Chicago Sky forward Angel Reese knew going into the 2025 WNBA season what her biggest detractors thought about her shooting ability.
Her inability to finish at the rim was the biggest knock on her game, and when the season started, it didn't look like she had gotten much better. Through her first seven games, she shot just 31 percent from the field, down significantly from an already lackluster 39 percent that she shot her rookie year, primarily around the rim.
Then, she turned it on with an 8-13 performance against the reigning champion New York Liberty. By season's end, her field goal percentage sat at 45.8 percent — still not dazzling, but an improvement.
“I just trust my work,” Reese said Tuesday on her “Unapologetically Angel” podcast. “I put in countless days, countless nights, countless hours. So knowing that like if I miss six, I can make six more and I’m still at 50%. Or I can make seven and I’m over that. Or I can make eight, I can make nine. Especially for me, like I know the team needs me, the team needs me to perform. And if I don’t have a positive mindset or if I’m not in the right mind I’m useless.”
Reese has owned the criticism from the start, too. The Reebok athlete launched a “Mebounds” colorway of her Angel Reese 1s — a nod to the word her critics coined to describe her rebounding her own missed shots.
She revealed on another episode of her podcast that the haters made her “six figures” off the shoes.
“They tried to clown me for rebounds, and what did I do? I made a bag off of it. Six figures plus,” Reese said. “Y'all can try again, because I do need another idea for some more colorways, so just keep it coming.”
She explained in a story for Elle that she didn't even know the term until she went on TikTok and saw people spamming her comments.
“I was like, ‘Well, might as well make some money off of it.' And we made a lot of money off of it. It's important to maximize the moment, and turn a negative into a positive,” Reese said. “We clearly did that. Also, to be able to give some of the money to my foundation for cyberbullying was great. It was like killing two birds with one stone.”
