What’s Angel Reese’s greatest achievement?
Is it her latest one, winning 2026 WNBA Defensive Player of the Year?
Is it both making and then thriving with the gold medal-winning USA Basketball Women’s World Cup team? Is it breaking WNBA records, headlined by breaking the league’s single-season rebounds and double-double records, as well as becoming the first WNBA player with a 500-rebound season? Is it helping the Atlanta Dream win 30 games, make the playoffs as the No. 4 seed and sweep their first-round
series?
Or, is that she manifested all that, announcing those goals on her podcast, Unapologetically Angel, before achieving them all, and even more?
Angel also declared that her theme for the year was elevation, explaining, “I want to continue to elevate in every category of my life”
The DPOY is culmination of her manifestation of elevation.
Reese earned 46 of 74 Defensive Player of the Year votes. The Golden State Valkyries’ Gabby Williams finished in second place with 20 votes. The reigning co-DPOY, the Las Vegas Aces’ A’ja Wilson, was third with four votes. All of the Washington Mystics’ Shakira Austin, Valkyries’ Veronica Burton, Mystics’ Sonia Citron and Dream’s Rhyne Howard collected one vote.
In her first season in Atlanta, Angel established herself as the foundation of the Dream defense, leading them to a 103.5 defensive rating. Her ability to influence the possession game—through her 1.8 steals per game and 12.1 rebounds per game—consistently snuffed out scoring opportunities for opponents.
The high point of Reese’s season might have been her record-breaking rebounding game against the Los Angeles Sparks, when she corralled a WNBA-record 26 rebounds.
Or, maybe for the always-elevating Angel, the high point is yet to come?
The Dream begin their semifinal series on Sunday against the New York Liberty.
