Angel Reese Rips Media for Making Her the WNBA Villain, Then Gets Major Reality Check From Fans
Decisions have consequences.
This shouldn’t be a three-word statement I should even have to make. Anywhere, ever, but especially as the lede to a story. If you choose not to do your homework, you get a zero. If you choose not to spend time with your child, you won’t bond with them and they’ll grow up to resent you. If you drink a fifth of Jack Daniels a day, you’ll probably have some liver ailment sometime down the road, not to mention loads of other consequences.
I could continue ad nauseam, but I won’t. This is a law of social and biological nature so foundational that deviations from it are merely exceptions that prove how bedrock to the human experience this rule is.
And Angel Reese, WNBA star rookie extraordinaire, apparently doesn’t like the rule — or somehow wasn’t aware of it.
Coming into the 2024 WNBA season, Reese was riding high as one of the brightest stars in a draft class that could go down as the best in history. The former Louisiana State University star was drafted by the Chicago Sky — along with another one of the biggest names in the rookie class, University of South Carolina star Kamilla Cardoso, who led her team to the NCAA Women’s Basketball Championship over the University of Iowa.
Their star, Caitlin Clark, would be picked No. 1 by the Indiana Fever.
Right away, a rivalry developed between Clark and the Fever and pretty much the entire Sky team, particularly Reese and veteran teammate Chennedy Carter.
Reese, who has never shied away from being outspoken, relished the new spotlight suddenly shining on the WNBA in general and Fever-Sky games in particular. In fact, she said she was ready, willing and able to “take the villain role” in the name of “growing women’s basketball.”
Grow it did. Except Reese doesn’t like the role she’s chosen now; according to the Los Angeles Times, she says the gambit has “backfired on me,” because apparently taking on the villain role involves being treated like a villain.
Who would have ever thought this decision might have that consequence?
As the L.A. Times noted in its Friday piece, Reese’s comments come amid complaints from WNBA players that, along with new fans, new incidents of bigoted abuse from trolls in the stands has become an issue. While no videos of racist slurs or chants being hurled at players en masse have surfaced, isolated reports have been made and the league has issued a statement noting that it “will not tolerate racist, derogatory, or threatening comments made about players, teams and anyone affiliated with the league.”
— WNBA (@WNBA) September 26, 2024
However, it’s worth noting that the bulk of the accusations of fan abuse came during the WNBA playoffs … which the Sky didn’t make, and by a not insignificant margin.
After spending much of the season in the top eight seeds — which make the postseason in the 12-team WNBA — the Sky finished 2-8 in their final 10 games, including five straight losses, to finish 13-27, two games out of the playoffs in the 10th seed.
In addition, Reese lost out to Clark for Rookie of the Year in a unanimous vote.
However, not happy with being cast as the “villain” despite the fact that she said she was doing it to grow women’s basketball — and, not coincidentally, her personal brand — she decided to lash out on social media about how she was being treated like a villain.
“For the past 2 years, the media has benefited from my pain & me being villainized to create a narrative. They allowed this. This was beneficial to them,” she wrote Thursday on the social media platform X.
“I sometimes share my experiences of things that have happened to me but I’ve also allowed this to happen to me for way too long and now other players in this league are dealing with & experiencing the same things. This isn’t ok at all. Anything beyond criticism about playing the game we love is wrong. I’m sorry to all the players that have/continue to experience the same things I have….
“This is why I started my podcast. To take my voice back and create the narrative of who I really am. At the end of the day, I don’t want an apology nor do I think this will ever stop but something has to change.”
For the past 2 years, the media has benefited from my pain & me being villainized to create a narrative. They allowed this. This was beneficial to them. I sometimes share my experiences of things that have happened to me but I’ve also allowed this to happen to me for way too long…
— Angel Reese (@Reese10Angel) September 27, 2024
In another missive: “I’ve never in my life had privilege but I definitely know the power I have through my platform. That didn’t come overnight. I grew that on my OWN. With that being said, I will continue to use my voice in the right way & say what’s right even though it has backfired on me to be this ‘villain’. I won’t stop!!”
I’ve never in my life had privilege but I definitely know the power I have through my platform. That didn’t come overnight. I grew that on my OWN. With that being said, I will continue to use my voice in the right way & say what’s right even though it has backfired on me to be…
— Angel Reese (@Reese10Angel) September 26, 2024
Suffice it to say, some of the world’s tiniest violins began playing for our poor little rich girl on social media:
You literally said you would take on the villain role and now you’re crying when you’re treated like a villain?
— E-Man (@WigginsWick22) September 27, 2024
Oh please! Stop crying already,grow up!
— 𝐅𝐢𝐧𝐢𝐬𝐡𝐞𝐫 (@MajorDefender) September 27, 2024
Not reading all that, congrats or sorry for your loss
— Matty Ice (@mattyicee9) September 27, 2024
Sooo you’re no longer taking on the villain role? 💀
— fatty patty (@theonlydyl_) September 27, 2024
And that last question is the pertinent one: Decisions have consequences, but those consequences allow us to make other decisions, hopefully with consequences more in line with what we desire for ourselves.
Reese got attention this year because she played the heel on a team that was more than full of heels, to use some pro wrestling terminology. Granted, she’s a fantastic player, provided you don’t need her to make a layup. This is kind of a problem, given that players in her position — forward — are expected to grab offensive boards and then make easy layups, not chuck the ball six feet over the basket like a middle-schooler. But this is easily correctable, and one assumes that, given proper coaching and experience, her star will continue to rise — athletically, anyway.
In other words, she doesn’t need to be a villain to get attention. She’s acted like one. That’s not my opinion, those are her own words. But she can stop, and people will stop treating her like a villain.
The question remains whether she wanted to play the villain because it was good branding or whether she wanted to because it fit her personality — and, if it’s the latter, whether maturity allows her to shed the villain persona. There are plenty of athletes who have gone from loathed to loved, from Kobe Bryant to Andre Agassi to Randy Moss to Darrell Waltrip to (yes, even) David Beckham. Young athletes are going to act like young athletes and should be given space to mature, no question.
That being said, Reese’s rants about her self-labeling as a villain — and then complaining about how that turned out for her — weren’t exactly the best of auguries. Maybe spend more time practicing layups and less time ranting about how your own self-branding “backfired on me?” That’s a decision, most would agree, that would definitely yield positive consequences on all fronts.
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