Charles Barkley shares thoughts on Angel Reese, Caitlin Clark taunting controversy

Charles Barkley is the latest media personality to weigh in on the controversy surrounding LSU’s Angel Reese.

Reese’s late taunting of Hawkeyes standout Caitlin Clark in the women’s national championship was the talk of social media as the game neared its conclusion Sunday. Monday, the Reese-Clark interaction continued to be a hot topic across multiple forms of media.

RELATED: Stephen A. Smith weighs in on Angel Reese, Caitlin Clark drama

Barkley was asked to share his thoughts by Greg Gumbel ahead of Monday’s men’s national championship game.

“Well, I thought it took away from the game,” Barkley said. “In fairness, Caitlin did that in the game before. I thought it took too much attention away from a great performance. She’s amazing.

““You have all these folks on the internet and on television,” Barkley said. “First, they gonna make it about race, which is part of it, (using) ‘unclassy’ and words like that. They (the players) deserve to celebrate. I thought it was unfortunate because people are talking more about that than what a great performance (it was).”

Kenny Smith was quick to agree with Berkley. Smith, Barkley and Gumbel can all be heard in the below video shared on Twitter.

SMDH at Greg Gumbel grumbling on not being pleased on Angel Reese giving Caitlin Clark the business, and then Charles Barkley not making it much better.

But Greg was REALLY be an old fossil here and not applying equal criticism to both. https://t.co/k8ZH3rHa0X

— Andrew Jerell Jones, Luke 1:37 (IG:twdbk3) (@sluggahjells) April 4, 2023

Andrew Olson

Andrew writes about sports to fund his love of live music and collection of concert posters. He strongly endorses the Hall of Fame campaigns of Fred Taylor and Andruw Jones.