Angel Reese is in the WNBA Finals, but her Chicago exit raises questions about her winning mentality

Angel Reese has been talking about taking control of her destiny. With the Atlanta Dream preparing for the WNBA Finals, things have worked out pretty well for her. But OutKick wanted to know what, exactly, she meant by that.

Earlier this week, Reese told WSB-TV about "taking control of your destiny" and said, "I wanted to come to Atlanta." Those comments got people talking about how she ended up there, particularly the question of whether she forced her way out of Chicago.

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Accounts sharing the interview clip mocked the defense that Reese never requested a trade and didn’t "run from the grind." There’s a difference between formally asking for a trade and making your dissatisfaction known, and Reese had certainly done the latter.

Reese has blocked me on social media, so I’m probably not her first choice for this conversation. I’ve written critically about her and, even more often, her fawning media fans. This was an opportunity to hear her explanation in person.

So, during Friday’s WNBA Finals media availability, I asked her directly: "What role did you play in the trade?"

"I mean, they..." Reese began before trailing off, looking away, and pausing for about three seconds.

"I was being traded," she continued after the false start, turning her eyes back to me. "And I found out I was being traded, and luckily enough, I was able to work with Chicago and where I wanted to go. And Atlanta also wanted me, so it made sense for both of us. And I’m happy just to be here."

Watching her answer, it seemed like she was being very cautious about what she wanted to say. She acknowledged helping choose the destination, but began by describing the trade as something happening to her.

It still seems strange that the Sky were looking to trade Reese in the first place, given how much Chicago invested in her.

The Sky traded up from No. 8 to No. 7 in the 2024 draft to select Reese. The deal included sending Minnesota a 2025 second-round pick and the right to swap first-round picks in 2026.

That 2026 pick became an expensive part of the story. In a separate trade the following year, Minnesota acquired Chicago’s first-rounder outright in exchange for the No. 11 pick in the 2025 draft. The Lynx eventually used Chicago’s selection on Olivia Miles, this season’s unanimous Rookie of the Year.

Then, after two seasons with Reese, Chicago traded her to Atlanta for first-round picks in 2027 and 2028. The organization went from spending draft capital to make sure it got Reese to deciding it would rather have future picks than keep her.

So, what happened in between?

Well, for one thing, Reese publicly criticized the roster.

"We have to get good players. We have to get great players. That’s a non-negotiable for me," she told the Chicago Tribune in September 2025.

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She also said she wanted to spend her career in Chicago, "but if things don’t pan out, obviously I might have to move in a different direction and do what’s best for me."

The Sky suspended her for half a game over comments they called "detrimental to the team." Reese said she apologized to her teammates.

She never played another game for the Sky, remaining sidelined with a back injury after serving the half-game suspension. Chicago traded her the following April.

ESPN’s Alexa Philippou and Kendra Andrews reported when the trade was announced, citing unnamed sources, that Reese hadn’t requested a trade and that there was "no contention" between the two sides. Chicago, according to that account, worked with her representatives to find a new home.

That’s a pretty favorable version of events for Reese. And I’ve written plenty about WNBA reporters acting more like PR representatives than journalists, so I’m going to have some questions before accepting that account as the full story. Who were those sources? Were they speaking for Reese, Chicago or someone else? The ESPN report never identified them.

How much did that public criticism contribute to Chicago deciding to move on? Reporting that she never formally requested a trade doesn’t answer that. And I’m not taking an anonymously sourced account of an amicable trade as the full explanation for how the relationship ended.

Atlanta was quite a landing spot for the 24-year-old forward. The Dream went 30–14 the season before Reese arrived, and she’s helped them reach the Finals this year.

Reese had also compared coming to Atlanta with transferring from Maryland to LSU, where she helped win a national championship. So, I asked her a second question: How does she balance looking for a new opportunity to win against staying where she is and trying to build a winner?

"I mean, anywhere I go, I’m looking to win," Reese said. "I’ve won at every level I’ve been at. So I know me coming into any situation that I’m coming to, it’s a winning mentality, no matter what it looks like and how long it takes."

The Sky weren't strangers to winning before Reese arrived. Chicago made the playoffs five straight seasons from 2019 through 2023, including winning the WNBA championship in 2021. Then the Sky missed the postseason in both of her seasons there.

Reese also explained why she thought LSU was a useful comparison.

"I mean, when I transferred to LSU, not a lot of people expected that we were going to win the championship," she said. "I don’t even know if we were ranked at the time."

I checked. They were.

LSU finished the season before Reese arrived at 26–6, second in the SEC and No. 9 in the final AP poll. Tigers coach Kim Mulkey had already won national championships at Baylor and had just been named AP National Coach of the Year in her first season at LSU. The Tigers entered Reese’s first season ranked No. 16.

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Maryland was a good program, too. The Terrapins went 23–9 and reached the Sweet 16 in Reese’s final season there. Terps coach Brenda Frese was also a national championship coach, but her title came in 2006, 16 years before Reese transferred. Mulkey had won her most recent championship at Baylor in 2019, just three years earlier.

Reese explained that Mulkey wanted to push her and prepare her for the next level.

"When you have a coach that really believes in you and has a mentality of winning, it really helps," she said. "So I was looking forward to and am grateful for that."

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Now, Reese is right that LSU wasn’t widely expected to win the championship. FanDuel’s opening-day odds for the 2022–23 season had the Tigers at 50–1, the same price as Maryland. South Carolina was the clear favorite at +135.

But you don’t have to join the preseason favorite to improve your situation. Playing for Mulkey at a program coming off 26 wins was a pretty attractive option.

Reese told me she brings a winning mentality "no matter what it looks like and how long it takes." But in Chicago, two losing seasons brought public complaints about the roster and talk of going elsewhere. Now she’s in the Finals with a team that won 30 games before she got there.

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Of course that’s a better situation for Angel Reese. I wasn’t asking why she’d want to play for a contender; I was asking how she weighs sticking around when winning takes longer than she’d like.

Chicago gave us a much clearer answer than she did Friday.