Angel Reese deserves her flowers for the women’s basketball boom

Reese is one of the WNBA’s primary targets of misogynoir, a reality that unfairly diminishes her role in the growth of the game, her excellence, and the joy she spreads.

(Anatoliy Tesouro/Shutterstock.com)

By Owen Pence

The air all around us is abuzz with women’s basketball chatter. It’s in the morning coffee, the afternoon smoothie, and the nighttime cup of tea. To say women’s basketball is having a “moment” would be to undersell reality. Moments are fleeting. Women’s basketball is here to stay.

How did we get here? The bro at your friend’s housewarming party breathlessly tells you it’s all Caitlin Clark’s doing, but he’s comically misinformed. Deconstruct the all-too-familiar white-savior narrative, and you find another player equally important to the current standing of the game, a player who’s been villainized by fans, media, and everyone in between in an attempt to stoke racist binaries: Angel Reese.

Reese deserves better. Unease should not bubble in my gut when the name of a player who brings so much joy to those around her and who has helped elevate the game in such phenomenal ways is invoked. Yet it does. Have you read the comment sections? Have you heard the men with microphones smugly shaming a young woman for expressing herself? Have you noticed the ways in which Reese is policed for reveling in her own competitiveness?

It’s hard to miss.

The underbelly of a stratospheric rise in viewership, ticket sales, online engagement, and overall investment is an influx of bad-faith actors, sullying a once-sacred space. Reese has become the prime target for folks who see women’s basketball as a vehicle to spread misogynoir. There’s a sickening glee in the way Reese is mocked online. The cruelty is the point.

A trip down memory lane helps illuminate why and when these waters became infected with nasty discourse.

On April 2, 2023, Reese elevated her superstar status as Louisiana State University dazzled its way to a 102-85 victory over Iowa in the National Championship game. Some celebrated this achievement earnestly, highlighting a special team and its special leader peaking at the perfect time. Others chose the vulturous path, isolating a gesture Reese made toward Clark—a celebratory point toward her ring finger—which Clark herself defended. What could have been a snapshot of competitive excellence was instead weaponized to extreme and hateful degrees, intentionally misrepresented as a malicious attempt at tearing down a peer.

Things haven’t been normal since.

“For the past two years, the media has benefitted from my pain and me being villainized to create a narrative,” Reese wrote on X in September 2024. “They allowed this. This was beneficial to them.”

These narratives are dangerous and invasive, packaged so tidily they spread like a bad cold.

The dichotomy between Reese’s and Clark’s on-court style only furthered racist rhetoric as the 2023 NCAA Tournament gave way to the 2024 WNBA Draft. Reese—a high-motored, relentless rebounder who gives maximum effort on every play, insightfully and emphatically defending her opponents; Clark—the flashy, offense-first speedster, zooming up and down the court, shooting threes from different galaxies while bending the geometry of the game.

Those driven by hate saw opportunity on both ends of this stylistic spectrum, labeling Reese as “unskilled” while elevating Clark as the main draw, the one capable of filling arenas and enrapturing the masses.

This is where the loathing becomes so fierce it leaves logic at the door. Angel Reese is built for superstardom. There’s a lot of nuance necessary in this conversation, but there are also the facts. Reese has over 5 million TikTok followers, brand endorsement deals that would make your average NBA player quiver, and kids in No. 5 jerseys lining up at every arena the Chicago Sky visit, shrieking with excitement at a glimpse of their hero. She casually sat beside Megan Thee Stallion and Doechii at a Met Gala table, turning an appetizer tasting into compelling content. Reese’s reach is so massive that to deny her credit for furthering the game’s growth is to spit in the face of reality.

Part of what’s beautiful about seeing Reese affect this many lives and inspire this many people is her ownership of who she is. Reese is honest about the ways in which a Black woman’s confidence is misrepresented in the media, shredded by jealous onlookers, and yanked toward the curve of discrimination.

“I don’t fit the narrative and I’M OKAY WITH THAT,” wrote Reese on Twitter in January 2023. “I’m from Baltimore where you hoop outside & talk trash … Let’s normalize women showing passion for the game instead of it being ‘embarrassing.’”

We must remember that Reese deserves space to be vulnerable. The crown is heavy. Superstars can’t be on every minute of every day. Being the subject of such vitriol on a daily basis results in a mental toll that, to me, is unfathomable. Admiring one’s strength is fine, but it shouldn’t be celebrated when the circumstances necessitating it are bred from a society that denies Black women enjoyment of their feats and triumphs.

To be sure, Black women athletes have walked this plank for a long time. The difference now is that women’s sports, especially basketball, are gaining audience.

Let’s frame things in a way that honors Reese’s excellence instead of tearing it down.

I’m reminded of a recent pregame moment between Reese and new teammate Courtney Vandersloot. Reese has a notable ability to connect with people and make them feel special. She’s displayed it at every stop, from her time at LSU, her delightful run this winter in Miami at Unrivaled, to her current WNBA home in Chicago. In this moment, Reese and Vandersloot are shown on the Jumbotron, looking into the crowd. Recently, Vandersloot and her wife, former Sky great Allie Quigley, announced the birth of their new baby. On the jumbotron you can see Reese and Vandersloot mimicking the cradling of a newborn, beaming and laughing as they express that they want to see the baby.

That’s the real Angel Reese—just as her iconic on-court performances are the real Angel Reese, too.

Owen Pence is a freelance journalist covering women’s basketball. His work has appeared in The Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune, Houston Chronicle, The Dallas Morning News, Star Tribune, SLAM Magazine, SB Nation, and elsewhere. He’s located in New York City.

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