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In June, Chicago Sky forward Angel Reese claimed on social media that a man “harassed” the team while arriving at their team hotel, following the incident in which teammate Chennedy Carter hard-fouled Caitlin Clark while calling her a “bitch.”
“Finding out our team’s hotel to pull with a camera as we get off the bus and put it in my teammates face & HARASS her is NASTY WORK. this really is outta control and needs to STOP,” Reese posted on X.
A few other players from the Sky quoted Reese’s posts with further allegations against the unnamed man. Sky forward Michaela Onyenwere accused him of calling Carter and the other women “ghetto bitches.” Isabelle Harrison said the man stormed at them to the point they “couldn’t even step off the bus.”
However, six months later, as 2024 nears an end, there is still no proof of the alleged incident. In fact, all existing evidence continues to suggest the incident didn’t happen in the manner in which Reese and her teammates tell it.
There is a video from the scene. But in the video, the man in question does not “harass,” storm at, threaten, or get in the face of the players – as the women stated. Rather, he simply recorded himself asking Carter if she “had a chance to reach out to Caitlin Clark.”
Watch below:
So, where does he shout “ghetto bitches” and block the players from entering the hotel? Put simply, nowhere in the video.
Could there be more to the incident than is on video? Sure. However, the Chicago Sky’s own general manager claims otherwise. In an interview with the Chicago Sun-Times a week later, GM Jeff Pagliocca described the incident exactly as shown in the clip above.
“It was over as fast as it started,” Pagliocca told the Chicago Sun-Times. “I’m very confident in our security always making our players feel safe. Today was a great example of how critical they are to our team.”
“The man had a camera and was trying to approach guard Chennedy Carter, however security was able to de-escalate the situation without the assistance of police, general manager Jeff Pagliocca [said],” added USA Today.
In other words, the team’s general manager directly contradicted the story his players told. For months, OutKick has asked the Chicago Sky team how that could be, what the truth is, whether they have access to another video, and whether it stands by Angel Reese’s allegations.
The team has never responded. We will be sure to update this story if it ever does.
Moreover, OutKick writer David Hookstead also asked several members of the team for comment and/or proof of their accusations. “They all refused to respond,” he said.
And that’s that.
It is hard to imagine that a white man stormed at a group of black WNBA players, harassed them, yelled racial slurs at them, and threatened them but not a single person caught it on camera.
Surely, the hotel would have surveillance footage evidence if that had happened, as it occurred right outside the hotel. So far, the hotel has also refused to comment on the situation.
However, that didn’t stop most of the sports media from covering the allegations this summer as a fact — as the industry did after the Duke Lacrosse hoax, Bubba Wallace noose hoax, the N-word on LeBron’s gate hoax, BYU volleyball hoax, and Dinger” hoax.
See a pattern?
Like American politics, the world of sports is filled with wannabe victims. Angel Reese and the catty mean girls of the WNBA are chief among them.
By all accounts, a man with a camera phone asked Chennedy Carter for an in-person comment after she cheap-shotted Caitlin Clark and sent nasty tweets about her online. We understand that a person running up and asking you questions can be uncomfortable. However, WNBA players demand to be treated the same as NBA players but not with the scrutiny of being a public figure that comes along with it. TMZ made an entire business out of confronting celebrities and athletes in public.
WNBA players – mostly because of Caitlin Clark – are now public figures. They are not victims.
By the way, did the man also shout, “This hotel is MAGA country”?