This is an opinion column.

May 2024. Welcome to opening night of the WNBA’s 2024-25 season.

In prime time, on ESPN, it’s the Los Angeles Sparks, who pulled off a stunning draft-day trade to nab LSU’s dynamic forward and two-time NCAA champion Angel Reese with the No. 1 pick, hosting the rising Indiana Fever featuring 2023 top pick and reigning Rookie of the Year Aliyah Boston and newly drafted Caitlin Clark, the Iowa sensation who ended another record-setting season by taking the Hawkeyes to their second straight Final Four.

As Reese and Clark head at midcourt, they greet each other with their now-familiar you-can’t-see-me hand wave, wink, smile, and slap palms. Welcome to the NBA, ladies–the most popular rivalry in basketball. Period!

A guy can dream, though this ain’t much of a stretch.

Last Sunday, Reese (think of her as a 6-foot-3-inch Florence Griffith Joyner) and Clark (a Pete Maravich clone) veritably owned the stage on a night that just might have propelled women’s college basketball past the men’s game like a no-look floor-length pass.

Even before the Reese-Clark face-move kerfuffle heard ‘round the world, Louisiana State’s 102-85 romp over Iowa for the school’s first-ever college basketball championship was a ratings monster for ESPN. It drew an average of 9.9 million viewers (peaking at 12.6 million), trouncing the previous record of 5.7 million for an NCAA women’s tournament game, set more than two decades ago.

RELATED: Embrace Angel Reese and Caitlin Clark, in all of their Black and white.

That was on the heels of 5.5 million average viewership of Iowa’s shocking upset of No. 1 a previously unbeaten South Carolina in the Final Four semis, a whopping 72% higher than the previous year’s semi nightcap. The other semi, between LSU and Virginia Tech, averaged 3.4 million, peaking at million, up 57% from 2022′s early game.

The men? Sure, Connecticut’s 76-59 triumph over Cinderella (and Alabama squasher) San Diego State in the title game on drew more eyeballs than the women (14.69 million average), but that’s 14% below last year’s championship featuring college basketball blue bloods Kansas and North Carolina (17.05 million) and less than the 16 million who watched Villanova-Michigan in 2018.

While eyeballs mean a lot for the networks, it’s the buzz for me—the heat that lingers long after the nets are snipped, and the alcohol-free champagne runs dry.

RELATED: Joseph Goodman: The undeniable Americanism of Angel Reese

The heat that makes for rivalries for the ages. The heat that was Magic/Bird.

Are Reese and Clark there yet? Of course not. But their heat lingered after Sunday’s game, driven partly, but not wholly, by the obvious racial dynamic.

That Reese is Black and Clark white is not the first thing you notice about them, if at all. It can’t be ignored either, though—especially in a game infused decades ago with debates over “Black” basketball vs “white” basketball.

No, LSU-Iowa wasn’t Earvin (Magic) Johnson besting Larry Bird in the vaunted 1979 NCAA men’s final. Yet Reese and Clark are poised to be a rivalry for the ages, one that may do as much to elevate women’s basketball as much as Magic/Bird led the NBA into prime time from an age when television aired the Finals on late-night tape delay because network execs had little faith their (mostly white) viewers would watch.

If they don’t misstep, if they don’t fly too close to the sun as the light shines upon them.

Reese was right to dismiss First Lady Dr. Jill Biden’s wrong-headed suggestion that both LSU and Iowa be invited to the White House—an honor reserved for champions, not runners-up.

But then, on Tuesday, Reese rejected FLOTUS’s walk-back attempt as if swatting a shot into the stands

“I don’t accept that—I’m not going to lie to you,” she said on the “I Am Athlete” podcast. “I don’t accept that apology because she said what she said.”

“We’ll go to the Obamas,” she added. “We’ll see Michelle. We’ll see Barack.”

Okay, then. So, that the Obamas are Bidens are long-time friends make it unlikely the former first couple would wade into such choppy waters. But, hey, Reese can dream.

In truth, both young women should be working this moment—leveraging it to fatten their NIL coffers during their final collegiate year in college, and elevate their visibility, their rivalry, such by the time they’re eligible to join the WNBA next season, they’d own center stage again on opening night.

I’d watch. You will, too.

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Roy S. Johnson is a Pulitzer Prize finalist for commentary and winner of the Edward R. Murrow prize for podcasts: “Unjustifiable,” co-hosted with John Archibald. His column appears in AL.com, as well as the Lede. Subscribe to his free weekly newsletter, The Barbershop, here. Reach him at [email protected], follow him at twitter.com/roysj, or on Instagram @roysj