Angel Reese put together the league-leading 24th double-double in a win over the Las Vegas Aces, but not everyone is convinced the numbers tell the whole story. Reese finished with 21 points, 10 rebounds, and four assists. However, WNBA analyst and podcast host Ben Daniel focused less on what Reese did well and more on how she got there. Daniel pointed to several missed layups and shots that Aces players blocked before turning his attention to something he believes played an even bigger role in Reese reaching the 20-point mark: her trips to the free-throw line.
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“You wonder how she got most of these points? Nearly half of these points on the free throw line. Look, look at these clips… Reese has the craziest whistle in the WNBA. Half her points come off phantom fouls. Even A’ja Wilson doesn’t have a whistle like this,” Daniels said on the podcast.
The clips he showed during the podcast included several plays where he questioned the calls in Angel Reese’s favor.
“Where’s the foul here? … One bounce into the lane. Where’s the foul there?” Daniels said about a whistle in Reese’s favor during the final minute of the first quarter before turning the comparison toward Caitlin Clark.
“If Caitlin Clark had a whistle like this, you know how many points she would average a game? 60. She’d average 60 a game.”
Per Basketball Reference’s stats, Angel Reese has gone to the free-throw line 216 times this season, compared to 207 attempts for Clark. That is only a nine-attempt difference over an entire season. However, there is an important limitation to those numbers. Free-throw attempts only tell us about fouls that were actually called. They cannot account for contact that may have occurred without a whistle.
In other words, the raw attempt totals can show us what the officials called, but they cannot prove whether one player was consistently denied calls that another received. The bigger difference appears when looking at how much of each player’s scoring comes from the free-throw line.
Angel Reese has made 160 free throws out of her 535 total points, meaning free throws account for roughly 29.9 percent of her scoring this season. Meanwhile, for Clark, 177 free throws make up about 25.0 percent of her 707 points. Additionally, there is another notable difference: Clark has converted 85.5 percent of her free throws, compared with Reese’s 74.1 percent.
Furthermore, Clark’s scoring outside the stripe makes the comparison even more striking. The Fever guard has knocked down 88 three-pointers this season, accounting for 264 points by themselves—well above the 177 points she has scored from free throws. And that, ultimately, is where Daniels’ argument gets interesting.
The numbers do not prove that Angel Reese receives a uniquely favorable whistle, nor do they establish that Clark is being denied calls. But they do show that free throws make up a larger share of Reese’s scoring than they do of Clark’s. Whether that difference is simply the result of their styles of play or evidence of the officiating disparity Daniels believes exists is a much bigger question.