Angel Reese’s third WNBA season has taken her somewhere she had never been before. The Atlanta Dream star has won Defensive Player of the Year and reached the WNBA semifinals for the first time. For former college basketball player Rachel DeMita, however, the story goes beyond Reese’s numbers. She believes one decision gave Reese the chance to shape what came next for herself.
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“She saw early on in Chicago like, I’m not winning here. I’m not going to be able to excel here,” DeMita said on the Courtside Club episode on YouTube. “We’ve seen the player get so much better from her first two seasons to this season.”
In Chicago, Reese’s best points tally was 462 in her rookie year. Her 705 points this year have blown that personal best out of the water. Similarly, she had 32 blocks and 77 steals this year, both miles above her personal best tallies in a year at Chicago. So, the analysis of that one decision does seem to have changed everything.
DeMita singled out Reese while reflecting on Atlanta’s semifinal opener, where the forward delivered another impressive all-around performance.
“I want to specifically shout out Angel Reese. She actually won Defensive Player of the Year this year… In this game [semi-final game 1], she had 17 points, 7 rebounds, 2 assists, 4 steals, and 3 blocks, which is insane. I’ve just seen such incredible growth from Angel Reese… And I think the biggest thing I’ve been impressed by with Angel Reese is her ability to create her own destiny,” DeMita said in her video.
Rather than simply accepting things as they were in Chicago, Reese made her frustrations known and pushed for changes. She did exactly that during a lengthy interview with the Chicago Tribune, openly discussing her concerns about the Sky’s front office, coaching staff and roster construction.
Reese also made it clear that she expected the team to make significant changes in free agency.
“I’m not settling for the same sh*t we did this year,” she said. “We have to get good players. We have to get great players. That’s a non-negotiable for me.”
Reese also called out several teammates, including Courtney Vandersloot, Rachel Banham and Hailey Van Lith. Though she later apologized for her comments about her teammates, the tension between Reese and the organization eventually preceded her move from Chicago to Atlanta.
That change appears to have worked out remarkably well for Reese. DeMita pointed to the confidence Reese now carries on the court, while also highlighting her performance with FIBA.
“We’re seeing her thrive in Atlanta on the basketball court. She did really well in FIBA as well. You see this new confidence with her and you also see with Angel Reese and it feels like she’s even more locked in on basketball than she ever has been… And she called it out at the beginning of the season. She’s like, ‘I want to be defensive player of the year.’ And she went out and got that,” DeMita added.
Over the FIBA tournament, Reese played a total of 90 minutes and averaged 7.2 points a game and five rebounds.
Furthermore, her Player Efficiency Rating (a per-minute, pace-adjusted box-score metric that measures a player’s overall offensive and minor defensive productivity) has also risen from 17.6 during her first season with Chicago to 20.7 in Atlanta. Still, the biggest difference may be what those numbers cannot fully capture.
Reese went from missing the playoffs with Chicago to making the postseason in Atlanta and now playing in her first semifinal series. After deciding she needed something different, Reese has put herself in a position to achieve exactly what DeMita believes she set out to create: her own destiny.