Reese bounces back from slow start as Dream builds halftime lead over Fever

Angel Reese came out cold against the Indiana Fever on Sunday night, and she wasn't shy about saying so. Through the opening stretches, she couldn't find the bottom of the net—0 for 6 from the field, missing layups and short-range attempts that should have fallen. It was the kind of start that could derail a player's confidence, the kind of night where the rim looks smaller than it is.

But basketball is a game of momentum, and the Atlanta Dream found theirs before halftime. With Reese still searching for rhythm, her teammates stepped in. Allisha Gray took over, eventually finishing the half as the team's leading scorer. Madina Okot contributed off the bench. Rhyne Howard kept the offense moving. The Dream constructed a 17-point run over the final minutes of the second quarter, a stretch that turned what could have been a deficit into a four-point halftime lead.

Reese herself finished those first two quarters with seven points on 3-for-10 shooting, but she grabbed nine rebounds—the kind of stat line that shows up in the box score as incomplete until you understand the full picture. During her halftime interview with ESPN's Holly Rowe, she was direct about what she'd been doing wrong. She'd been playing poorly, she said plainly, but that's how basketball works sometimes. You have stretches where nothing clicks, and you have to trust that your teammates will carry you through them.

What changed in the second quarter wasn't some technical adjustment or a sudden burst of skill. Reese described it simply: she slowed down, took a breath, and trusted the work she'd already put in. The mental reset mattered as much as anything else. She acknowledged Gray, Okot, and Howard by name, crediting them with keeping the Dream in the game while she found her footing. That kind of honesty—admitting when you're not playing well and giving credit to others—says something about how this team operates.

The stakes made the performance matter more than a regular-season game might otherwise. The Dream and Fever were battling for first place in the Eastern Conference. Whoever won this matchup would hold that position, at least for the moment. Reese, now in her third WNBA season, had already made her third All-Star team. She'd been averaging a career-high 15.6 points per game with 12.0 rebounds coming into this contest, numbers that reflect her growth as a player. But on this night, she was willing to be a secondary piece, to let others lead while she worked her way back into the game.

The Dream's approach—balanced scoring, collective effort, defense as a statement—suggested they understood that playoff positioning isn't won by individual performances alone. It's won by teams that can adjust, that can absorb a star player's slow start without falling apart, that can trust each other enough to share the load. As the second half began, the question wasn't whether Reese would eventually contribute. It was whether the Dream could maintain the momentum they'd built while their best players found their rhythm.