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An Ode to Angel Reese’s Gutsy Playoff Masterpiece

She came to Atlanta. She saw a challenge. And she conquered.
Kristen Wong|
The Angel Reese trade is the gift that keeps on giving for the Atlanta Dream in this year’s WNBA playoffs.
The Angel Reese trade is the gift that keeps on giving for the Atlanta Dream in this year’s WNBA playoffs. | IMAGN IMAGES via Reuters Connect

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Atlanta Dream

The greatest sports heroes never let the game come to them. Angel Reese didn’t, either, in the Dream’s thrilling 101–98 overtime win over the Liberty in the WNBA semifinals.

Less than two months after Reese missed a game-winning layup against Caitlin Clark and the Fever in the regular season, the Dream star called her shot on Wednesday night. Before Atlanta’s final inbound in overtime, with roughly six seconds left and the Dream up by one, Reese told her teammate DeWanna Bonner to throw her the ball in the back court. Bonner did, and Reese dribbled for a bit to burn out the clock before getting fouled by a Liberty player.

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Calmly and coolly, Reese stepped up to the charity stripe for a pair of critical free throws. She made both.

Let’s not mix execution with intent, here. She wanted the ball in her hands to ice the game. She got it. And she delivered.

Reese’s free throws gave the Dream a three-point lead late in overtime. New York, confused about whether it had a reset timeout or not, hastily inbounded and put the ball in the hands of its clutch superstar, Breanna Stewart, who air-balled her Hail Mary three. Game. Dream win.

“That’s just IQ right there,” Reese said postgame of Atlanta’s final inbounds play. “It’s gonna take them a couple seconds to come chase me around the court, so I told [Bonner] to throw it to me in the back court, and I’m gonna run as fast as I can out there.”

With the game on the line, Reese, who notably ranked last among the Dream’s starters in free throw percentage in the regular season (72.1%), craved the chance to secure the playoff victory. Knowing that even one miss at the line could lead to an online barrage of nasty jokes or mean-spirited criticism. Knowing that these two free throws might be the biggest shots of her young WNBA career thus far. And, ultimately, knowing that she was up to the task.

“Trust my work,” Reese told ESPN’s Holly Rowe of her mindset leading up to that clutch moment. “I shoot free throws after every single practice no matter how late I’m here, I got to shoot 10 in a row ... last one got to be a swish coming right back to me. It felt like it today, and I trusted my work.”

The Dream’s Angel Reese trade is already paying dividends during Atlanta’s title-contending run

After getting traded to the Dream in April, the 24-year-old Reese continues to prove herself as the unflinching motor and beating heart of a championship-contending squad. The 2026 Defensive Player of the Year shot 8-for-16 from the field for a team-high 23 points while adding two blocks and one steal against New York. She unsurprisingly rose up for seven rebounds, five of which came off the offensive glass, and helped Atlanta—which was missing top scorer Allisha Gray—go toe-to-toe against a relentlessly gritty Liberty side throughout the game.

On one mesmerizing do-it-all sequence in the second quarter, Reese sank a three-pointer, stole the ball on defense and then converted an and-one layup on the other side of the court:

On another play, Reese showed off her defensive agility and know-how by thwarting Liberty big Jonquel Jones:

For four quarters-plus, Reese clogged up the paint and ate up space against two of the WNBA’s most ferocious post players in Jones and Stewart, showing how quickly she could change the momentum of the game with a nifty steal or huge stop. Take a look at this angle of Reese’s thunderous block on Sabrina Ionescu late in the fourth, and hear the home crowd in Atlanta get up on their feet to celebrate their special No. 5:

It’s too difficult to describe Reese’s impact on the game based on the box score alone; she was seemingly everywhere all at once, and she kept her team’s energy and spirits high up until the very end. Including her two game-sealing free throws, Reese scored six of her team’s 13 points in overtime. She also helped stymie Jones on a Liberty drive with roughly 10 seconds left in OT and force a jump-ball situation.

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Off the glass, Reese may already be unstoppable. In her first unfinished season with the Dream, Reese set more career WNBA records with 521 total rebounds (to the tune of a league-leading 12.1 per game), becoming the first player in the W’s history to reach that mark. She posted a single-season record of 32 double-doubles, ranked third in steals per game (1.8) and helped bolster Atlanta’s third-best defensive rating (103.5).

Sprinkle in some more fine-tune improvements in her offensive game, refine her shots around the rim, high-five her undaunted confidence, and Reese has the makings of a transformative franchise superstar.

Not too long ago, Reese was struggling to find her footing while playing for the basement-dwelling Sky in Chicago. Now, the three-time All-Star stands with renewed faith and matured composure, only one win away from the WNBA Finals. It took an unbelievable amount of guts, and resilience: She wouldn’t be here without believing in herself and her talent.

But she also wouldn’t be here without her Dream teammates, who have stepped into the spotlight alongside her on their high-flying playoff run.

“I think our team always rises to the occasion,” Reese said in her postgame presser. “Our team is super fearless, and being in moments like this, we always talk about [how] adversity builds character. All of us have been in situations in our lives where we felt like it was the last possession or our backs were against the walls in some sort, and all of us just saying, ‘Just one more. Just one more.’ We did a great job making sure that we were all on a connected string. We just stayed together and played together, and that’s how we won it.”

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Kristen Wong
KRISTEN WONG

Kristen Wong is a staff writer on the Breaking and Trending News team at Sports Illustrated. She has been a sports journalist since 2020 and has a bachelor’s in English and linguistics from Columbia University. Before joining SI in November 2023, Wong covered four NFL teams as an associate editor with the FanSided NFL network and worked as a staff writer for the brand’s flagship site. She is a lifelong Liverpool fan who enjoys solving crossword puzzles and hanging out at her neighborhood dive bar in NYC.

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