Game recognizes game, but real friendship celebrates greatness. While Angel Reese is busy making history in the 2026 WNBA Finals, Dallas Wings star Paige Bueckers is having a proud friend moment. The Dallas guard praised the Atlanta forward’s championship-series clinic, pointing out that Reese’s rise to the top of the basketball world is anything but accidental.
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“The crown she wears is heavy, but she wears it well. To see her thrive on the biggest stage…she deserves it,” said Bueckers about Angel Reese, per Justwomensports.
“Just to see how she handles everything with grace, just being unapologetically herself, I admire that, and so it’s really great to see her hoopin!”
Bueckers maintains that the duo have kept in touch over time and are there to support each other.
“Me and Angel are close friends, we’re great competitors, people who just want the best for each other. We’ve stayed in contact. Just wishing her the best, talking to her, talking basketball, talking hoops, so to see her thrive on the biggest stage, she deserves it. She works for it. Really happy for her.”
Reese had a good start to her WNBA Finals journey, dropping 14 points and grabbing 12 rebounds, but after failing to score in the second half, her performance drew criticism, and she took the blame for Dream’s loss.
Reese let her game do all the talking in Game 2, as Atlanta roared back in the series. Her performance delivered the franchise’s inaugural WNBA Finals win while securing her spot in the record books. With 30-plus points and 15-plus rebounds, she joined an elite two-player fraternity, Breanna Stewart and Jonquel Jones, to post that stat line on the Finals stage. Reese finished the game with 30 points, 16 rebounds, three assists, and two blocks.
As things stand, Reese has picked things up where she left them in Game 2, as she dropped 15 points in Game 3 till the halftime break on 6 of 10 shooting from the field.
While there is no denying Reese’s impact on the court, she is contributing to growth in an important aspect off the court as well.
Angel Reese Driving Finals Viewership Growth
It seems that Angel Reese made quite the impact on television ratings in her first Finals appearance, drawing 2.1 million viewers across NBC and Peacock for Atlanta’s clash with Golden State, per Marca.
Even with the Dream falling 68–64, the broadcast reached a peak of 3 million viewers, becoming the most-viewed Finals opener the league has ever seen. The 11 percent year-over-year jump from last season’s Game 1 quickly sparked fresh discussions among supporters about the impact Reese is having on women’s basketball.
However, numbers only tell part of the story. Television ratings cannot measure how many eyeballs were drawn purely by Reese’s presence, nor can they untangle how much the broader league is still benefiting from the rising tide of Reese’s popularity.
Still, WNBA legend and Hall of Famer Sheryl Swoopes was already in Reese’s corner before Game 1 tipped off. Joining The Draymond Green Show, the WNBA icon addressed the polarizing discourse around the Atlanta star, arguing that Reese simply commands an outsized amount of focus from supporters and skeptics in equal measure.
“You should tune in to the finals because of Angel Reese,” said Swoopes. “She alone is worth the price of the ticket…”
“Angel is gonna have people watching this because there’s a large consortium of people who want to see her succeed; there’s an even larger group of people who want to see her fail, and they’re gonna watch to see her fail.”
With Atlanta leading Game 3 by the end of the third quarter, the excitement remains high among the Dream fans. With a much larger home crowd present at the State Farm Arena to support them, the Dream will look to make the most of the home-court advantage.
Atlanta fans will hope that Reese can continue her dominant run in the rest of the series as well and bring home the franchise’s first-ever championship.