Angel Reese exits with leg injury after poor shooting performance vs. former team

Angel Reese's Sunday afternoon against the Chicago Sky started poorly and ended worse. The Atlanta Dream forward, playing against the team that traded her away months earlier, shot 3-of-13 from the field and managed just eight points in twenty minutes. Early in the fourth quarter, as she went up for a layup, her left leg gave out beneath her. She fell hard, briefly got up, then went down again. The Dream ruled her out for the remainder of the game.

Before the injury ended her afternoon, Reese's performance had already been difficult to watch. She grabbed five rebounds—four of them offensive boards, including two instances where she collected her own missed shots—and turned the ball over three times while committing three fouls. Her plus-minus rating of minus-7 was the worst on the Dream roster. She attempted just one three-pointer and missed it. For a player who entered the game averaging a league-leading 11.8 rebounds per contest and 15.7 points, this was a stark departure from form. Two days earlier, she had posted 23 points and 12 rebounds against Toronto, her seventeenth double-double of the season.

The timing of the injury raised immediate concerns about the WNBA All-Star Game scheduled for July 25, just five days away. Reese is widely considered the second-biggest draw in the league after Caitlin Clark, and her presence significantly shapes the All-Star conversation. Dream head coach Karl Smesko said after the game that Reese was in good spirits with her teammates, but he had decided against letting her continue playing. According to WNBA reporter Wilton Jackson, Smesko noted that Reese wanted to keep going but appeared to be in considerable pain.

What made Sunday's performance particularly striking was that the injury didn't cause the poor shooting. Reese had already logged her full twenty minutes before getting hurt fourteen seconds into the fourth quarter. She had simply been off—missing ten of thirteen attempts, a shooting line that left her with more missed shots than either points or rebounds. Her teammates, however, bailed her out. Atlanta had built a lead as large as twenty-two points before Chicago mounted a furious comeback. When Reese exited, the Dream led by just one. Guard Jordin Canada made a game-winning layup as time expired, giving Atlanta a 93-91 victory and improving their record to 16-10. For Reese, it was her second win against the Sky since Atlanta acquired her for two first-round draft picks in April—but it was hardly the revenge performance she might have envisioned.

The Dream don't play again until July 29, giving Reese more than a week to recover. But the All-Star Game comes first, and the league would certainly prefer to have her available. Whether she'll be ready remains an open question.