ATLANTA — Angel Reese has always exuded confidence on and off the basketball court.
In her first season with the Atlanta Dream, the third-year pro has already become the team’s emotional leader, and now the 6-foot-4 forward from Baltimore has the 19-year-old franchise two wins away from its first league championship.
Game 4 of the WNBA Finals against the Golden State Valkyries is set for 1 p.m. Saturday at Atlanta’s State Farm Arena, and NBC will televise the matchup. With her baseline-to-baseline energy, Reese will be hard to miss — and she’ll certainly get plenty of attention from the Valkyries.
“I just want to be able to come in every day and just pour into everybody, bring energy, bring the morale, because I think it’s contagious,” Reese said after her team’s 97-71 victory Wednesday night at State Farm Arena.
“I’m hype all the time and bringing confidence into everybody. Like, you’re not taking this from us. In my heart, I’m not letting you take this from us, and I think it becomes contagious within the team. They feel that confidence, too. So that’s kind of been my mindset throughout the entire season. Just being able to want it more than anybody else.”
Reese, who came to Atlanta in an offseason trade with the Chicago Sky — the team that selected the former LSU star with the No. 7 overall pick of the 2024 draft — is making the most of her first postseason appearance. She became only the second player in WNBA Finals history with at least 20 points and 10 rebounds in consecutive games; the first was Las Vegas Aces center A’ja Wilson, a three-time WNBA champion who won her record-extending fifth league MVP award this year.
At 24 years old, Reese also became the youngest player with three straight double-doubles in the title round. She had 14 points and 12 rebounds in a 68-64 loss to the Valkyries in the series opener last Saturday in San Francisco, upped her game with 30 points and 16 rebounds two days later in a 79-65 victory on the same floor at the Chase Center, then had 21 and 12 in Wednesday’s win at State Farm Arena.
“Angel shows up in every game,” said Atlanta point guard Jordin Canada, who won WNBA titles with the Seattle Storm in 2018 and 2020 and was traded to the Dream two years ago. “Some people only show up at big games, but she’s consistent with that, and she brings her teammates along.”
Reese, a three-time WNBA All-Star who was voted the league’s defensive player of the year for the first time this season, has raised her game offensively during the postseason and has averaged 21.7 points and 13.7 rebounds in the title series so far. She had always displayed an incredible motor while outworking opponents on both ends of the court, but now her offensive game has caught up.
“It’s really hard to match Angel’s energy, but we just try to do our part … just doing the little things to get into it,” Dream forward Naz Hillmon said. “She brings a ton of energy. It’s very infectious. She brings her teammates with her, as (everyone) can see, so (it’s about) just continuing to beat into it and go along with what she’s got going on.”
Reese entered the WNBA with criticism of her offensive skills. She didn’t shoot much outside of the lane, and detractors said many of her rebounds came from her own misses. Now she is hitting 3-pointers at a 47% success rate in the postseason and shooting about the same from the field overall, thanks in part to the trust she had in Atlanta coach Karl Smesko to change her shot.
It has helped her go from two losing seasons in Chicago to within sight of adding a WNBA championship to her ever-growing hoops résumé. She helped lead LSU to the 2022 NCAA Division I women’s basketball tournament title as a junior, and she was part of the wave of young players who helped the U.S. add to its stack of FIBA Women’s Basketball World Cup titles in September.
When asked after Wednesday night’s win if she belonged in the conversation with other Atlanta sports greats such as Hank Aaron, Deion Sanders and Dominique Wilkins, Reese deflected the notion.
“I’ve only been here six months, so I don’t know how y’all can give me that yet,” she said. “My goal was to come to Atlanta and win a championship. And I think you become one of the greats and you become one of the best when you can win and impact winning. And that’s all I wanted to do coming here. Everything else really doesn’t matter to me.”
Gray giving herself ‘grace’ while injured
Allisha Gray’s left hand isn’t 100% yet, but the Atlanta guard is doing all she can to help the franchise win its first championship.
Gray injured the ring finger on her shooting hand in Game 1 of the Dream’s semifinal series against the New York Liberty on Oct. 4. After missing the final two games of that round, she returned for the WNBA Finals opener last weekend.
The four-time WNBA All-Star has averaged 15 points through the first three games of the title round, but the 31-year-old is shooting just less than 29% from the field, including 22% from behind the 3-point line.
“The biggest thing for me is giving myself a lot of grace. I am literally playing with eight fingers,” said Gray, who wore a black velcro brace on her shooting hand while talking to reporters Friday. “It’s knowing I am not 100% ‘Lish,’ the one that can hit shots and things like that. But if I give myself grace, I know the other ways I can impact the game. I know that a 10% Lish is better than a 0% Lish.”
Gray, who has averaged 4.3 rebounds and 3.0 assists against the Valkyries, briefly left Game 3 after Golden State star Gabby Williams made contact with her injured hand. She did return a few minutes later and continued to play.