Angel Reese has spent much of her basketball journey proving her game is about more than the headlines, debates, and criticism that follow her wherever she goes. Now, as she helps the Atlanta Dream close in on a WNBA championship, her performances are giving even greater weight to the argument that her impact deserves far more appreciation than she has received.
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For ESPN host and WNBA analyst Chiney Ogwumike, Reese is already making a compelling and convincing case for the Finals Most Valuable Player award. And Ogwumike is not even waiting until the series is over to make her choice. She already named the Atlanta Dream star her pick for the honor, pointing to her remarkable production and the significant improvements she has made to her shooting.
“She’s my Finals MVP, no question about it,” Ogwumike said on ESPN’s First Take. “And what she’s been able to do has been truly impressive. She’s averaging over 21 and 13 so far in the WNBA Finals. But more importantly, her team is 15-and-0 when she knocks down a three.”
“She has been the missing link for a team that has had talent. And she now sets them over the edge. And so, this is a unique era for the WNBA, and she deserves her flowers and everyone’s respect,” she added.
Ogwumike highlighted a particularly remarkable aspect of Reese’s game: her completely reconstructed shot, which she credited to Carl Smesko and accomplished in the middle of the season. She noted that now, when it matters most, Reese has knocked down multiple three-pointers while also contributing steals and transitioning the ball coast to coast. Ogwumike described Reese as a 24-year-old young woman on the precipice of winning who has already earned Defensive Player of the Year honors and could soon win a championship.
Angel Reese has indeed been transformative for the Atlanta Dream all season. When she first signed with the team, teammates like Allisha Gray described her as the missing piece that would finally push Atlanta past the first-round exits that had defined their recent postseason history. She has proven to be exactly that, and even more, producing from the regular season all the way through the postseason without missing a beat.
Her regular season, which culminated in the WNBA Defensive Player of the Year award, saw her lead the league in rebounds with 12.1 per game, post Defensive Win Shares of 3.39, and start all 43 games while helping the Dream allow 7.9 fewer points per 100 possessions with her on the floor. The numbers told the story of a player who anchored the entire defensive identity of her franchise.
And somehow, she has elevated that level even further in the postseason. So far through the Finals, she is averaging 21.7 points and 13.3 rebounds per game while shooting 56.4 per cent from the field and 75.0 per cent from three-point range, numbers that represent a remarkable all-around efficiency in the highest-pressure games of the season.
That three-point efficiency is particularly striking given her history from behind the arc. In fact, she shot just 19.3 per cent from deep during the regular season. So her postseason accuracy from distance is one of the more unexpected and impactful developments of this entire championship run.
Overall, what is certain is that Angel Reese has entered this WNBA Finals with extraordinary determination and resolve, particularly after their Game 1 loss to the Valkyries.
She has shown that emphatically in Games 2 and 3, exploding for a Finals-record 30 points and 16 rebounds in Game 2. In Game 3, she added 21 points and 12 rebounds to join A’ja Wilson as one of the only two players in WNBA Finals history to record at least 20 points and 10 rebounds in back-to-back games. The Dream currently leads the series 2-1 heading into Game 4.
In her own words after Game 2, “Whatever the team needed tonight, I was willing to do.”
She will be carrying that same energy into Game 4. And if the Golden State Valkyries can not find the right answers for her, the Atlanta Dream could just be looking at their first WNBA championship.