SAN FRANCISCO -- Ninety minutes before tip-off on Monday, Angel Reese finished her pre-game warm-up and walked straight to a scrum of a dozen media members waiting in a tunnel. The youngest member of the Atlanta Dream's starting five made no excuses for how Game 1 ended. She only promised that Game 2 would be better.
"I can't let my team down," Reese said. In front of another hostile Ballhalla crowd that booed her introduction louder than any other Atlanta player, and erupted every time she was called for a foul, Reese carried the Dream to a 79-65 win over the Golden State Valkyries in Game 2 of the 2026 WNBA Finals. She finished with a playoff-career-high 30 points on 10 of 16 from the field, 16 rebounds, three assists, a steal and two blocks in 34 minutes.
The best performance of her young career not only evened the Finals at 1-1, but gave the Dream their first Finals victory in franchise history. "That's what we expect from her night in, night out. She's young and she hasn't been here before, but that's not an excuse," DeWanna Bonner told CBS Sports after Reese became the third player in WNBA history with 30 points and 15 rebounds in a Finals game.
"We ride her back, we ride her coattail, we ride her energy. We expect that from her every single game." Dream coach Karl Smesko had a feeling Game 2 would go his team's way when he walked into the locker room before tip-off and made eye contact with Reese. "I was like, 'Oh, I like that look," Smesko said.
Reese's teammates saw it too. "You can just see that she wants it really bad. She's such a competitor and we feed off of her energy," Jordin Canada said.
"She set the tone for sure, and it trickled down to the whole team." ANGEL REESE MADE HISTORY IN GAME 2 🔥She led the @AtlantaDream to their FIRST-EVER Finals win with a monster performance, dropping 30 PTS, 16 REB, 3 AST & 2 BLKS on 10-16 shooting! #WNBASeason30 | #2026WNBAFinals pic.twitter.com/YueB9Z7M1j Reese, who didn't score in the second half of Game 1 and took only three shots in the final 26 minutes, pledged to be more "assertive" on Monday. She followed through immediately. Forty seconds in, she had to reach back and make a catch with one hand because she was trying to drive before she even had the ball.
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