The Atlanta Dream and Seattle Storm finally met for the first time this season, but it wasn’t just another regular-season game. With Angel Reese being traded to the Dream and Flau’jae Johnson being traded to the Storm, it was the two former LSU Tigers’ first WNBA matchup.

But while Johnson’s night ended with one of Seattle’s biggest wins of the season (105-90), it was a brief moment between the two former teammates that had everyone talking.

“You see what she just did to Angel? Angel don’t think that’s funny,” Rebecca Lobo, announcing the Saturday game, said.

“Yeah, they’re competitors. Teammates and friends, but they’ll be both of those after the final buzzer,” play-by-play caller Ryan Ruocco replied.

With just 1:20 left in the fourth quarter and Seattle clearly already having swept the win with a 103-89 lead, both teams began emptying their benches. Johnson wrapped up one of the best performances of her rookie campaign by finishing the night with 24 points on 9-of-12 shooting, 11 rebounds, and two steals. Giddy, she was hugging her teammate, Natisha Heideman, and walking towards Jade Melbourne when she noticed Reese walking past her.

Johnson walked up to her and extended her hand for a quick handshake for good sportsmanship. However, Angel Reese was having none of it and kept walking, shaking her head while the two exchanged some words. And that didn’t go unnoticed by the broadcasters. In fact, it wasn’t just Lobo and Ruocco, but others too.

On another broadcast, one commentator asked, “Angel didn’t want to talk, did she?”

“There are reports that they’re not exactly the closest that they used to be when they were teammates,” his broadcast partner responded.

But the thing is, their relationship got hampered years ago while they were still in Baton Rouge.

As a senior at LSU, Reese missed four games, and many believed it was a suspension due to poor academic results. While she clarified that wasn’t the case later, during the time, her mother, Angel Webb, and Johnson’s mother, Kia Brooks, were in an online catfight. The two players remained separated for a long time before finally coming together. But the wedge was already there.

Angel Reese and Flau’jae Johnson weren’t just teammates at LSU. During their two seasons together, they became close friends and often appeared inseparable as they won the 2023 national championship before making another deep run to the Elite Eight in 2024. But the divide only grew as Reese left for the WNBA and Johnson stayed in college. It is not something surprising, though, as both of them have previously acknowledged it.

“I still support Flau’jae. We aren’t as close as we used to be,” Reese revealed in the debut episode of her Unapologetically Angel podcast after the 2024 WNBA season. “And there’s no hard feelings or anything, but we aren’t as close as we used to be. That’s why people always expect us to still be posting each other and stuff like that. But, like, we aren’t as close.

“It happens. You don’t have the best relationships with everybody, and don’t always continue relationships with people. So I wish her the best always, and I’m always gonna support her. But yeah, there’s no love lost. But we aren’t as close as we used to be.”

Later, Johnson also said something similar.

“Me and Angel, we aren’t as close as we used to be,” Johnson said in an interview with the New York Post a few days later. “But I still support her 1000%. I was proud of her, just being in the W and breaking records.

“A lot of people said that she wouldn’t go to the W and do all those things, and they kinda hated on her. But I kinda knew that because I’d see it every day in practice, and I see the mentality that she has. So, it’s been dope to watch her.”

Johnson also revealed that she wanted to team up with Caitlin Clark someday and was visibly on Clark’s side during the 2024 All-Star Game. Reese, meanwhile, once said that her favorite player to watch on the Tigers team in 2024 was Aneesah Morrow, clearly removing Johnson from the contention.

But while their friendship is not what it used to be, that doesn’t mean there’s any bad blood between Angel Reese and Flau’jae Johnson.

What the broadcast picked up on during the game was more about the timing of the moment than anything deeper. With Seattle already in control and both players checking out late in the fourth quarter, the game just wasn’t quite at the point for post-game pleasantries yet.

Angel Reese ended up finishing the night with 17 points and nine rebounds, as the Dream recorded their third straight loss of the season. The two will next face off again in Atlanta on July 9.