Let's Talk About the "Sisterhood"

Last week on the Season 29 premiere of the WNBA and the Season 2 premiere of Secret Lives of Mormon Wives (aka Mormon Wives) [Spoilers ahead]:

The first week of the 2025 WNBA season has come with a ton of phenomenal basketball and an almost equal amount of drama.  Likewise, Mormon Wives also kicked off this past weekend with its full Season 2 drop and enough drama to keep us entertained all weekend long.  

Sisterhood of the WNBA

The Mormon Wives often refer to themselves as the “Sisterhood”, and up until the expansion team this year, the WNBA referred to themselves in a similar way – as the “One Forty-Four (144)” (representing the 144 women playing in the league).  Both the WNBA and the Mormon Wives are a sisterhood of women working together to grow their brand and league and sometimes this comes with tension and drama.

The Mormon Wives talk about this “Sisterhood” so much that Mikayla Matthews decided to use it as her safe word to avoid an uncomfortable conversation with Whitney Leavitt.  Every single time one of the Mormon Wives does something nasty to another, it cuts to a talking head of one of them saying something along the lines of “MomTok is a Sisterhood, we are supposed to uplift one another and empower women”, and then they again immediately proceed to do something even more horrible to one another.  This “Sisterhood” is giving all talk no action.  

Weirdly, the WNBA (the League itself, not the 144) seems to be on a similar journey of all talk no action. This past weekend the WNBA hard launched their “No Space for Hate” campaign.  The social media graphics for this campaign have been everywhere and yet when the time came to shut down the literal hate Angel Reese has been receiving since the foul incident (discussed below), the WNBA was nowhere to be found.  It took a ton of social media pressure before they decided to open an investigation.  Only time will tell if the WNBA will actually stand on their “No Space for Hate” Campaign and whether “Sisterhood” of MomTok can survive this season.

Another theme that quickly emerged this weekend in both the WNBA and Mormon Wives was that of rivalry amongst the “Sisterhood”; however, one rivalry is real and another one has been created entirely by the media. Which one is which might surprise you!

Angel and Caitlin

Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese have become a tale as old as time.  Since LSU beat Iowa in the NCAA Women’s National Championship in 2023 a lot of people have had a lot of opinions about these two women, their game, and the infamous “you can’t see me”.  During their rookie season last year, which tipped-off mere weeks after that National Championship game, the media missed no opportunity to continue to push the narrative that not only was there a rivalry between Caitlin and Angel on the court, but that off the court they hated each other.

The only problem is none of that narrative is true. Caitlin and Angel have repeatedly said the opposite. 

In fact, Angel and Caitlin were teammates in All-Star Game last season on “Team WNBA” that beat “Team USA” (the literal Women’s Basketball Olympic Team), and Angel had nothing but great things to say about Caitlin and playing with Caitlin. But try any combination of Google search to find that and you will be force fed charged articles from sites and people whose entire goal is to sensationalize this idea that they dislike each other for clicks and views. 

Even the WNBA itself seems to be capitalizing on this idea of a “rivalry” between the two, and while capitalizing off a rivalry on Mormon Wives makes sense because it is a reality show built on drama, doing the same with two talented young women who have repeatedly said there is no ill will, is something the WNBA really should not continue to feed into.  Unfortunately, exactly that happened - this opening weekend contained a matchup between Angel (with the Chicago Sky) and Caitlin (with the Indiana Fever).  Even though Caitlin and Angel both walked away from this game as the game leaders for their respective teams – Caitlin with 20 points, 10 rebounds and 10 assists and Angel with 12 points and 17 (!!!!) rebounds, the biggest story from that game was one flagrant foul.  The highlights are bad, Caitlin’s foul doesn’t look good and there are allegations that fans in the stands were making racist remarks.  Angel’s reaction to Caitlin’s foul was heated, but no more than we’ve seen any NBA player act when they take a nasty hit.  Despite how bad it looked, after the game, both women stated the call was right and Angel herself said Caitlin’s play was a basketball play.  We even saw Caitlin step it up (a bit more than she has previously) and speak out against the racism she’s seen and heard surrounding the flagrant foul situation since it happened on Saturday.  Yet, again every single site, news source and washed-up athlete (looking at you RGIII) has had something horribly disgusting and negative to say about what happened. 

Here’s the deal – until you hear either of these women say they hate each other, then the facts are that they don’t, and that’s that.  This is an aggressive, physical league containing the 156 (another 12 added in due to the expansion team) BEST women’s basketball players in the world and people are wasting time discussing a rivalry they made up in their heads with the help of the media.  If you are looking for an actual rivalry between women who have admitted they actually don’t like each other, then I invite you to tune into Mormon Wives.

Demi and Jess v. Jen; Taylor v. Everyone:

Two REAL “rivalries” have emerged among the Mormon Wives, the flames of which have also been fueled by the online perception, which the Wives themselves have contributed to.  (Unlike Caitlin and Angel who have used the internet to dispel the rivalry). 

From the beginning of the first episode, it is clear something is up between Demi Engemann, Jessi Ngatikaura and Jen Affleck.  It all began with the infamous Chippendale’s show last season (not unlike the infamous “you can’t see me”).  To really twist the knife this season, Demi and her sidekick Jessi decided to have their husbands perform a Chippendale’s dance for Jen, in front of her husband, who was less than pleased.  To push things a bit further, at this same party, Jessi and her husband dressed as J.Lo and Ben Affleck in a blatant effort to make fun of Jen for mistaking that her husband’s family was related to the Afflecks.  From there the drama raged on with Jen spiraling into a deep depression after receiving an “anonymous” note that she was fake. Instead of supporting Jen during this difficult time for her, while she struggles with her marriage and new pregnancy, Demi and Jessi have been cruel in their talking heads and have worked harder than Kris Jenner to turn the whole group against Demi.

However, luckily(?) for Jen the tides are turning as now Demi has a new target in her sights – Taylor.  After Taylor attended the CMAs and received no comments on her posts she took to social media to stoke the fires alleging that none of the Sisterhood supports her and Demi and the Mormon Wives did not take this lightly.  An all-out social media war ensued.

Thus, the drama and rivalry you are craving, while not found between Angel and Caitlin, can be satisfied by Mormon Wives and their hunt to name the next queen bee of the Sisterhood.

WHERE TO WATCH:

If it’s the Sisterhood drama you crave:

Every single episode of Mormon Wives is now streaming on Hulu and for bonus content - check out their TikToks!

If it’s a real Sisterhood you crave:

There’s a great line of up games this weekend starting with the always FREE Friday night games on ION this Friday May 23:

• Washington Mystics at the Las Vegas Aces on ION @ 4:30 PM Pacific Time

• Connecticut Sun at the Minnesota Lynx on ION @ 430 PM Pacific Time

• Oakland Valkyries at the Los Angeles Sparks on ION @ 7:00 PM Pacific Time

• Phoenix Mercury at the Seattle Storm on ION @ 7:00 PM Pacific Time