Dream’s Angel Reese Blamed Herself, Then Led Atlanta to Its First WNBA Finals Win

After the opener of the WNBA Finals, Angel Reese had an alibi waiting for her. Golden State’s coach was already crediting the defender assigned to her. Reese refused it. “I don’t think they really did anything, maybe that was just on me,” she told reporters, and then named the fault in one sentence: she had not been aggressive enough with the ball, had not fought to get to her spot.

Back on the floor in San Francisco, the Atlanta Dream forward did exactly what she said she would, and the franchise won a Finals game for the first time in its history. The coverage calls it redemption. It was something more specific and more fragile: a player who diagnosed herself in public and then played to the diagnosis. The catch is that Golden State has read the same diagnosis, and its answer runs through the whistle.

The fade, and the excuse she turned down

Reese opened the series loud. She scored 11 points in the first quarter of Game 1, according to The Sporting News, and all 14 of her points came before halftime. Then nothing. She did not score after the break, finished with five fouls and four turnovers, and Atlanta, which led going into the fourth quarter, lost 68-64.

The way out was right there. Laeticia Amihere, a Valkyries forward who had appeared in one playoff game before that night, spent long stretches on Reese, and Natalie Nakase praised her for it. “I thought [Amihere] did a fantastic job with that matchup,” the Golden State coach said, as Bleacher Report relayed from SI.com. Reese declined the framing. Accountability is cheap after a win. After a Finals loss, with the credit already handed to the player guarding you, it is a commitment, and it comes due the next night.

Playing to the diagnosis

Game 2 looked like a promise being kept. Reese took 16 shots, up from 11, and went to the free-throw line 11 times, up from seven, according to ESPN’s box scores. She made 10 of the shots and nine of the free throws, and finished with 30 points and 16 rebounds in 34 minutes. Her coach saw it before tip-off. Karl Smesko said he caught her eye in the locker room and thought, “Oh, I like this look.”

“I let my team down last game, not really contributing as much as I could in the second half,” Reese said afterward, per ESPN. “I was hungry,” she added. “I think we let one slip away [Saturday]. You can’t do that.” Then the line that explains the whole night: “I walked off the court not feeling like myself, and I wanted to make sure that this game, I did everything I could do to walk off the court and feel like who I am.”

Her teammates felt the volume. “You can just see that she wants it really bad. We feed off her energy,” point guard Jordin Canada said. Allisha Gray told the BBC that Reese “just came out on a mission tonight.”

The whistle is now the matchup

A post player’s aggression shows up at the free-throw line, and that is where Atlanta won. The Dream led 39-37 at halftime, then took the third quarter 21-9 while going 12-of-12 from the line, ESPN reported. For the night they made 30 of 35 free throws; Golden State attempted 19. Reese scored nine points in the stretch across the third and fourth quarters in which Atlanta outscored the Valkyries 30-8, according to the BBC.

Nakase’s answer did not mention Amihere, who played eight minutes. “We’re going to see how close these fouls were,” she said. “[The Dream] do lunge forward at times. We’ve just got to make sure we take a close look.” She did not name Reese. She did not need to: no one in Atlanta’s rotation went to the line more often. Golden State’s adjustment for Game 3 starts with the contact that put her there.

What the win ended, and what comes next

The 79-65 win ended a run of 10 straight Finals losses for the Dream, dating to 2010, after series defeats in 2010, 2011 and 2013. Reese became the third player with at least 30 points and 15 rebounds in a Finals game, after Jonquel Jones in 2019 and Breanna Stewart in 2020. She is in her first season in Atlanta after a trade from the Chicago Sky, which drafted her seventh overall in 2024, and she was voted the league’s Defensive Player of the Year after averaging a career-best 16.4 points and 12.1 rebounds, per The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Gabby Williams, the runner-up in that vote, scored 26 in Game 1 and went 3-of-15 in Game 2.

Neither franchise has won a WNBA title. The best-of-seven series, tied 1-1, moves to Atlanta for Game 3 on Wednesday, Oct. 21, at 8 p.m. ET, and Game 4 on Saturday, Oct. 24.

Reese has picked up five fouls in each game of this series. The edge that saved Atlanta has almost no room left in it, and Golden State is going to the film room to find the last inch.

Tags: Angel Reese, Atlanta Dream, Golden State Valkyries, Natalie Nakase, WNBA Finals