fifth win of the season for the Fever (5-10) and fourth in the last six games.
Reese left her mark as well, scoring 11 points to go with 13 rebounds (5 of them were offensive), and 5 assists.
After the game, though, there was only one topic to discuss. After cursory first questions to open their pressers, the second question for both Clark and Reese postgame was about the flagrant foul.
“What’s going through my mind is I need to make these two free throws,” Clark said when asked about Reese’s flagrant foul. “That’s all I’m thinking about. It’s just part of basketball. It is what it is. She’s trying to make a play on the ball and get the block but, yeah, it happens.”
Reese, meanwhile, was far shorter with her response, calling the foul a “basketball play” and stating that she was going for the ball. Neither wanted to make a big deal about it, but that won’t stop the take train from going down the tracks — and potentially derailing women’s basketball discourse for a few days once again.
Clark and Reese are no strangers to being in this spotlight, nor is it new for them to do it together. Sunday was the eighth time the pair have faced off, including in college. Reese won the first four meetings, culminating in the national title game in 2023 in which the first viral moment between the two came when Reese taunted Clark in the waning seconds of the game.
Clark, though, has won the three most recent meetings. That includes the Elite Eight contest earlier this year and the two WNBA meetings between the pair so far.
While their duels in the Big Ten when Reese was at Maryland in her freshman and sophomore seasons before transferring to LSU didn’t capture the national audience, their tournament showdowns certainly did. The pair helped set the record for the most-watched women’s college basketball game of all time in 2023 at 9.9 million viewers.
This spring in a rematch with a Final Four berth on the line, they obliterated that record, with 12 million fans tuning into the game. In their first WNBA meeting this season, 1.5 million fans tuned in, the fourth-largest audience to watch a WNBA game in the last two decades at the time.
After years of commanding enormous audiences on the collegiate level, Clark and Reese are now bringing a whole new set of eyes to the professional ranks.
“They love to watch us,” Reese said of her and Clark before Sunday’s meeting. “I think we’ve done a great job bringing a lot of fans to the league from college. I think we both have done that from our respective schools and [having] our championship runs and going to the Final Four. I think we did a great job bringing fans from college to the league and…we’ll continue to help [the league] grow.”
Brad Penner-USA TODAY Sports
Given the events and controversy that took place in the first meeting between the Fever and Sky in their first meeting, the TV audience for Sunday’s game will almost certainly be another large one. Gainbridge Fieldhouse was sold out for the fourth time this season, and the fans were as loud as they’ve been all year.
It’s inarguable that Reese and Clark are compelling television: two of the best young players in the world squaring off with one another time and time again as they help grow the game along the way.
But what Clark thinks draws audiences most, though, is the “emotion and passion” the two play those showdowns with.
“I think people love to see that,” Clark said. “I think that’s maybe not something that was always appreciated in women’s sports and it should be. That’s what makes it fun. We’re competitors. That’s the way the game should be. It’s going to get a little feisty, it’s going to get a little physical but at the end of the day, both teams are just trying to win.
“I think what she’s done with her platform is incredible. She has an entire fanbase that has supported her [with] what she did at Maryland and then LSU. Obviously, I’ve played her for a very long time and she’s been a tremendous player. It’s been fun to get to compete against. I think it’s been really good for the game. People just love seeing great matchups. But also, at the same time, people tune in for these matchups but then they get to see how amazing these teams are and then they find new players to support and continue to come back for them, too. So, I think that’s another benefit of it, honestly.”
Sunday was another noteworthy moment in the rivalry. Even if both downplayed it, the headlines from the game won’t be about Clark’s near-triple-double or Reese’s double-double. It will bring attention to the league, but not in the way either desire.
The pair, though, is bringing lots of the wanted attention to the league as well. And Reese and Clark will have plenty of opportunities to provide more memorable moments against one another.
The WNBA is not chock full of rivalries that resonate on a national scale the way Clark’s and Reese’s do. The Liberty and Aces are a clear one as the league’s two superteams, but outside of that, there aren’t many other nationally-known rivalries.
Pregame, Fever head coach Christie Sides was asked if their matchups against the Sky feel like rivalry games. Sides, who served as an assistant in Chicago from 2011 through 2016, said it was a “huge” rivalry and has been for many years. But even if that’s how it felt to those on the inside already, the addition of Reese and Clark was always going to bring it up a couple of notches now.
They’re two of the bright young stars in this game and have already defined an era of the college game. They look to be on the path to doing the same in the WNBA as well.
And if they do, it could help elevate the league to its highest levels yet.
