Angel Reese won’t get the formal apology she deserves, but she has already received plenty of anonymous ones on the internet.
On Monday night, moments after Reese bulldozed her way to 30 points and 16 rebounds in the Dream’s 79-65 win over the Golden State Valkyries in Game 2 of the WNBA Finals, a post appeared on Reddit’s r/WNBATalks titled “Apologies to Angel Reese.”
The thread consisted of a bunch of folks owning up to their freezing cold takes about Reese, the Dream’s polarizing power forward.
By the next day, it had 88 comments.
Last night, Reese gave them another reason to hold their L when she notched 21 points (on 7-12 shooting) to go along with 12 rebounds, 3 steals and 3 assists as the Dream defeated the Valkyries 97-71. For the finals, Reese is now averaging 21.7 points, 13.3 rebounds, 2 assists, 2 steals and 1 block as the Dream have taken a 2-1 lead in the best-of-seven contest.
Amid growing pains, concerns about stat-padding, and, frankly, implicit racism, a lot of WNBA fans didn’t think Reese could be the best player on a championship team. But here she is on the cusp of a chip and a Finals MVP trophy. No matter how this series ends, Reese has already won. She has silenced her critics and converted her skeptics who scolded her about everything from her style of play to her perceived attitude.
And she’s accomplishing all of this while at the center of a ridiculous culture war she was enlisted in before she even donned a WNBA jersey.
The Caitlin Clark Effect
The opening salvo in the “war” occurred when she was cast as the villain in the Caitlin Clark story.
While they had competed against each other dating back to their AAU days, their public rivalry truly began when Reese’s LSU Tigers faced Clark and the Iowa Hawkeyes in the 2023 NCAA women’s basketball championship game. In the closing seconds of an LSU blowout win, Reese approached Clark with the “U Can’t See Me” gesture before pointing to her ring finger as LSU won its first NCAA women’s title.
At the time, Clark was the consensus player of the year and the biggest star attraction in women’s basketball, professional or college. And of course she was white.
The narrative was set. Angel Reese was the boisterous Black woman full of bluster mocking this noble white woman. For half the country, Reese embodied everything wrong with sports.
Never mind that Clark herself had engaged in similar mid-game trash talk and taunts throughout her career.
Never mind that Clark literally defended Reese’s celebration afterwards.
None of that mattered. This was a Larry vs. Magic redux: a brewing racial war between fans despite the players refusal to participate in it—and now with the added accelerant of social media.
And so, when the Chicago Sky drafted Reese with the seventh overall pick of the 2024 WNBA Draft, a promising but still-developing young player was placed under a microscope.
Like most rookies, Reese struggled making the transition to the pros. She still had to learn how to finish over length, resulting in a plethora of missed lay-ups, the footage of which would inevitably go viral.
So even when she averaged a promising 13.6 points and 13.1 rebounds and was named an All-Star, most online fans and the casuals who cover the league focused on her misses and 39% field goal percentage and pointed to Clark’s record-breaking rookie season in Indiana.
Year two went a bit better until it turned into a disaster.
Reese averaged 14.7 points and 12.6 rebounds while hitting about 46% of her field goals. She had improved, but the Sky, a fraught organization with a history of losing star players, weren’t supportive. They fired Reese’s head coach, Teresa Weatherspoon. Then, when point guard Courtney Vandersloot tore her ACL seven games into the season, the team was without its initiator on offense.
Perhaps these factors played some role in Reese’s admittedly ill-advised interview with the Chicago Tribune. Speaking to a reporter, she called out the Sky for allegedly being unable to get better players, and wondered aloud whether the squad could rely on the then-36-year-old Vandersloot in the future. All of this led to a justified half-game suspension. Around that same time, she earned her eighth technical foul of the season, leading to a full-game suspension.
Members of the media, including Stephen A. Smith, blasted her for focusing too much on her tunnel fits and off-court brand. She was criticized for walking in a Victoria’s Secret fashion show. She was criticized for her fiery play.
And then she and the Sky missed the playoffs.
And winning players don’t miss the playoffs.
So Reese wasn’t a winning player.
Until she was.
A Rebirth in Atlanta
In April, the Sky traded Reese to the Atlanta Dream for two first round picks.
The organization seemed to have given up on the Bayou Barbie. But Reese would embark on the most successful season of her career. She was already a two-time WNBA All-Star, but now she upped her scoring to 16.4 points per game while roughly maintaining her efficiency. Her rebounds held steady at a little over 12, but her blocks and steals averages went up; she averaged 1.8 steals and 0.7 blocks for the highest stocks total of her career.
Like the best players, Reese’s impact went beyond the raw box-score stats: during the season, the Atlanta Dream allowed just 102 points per 100 possessions with Reese on the court. They allowed 114.5 points per 100 possessions without her. That would be good for the second-worst defensive rating in the league. It was a case fitting for a Defensive Player of the Year trophy. So it’s only right that she won it earlier this month.
In addition to fortifying her defensive presence, Reese continued developing her dribble-drive game, going from finishing about 52% at the rim to 57% this regular season. She was under 50% her rookie year. The level-up is one anyone—besides, perhaps, a sore loser veteran of the culture wars—can appreciate.
Few would appreciate it more than WNBA Hall of Famer and four-time WNBA champion Cynthia Cooper. In an interview with Complex last month, the four-time WNBA Finals MVP spoke on Reese’s improvements as a player, citing her defensive versatility, high-energy hustle, and improved creation abilities as factors in her deserved all-star campaign. After Reese had been maligned as a less-than-ideal teammate in Chicago, Cooper also praised her as a great teammate.
“I will tell you that [Reese] has been absolutely an all-star this year,” Cooper said. “She has really been great. And it's not just her nose for the rebound and her rebounding both offensively and defensively. It's her putting that ball back in the basket through contact, her taking players off the dribble, like facing up and taking them off the dribble and then her running the floor. Oh my goodness, get the rebound outlet and now she's running the floor and it hasn't taken away from her defense. I think that is one of the most underrated things in her game.”
While Reese is a better player now, there are areas she can still improve upon. Her true shooting percentage remains a non-negligible amount below league average, and she has more turnovers than assists. But her improved scoring punch, along with her stellar defense, has her rightfully designated as the Dream’s best player this postseason.
And more importantly, Atlanta is now two wins away from the WNBA Championship. It’s a reflection of a work ethic some people might have allowed to be outshined by a caricature that shouldn’t have existed in the first place.
“She has done a fantastic job of getting better in the off season,” Cooper said. “She heard the critics. She heard the criticism, and she just went back to the drawing board and started working on her game. And that's the mark of a great player.”
And now she’s got the chance to win a chip. Great players do that, too.
