Angel Reese has never been shy about showing love to her teammates, and her latest comment was no different. Following Mali’s historic win against the top-ranked Spain, Reese had nothing but praise for a teammate who broke records for her team.
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The teammate in question is Malian forward Sika Kone. Kone scored 19 points and 10 rebounds, leading the team in both categories, logging her fifth straight double-double in the World Cup. According to the official FIBA Instagram page, this made her the first player to do so since 1994, 32 years ago.
In the comments of the post, Reese immediately showed how proud she was of her teammate. “DONT PLAY WITH SIKA,” she wrote.
Apart from Angel Reese, she also saw public support from the official Atlanta Dream Instagram account, which commented, “LET’S GO SIKA 🙌.”
What makes this win even more important is just how significant the result was for Mali. The 82-73 stunner against Spain was only the second-ever World Cup win for the country, and their first since beating Senegal in 2010, 16 years ago.
For her efforts, Kone was named the TCL Player of the Game, an award she accepted while draped in the Malian flag after the game.
Even more impressively, in her seven career World Cup games, Kone has recorded a double-double in six. The only time she failed to do so was against Australia on September 23, 2022, when she logged nine points and six rebounds during a blowout 58-118 loss.
After the game, Kone was overcome with emotion and told reporters just how much the win meant to both her and the team.
“It’s everything to us,” Kone said, per FIBA.
“To be able to win against Spain is everything. I mean, we are not surprised because we all are professional players. So, we just have to continue to believe in what Coach told us and stay with that… Spain is one of the best teams, so to be able to beat them is amazing. Also, we have good players too, but we just have to believe in it and try to stay with the game plan.”
Kone has played much of her career internationally with Spain, including stints at SPAR Gran Canaria from 2019 to 2023, then CB Avenida till 2025, and is currently with CAB Estepona Jardin.
Kone also told reporters that she was proud of the team for bouncing back after a tough loss to Japan on September 4, but highlighted that they are focused on whatever competition comes next.
“In yesterday’s game [against Japan], we were up for most of the game, most of the time. We lost, we were a little bit down, but we tried to encourage each other to come back stronger,” she said.
“We said the competition is not done, so we have to keep believing in ourselves and keep going.”
In the WNBA, the forward has had a turbulent career, bouncing around the league. Since being drafted by the New York Liberty in 2022, she has played for the Chicago Sky, Minnesota Lynx, and Washington Mystics before finally landing on the Atlanta Dream.
The Dream picked up Kone on August 15, 2025, adding her to bolster their frontcourt. This season, she has played 32 games for the Dream, but doesn’t get more than five minutes a night due to the team’s already stacked forward rotation, especially after they added DeWanna Bonner after she was bought out by the Phoenix Sun.
Now, the World Cup has given her a massive platform to showcase what she is really capable of, and she has certainly made the most of it.
Angel Reese, for her part, clearly isn’t surprised. After countless practices with Kone, she knows what her teammate is capable of, and her comments might be the perfect summary of the Malian forward’s World Cup campaign.
Mali will next face Germany, but they won’t face the US in the group stage. If both teams qualify for the knockout round, we might see Angel Reese take on her teammate in the midst of a historic run.