Lakers News: Angel Reese's Controversial Gesture Has Origins In LA Playoff Series
The Louisiana State University women's basketball team won an incredibly compelling NCAA championship last weekend (the highest-rated game in the history of the women's college basketball NCAA tourney, per The New York Times) thanks to a concerted team effort. LSU's best player, 6'3" wing Angel Reese, was taken a bit out of her rhythm with early foul trouble, but still finished up with a 15-point, 10-rebound double-double, while her teammates stepped up to the plate to take on a bit more of the scoring burden than usual.
Unnecessary controversy erupted when Reese flashed a "You can't see me"/"Can't feel my face" hand gesture to the University of Iowa's best player, point guard Caitlin Clark, during the matchup, with the Tigers lapping the Hawkeyes.
Former Phoenix Suns forward Tim Thomas made the move NBA-famous during Phoenix's charmed 2006 playoff run, which kicked off with a hotly-contested seven-game playoff series against your seventh-seeded Los Angeles Lakers, led by future Hall of Famer Kobe Bryant, enjoying a career season, Lamar Odom, and not much else. The 45-37 Lakers pushed the 54-28 Suns to the brink, before Phoenix ultimately smoked them in Game 7, 121-90.
Thomas talked with Brandon "Scoop B" Robinson of Bally Sports about the gesture, its hip hop origins, and his feelings regarding its revival in the tournament this year.
“I love it," Thomas told Robinson. "I had a opportunity to do a WWE night with Mark Cuban and me and John Cena talked about it that night... we both got it from [rapper] Tony Yayo, I was the first to bring it into Professional Sports, I told my brother Yayo that I would do it in '06 once I got out of my Bulls buyout and joined the Suns. Remember that’s what and saw me doing after every three-point [shot] made."
"I love that the ladies are doing it in what may be the greatest NCAA women’s tournament and championship game in history," Thomas continued. "Shoutout to all of the athletes that use the gesture during their career moments!”
This entire hullabaloo over Reese's relatively innocuous bit of awesome gamesmanship is pretty darn ridiculous, as Clark herself employed the exact same gesture in an earlier game against Louisville during Iowa's run to the title game:
So why did people latch onto Reese's clearly intentional callback to Clark? A generous interpretation would be that they simply didn't see the Louisville game and thus didn't know that Reese was employing a callback, but there could other, less-pleasant readings into pundits' anger (this extends to people like neoliberal former Barack Obama speechwriter David Axelrod and Barstool Sports president Dave Portnoy) as well.
The entire LSU roster, by the way, was gifted with Kobe 6 Grinch sneakers by Vanessa Bryant, following the club's stunning 66-63 upset victory against the Utah Utes during its charmed NCAA tournament run to a title.
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