“Let it fly”: Inside Angel Reese’s sophomore leap
INDIANAPOLIS — The Sky (7-14) were on the cusp of a breakthrough in early July, up big on the road against the Lynx (14-2). But Minnesota was starting to chip away.
In the third quarter, Reese, fresh out of a slump and back to dominating, got to the line. She said something to Lynx guard Courtney Williams after the whistle, prompting a ref to step in between them. Reese waved the official off, emotion on her face. “We’re good,” she said.
When the teams met again in Chicago a few days later, the Sun-Times asked Williams about that moment — whether players need more space to let on-court heat settle on its own.
But Williams said Reese wasn’t even heated.
What happened, she explained, was just a conversation between competitors.
“I fouled her,” Williams said. “I said, ‘That’s my foul.’ She said, ‘Yeah, that’s like the fourth one we got all night.’ She was clowning. And then because of her demeanor everybody’s like, ‘Ahhhh.’”
Williams’ point was simple: Reese often gets misread. She reacts, and people assume it’s a blowup. More often, she’s just in the moment.
Reese is a passionate communicator and competitor, and she doesn’t calibrate based on resume. In close games this season, she was just as vocal with Tina Charles — a league legend and her mentor — as she was with Shakira Austin, her peer.
At practice inside the Sachs Recreation Center, she’s always giving and receiving tips from teammates. During games, Reese and Ariel Atkins, the team’s leading scorer, are in constant dialogue.
“You can see us [talking] in different little moments,” Atkins told the Sun-Times. “She’s telling me what she was thinking, I’m telling her what I was thinking.”
As the team’s top two players, they made a point of being on the same page. That intentional connection has helped dig the Sky out of an early hole.
They entered the season with a revamped roster and playoff expectations. But after losing point guard Courtney Vandersloot to injury, it looked like the whole project might unravel. Atkins was still working to step into the go-to scorer role. And Reese was struggling to finish layups.
One recurring issue: finding an angle in the low post, where her defenders often have several inches on her. Reese’s goal was to become more efficient around the basket, but her efficiency actually dipped to start the season.
“I kept telling myself, the storm doesn’t last forever,” Reese said before a game near her hometown, more relaxed with her mom in the stands.
As the losses piled up, head coach Tyler Marsh made an adjustment, pulling Reese out more and having her initiate offense beyond the three-point line. There, she could lean into one of her strongest skills: her driving.
The new spacing gave her cleaner finishing angles and let the team capitalize on her vision.
“That’s the [idea],” Marsh said. “Creating space and opportunity for her to utilize all the gifts and strengths that she has.”
Over the last nine games, Reese is averaging 19.1 points on 52.5% shooting, and she’s become the Sky’s best playmaker. Her 3.8 assists per game ranks third among all post players, and they’re not just high-low passes or simple reversals. She’s finding teammates in tight windows and on the move.
“Some of the passes she’s been throwing are legit dimes,” general manager Jeff Pagliocca said via text message.
Opposing coaches often point out that the same traits that make Reese an elite rebounder also make her a dangerous driver: relentlessness, body control, and a refusal to be denied.
And like her rebounding, there are hidden tricks too.
Hailey Van Lith, a rookie and former LSU teammate, has noticed one of them.
“She’s very deceptive with her eyes,” Van Lith said. “She makes it look like she’s about to swing it or reverse — then she attacks.”
That driving ability makes defenders sag off, which is part of why the Sky want Reese taking more mid-range jumpers. But it’s still a work in progress.
Sometimes she’ll catch it with a cushion of space, lock eyes with the rim, and freeze. You can see the wheels turning. If she takes the shot and misses, she talks to herself, then works on her form at the other end.
During the rematch with the Lynx, she passed up an open look and turned to Atkins: “I gotta shoot, right?”
Atkins’s answer is usually the same: “Let it fly. You working on something, you gotta let it fly.”
That afternoon, Reese did. She helped build a big lead with a pull-up jumper that sent Wintrust Arena into a frenzy.
“I felt like I was at the blacktop,” she said after the game, the team’s signature win of the season. “I felt like I was in Baltimore.”
Atkins just shook her head. “The in-and-out pull-up was crazy.”
Even crazier to consider: Reese already changes games in so many ways, she might not even need the jumper. But modern coaches love shooting bigs for how they stretch the floor, and Reese isn’t chasing just effectiveness.
“I want to be unstoppable,” she said in June after the first triple-double of her career.
As a rookie, she was an unstoppable rebounder, grabbing more boards than Tina Charles and Sylvia Fowles, on pace to become the best in league history. This year, she’s becoming an unstoppable driver too.
If she becomes unstoppable in some other category — say, mid-range jump shooting — the rest of the league will have a problem.
As Chiney Ogwumike, a former All-Star and current ESPN analyst, told the Sun-Times during All-Star weekend: early-career success is often powered by motor and physicality. But long careers are built on the ability to adapt and add layers.
That’s why Reese’s sophomore season — with a second All-Star selection now under her belt — stands out. She isn’t just weathering storms, she’s growing inside of them.