On Angel Reese’s big night back in Chicago, everyone has moved on — except the fans
· Yahoo Sports
CHICAGO — Because this was not Angel Reese’s actual first return to her first professional basketball home, the welcome back Tuesday was a little muted.
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Just one fan hustled to floor level to hold up a sign a few feet from Reese when the Atlanta Dream emerged for stretching. Only one more displayed a sign behind the visitors’ bench. Hoots and whistles followed her official introduction — “At center, Angel Reese” — just before the 6 p.m. CT tipoff, but dissipated quickly. There was no in-game tribute video like the one that ran inside Wintrust Arena when Reese and her club swung through for a preseason game in late April.
Yes, Chance the Rapper was on hand to emphatically check the box for celebrity audience members. But four minutes before the Chicago Sky’s initial meeting with the two-time All-Star they traded in the offseason — in a game that counted, anyway — anyone else could get in the building for less than $20.
Now that people had been here and done this twice, maybe it was only right that the basketball was more compelling than the back story. A fourth-quarter surge led the Dream to an 82-75 win over the scuffling but persistent Sky, with Reese showing up in town and generally doing what she’s been doing: Occupying space in the middle of everything.
The third-year center finished with 17 points, 17 rebounds, four assists, two steals, six turnovers and a team-high plus-18 rating when she was on the floor. The night also featured just her second made 3-pointer of the year, an emphatic demand for a review to overturn an illegal screen call in the third quarter — turned out Reese was right — and a huge offensive board with 90 seconds left that led to Allisha Gray’s bucket and an 8-point lead. Reese’s layup with 56.1 seconds left to bump the advantage to 10 was the icing.
According to Reese, multiple Dream teammates requested a heavy dose of her energy and competitiveness on this trip to her former stomping grounds. Asked and received, all on the heels of an 18-point, 17-board night one game earlier against the Washington Mystics.
“Just finding my flow, finding where I fit in,” Reese said. “The team makes it easy for me because there’s so much talent around me, you just can’t sit on me the whole time, when everybody else is so great.”
Most critically, the win preserved the Dream’s hopes of advancing out of the Eastern Conference and into the Commissioner’s Cup final with $500,000 of prize money on the line. Atlanta’s home game against the first-place New York Liberty, who are unbeaten in Cup play, looms on Thursday.
And there would continue to be no buyer’s remorse on the ride back from Chicago.
To review the particulars: The Sky drafted Reese out of LSU with the seventh overall pick of the 2024 WNBA Draft, one of their two first-rounders that year. (Kamilla Cardoso, still with the club at starting center, was the other selection at No. 3.) She made two All-Star appearances in two seasons in Chicago before some turbulence at the end. Reese was critical of teammates and asked to be coached harder in a story published by the Chicago Tribune in September 2025, which earned her a half-game suspension by the team. She didn’t play another game for the Sky.
On April 6 came the blockbuster announcement: Atlanta picked up Reese in exchange for first-round picks in 2027 and 2028, plus a second-round pick swap in 2028.
Since then, both sides have taken pains to paint it as the best move for both parties. When the teams met for the preseason game in Chicago in late April, the Sky rolled a tribute video for Reese during the first timeout, which was followed by a standing ovation.
Since then, fates have diverged. Starkly. The Dream entered Tuesday tied with the Dallas Wings for the league’s third-best record, with Reese averaging 13.3 points and a WNBA-best 11.7 rebounds per game. The Sky, meanwhile, stumbled in three games under .500, thanks primarily to an offense with the league’s second-worst effective field goal percentage (45.4). (Which prompted offseason pickup Skylar Diggins to call out the team for a “loser mentality” after a blowout road loss to the Toronto Tempo.)
The Sky offense flipped for a half on Tuesday but didn’t sustain the rate of production after the break. Which ultimately led to “sell the team” chants from the home crowd and a victory lap for Reese once the buzzer sounded, a one-woman parade of autographed hats and delirium-inducing selfies.
“She had a remarkable game,” Dream coach Karl Smesko said of Reese. “I think she’s got back-to-back 17 rebound (games) and that hasn’t been done by a Dream player ever. I really thought down the stretch, she made really big plays. We were looking for her to screen and get behind people and she did it. Just a great effort by her. It seems like down the stretch, she has a tendency to step up and do what needs to be done.”
“WE MISS THE MEBOUNDS,” read that sign held aloft by the young girl in a Dream jersey behind the bench.
Unfortunately for her and anyone else sharing the sentiment, it’s abundantly clear there’s no going back now.
“It just felt like another game,” Reese said. “Just doing my job.”
This article originally appeared in The Athletic.
Atlanta Dream, Chicago Sky, WNBA
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