Angel Reese Ascends
At the precipice of superstardom the basketball star remains true to herself, despite what haters may say.
On her 22nd birthday, Angel Reese walked into the Met Gala — the first WNBA rookie to do so.
She wore a mint green gown, her waist circled by an explosion of matching feathers.
Want the latest issue in your inbox?
A week later, she played in her first WNBA game for the Chicago Sky, scoring 12 points and grabbing eight rebounds with an assist and a steal against the Dallas Wings.
On Saturday, May 18, she received her degree in interdisciplinary studies from Louisiana State University.
“So now what? what was said? oh okay that’s what i thought. I graduated from THE LOUISIANA STATE UNIVERSITY IN 4 YEARS ON TIME,” she posted on X, formerly known as Twitter.
Reese has been a star in Baltimore for a long time, but ever since the Randallstown native took her LSU team to the NCAA March Madness finals in 2023, beat out the Iowa Hawkeyes, and set up a rivalry with Caitlin Clark, she’s been a household name in women’s basketball.
When it comes to social media followings, Reese is in the upper echelon of athletes. She has well over 400,000 followers on X, 3.1 million followers on Instagram and 3.2 million on TikTok. A fan live-streamed her professional debut on social media because the game wasn’t being streamed on the WNBA app, garnering over 500,000 total views. The WNBA changed course and livestreamed her next preseason game.
Reese has dealt with detractors throughout the sport and on social media, from personal threats to racial epithets. But she’s continued to be herself: an unapologetic Black woman who walks to the beat of her own drum.
She’s a champion, an All-American, and someone who may be the bane of the existence to her haters, but will continue to fight to change the way that people view women’s athletics for the far future.
“Being able to be a face of women’s basketball right now and… being able to change that narrative that you can talk trash as a woman and be competitive and not take it personal, that’s something that I carry in my game,” Reese said, following a game against Coppin State on Dec. 23, 2023.
When her LSU team couldn’t make it to the finish line in 2024, a year when the women’s March Madness tournament garnered more hype and viewers than the men’s tournament, she had a decision to make: stay at LSU for one more year, or declare for the WNBA draft.
In line with the persona she’s cultivated for herself as the Baltimore — and later Bayou and Chi-town — Barbie, she announced her intentions to enter the draft in a Vogue Magazineshoot.
“A kid from Baltimore not supposed to be here,” she said at the 2024 WNBA Draft. I’m just happy. And my mom is here and my brother is here. I wouldn’t be able to do it without them.”
She told reporters she knows she is making an impact.
While the new crop of WNBA players and a planned league expansion brings a heightened wave of attention to women’s basketball, Reese is a star amongst stars.
How did she get there? By years of effort and sculpting an image of a hard-nosed on-court persona and a cosmopolitan one off-court that has galvanized the basketball world.
Reese’s stardom starts with her mother, Angel S. Reese, who was a standout on her own. The elder Reese scored 1,390 points and grabbed 932 rebounds in her career at UMBC and played a season in Luxembourg. She also was a two-year standout at Woodlawn High School.
“She’s a lot more skilled than I was at this age,” Angel S. Reese said of her daughter at her jersey retirement at St. Frances in 2020. “So, it’s just exciting to see that all of her hard work has paid off. It’s nice to see your kids follow and enjoy something that you enjoyed at one time.”
The Reeses grew up playing basketball with one another, learning the ins and outs of the game from their mother. Crashing the backboard glass by boxing out and finding the ball became a family hobby.
The grit and intensity that Baltimore is known for is what the Randallstown native has come to adopt as her own. Basketball standouts like Carmelo Anthony, Muggsy Bogues, Sam Cassell, Jasmine Dickey, Brionna Jones, St. Frances’ own Angel McCoughtry, and Reese’s high school teammate Nia Clouden all hail from the area.
“I would have to say that Baltimore has a lot of talent on the men and women’s side,” McCoughtry said in a March 31, 2021, interview ahead of USA Basketball camp. “It’s just the DMV area – we’re not far from D.C., not far from Philly, not far from Virginia — just that whole combined area has so much talent. I was watching Maryland play the other day and they’ve got some great talent from our area. So, it’s really exciting to see what’s coming up.”
St. Frances head coach Jerome Shelton’s coaching staff has cultivated a number of stars over the years. None of them are quite like Reese, who built a name for herself at the institution in her freshman season. From that point on, everyone who watched her knew exactly what she was and who she’d become.
“In her sophomore year, she continued to raise her level of play and got better,” Shelton recalled. “She was All-Metro all four years. I think getting USA Today All-American first-team and becoming a McDonald’s All-American — those are the first two in our program. So, I’m really happy for her and excited for our program that we could have a player of her stature here.”
Reese loves to revel in the fire that her competitors show — it just raises her level of play to the maximum. And while the opponent may make a bucket and clap, they need to prepare for Reese to bark back.
That was ever evident in Reese’s return to Baltimore last December, a matchup against Coppin State — just miles away from where she grew up. During LSU’s decisive 80-48 victory over the Eagles, Reese heard as much from her opponents as she typically gives to them. And for that, the 22-year-old was grateful.
“Trash talking, that’s just what I do,” Reese said after the game. “That’s where I’m from and that’s what we do in Baltimore. Being able to be back out here and the girls was talking trash, that’s something I’m used to. And I’m happy to be out here with girls that understand that.”
This specific December night was just months after Reese hoisted an NCAA championship trophy with her teammates on April 2, 2023, in a decisive 77-73 victory over Iowa and Caitlin Clark. The game set a then-record of 12.3 million viewers with a peak audience of 16.1 million, per ESPN.
The year 2023 continued to be a whirlwind for Reese. During the summer, she was honored with a court dedication at Scotts Branch Elementary School in Randallstown. She was named to the 2023 USA Women’s AmeriCup Team on May 14, 2023, where the United States won silver. On July 18, 2023, she earned a key to the city of Baltimore.
“The significance of it is that if you follow Angel’s career all of the way back to St. Frances, you know her history,” Mulkey said following LSU’s win over Coppin State last season. “I know as much about Baltimore as Angel has allowed us to learn… Certainly, she’s very, very proud. She has done a lot of things.”
Just one day following the WNBA draft, Reese’s jersey sold out on the online WNBA store.
While former rival Caitlin Clark might be putting the Indiana Fever at the forefront of the sports world, Reese is expected to do the same for the Chicago Sky. Ticket prices have soared, and teams have had to move their games to bigger venues.
Anticipating her hometown demand, the Washington Mystics had to move their June 6 matchup with Chicago from the 4,200-seat Entertainment and Sports Arena to the 20,000-seat Capital One Arena.
The day after her first regular-season game for the Sky, Reese made it clear that her success and drive to keep winning come from being raised in Baltimore’s basketball culture.
“Just being able to be from where I’m from — I’m from Baltimore,” Reese said to journalist Dorothy Gentry on May 16.
“Me and my mom, we have a really close relationship. Me and my mom and my brother, that’s what it’s always been. That’s my motivation.”
