Angel Reese can laugh about it now. She wasn’t laughing when it happened.
The scene was an Atlanta Dream practice, earlier this season. Dream coach Karl Smesko — who came to the WNBA after a college background based on getting teams to shoot layups, 3-pointers, free throws and nothing else — stopped a drill and wouldn’t resume play until Reese made back-to-back shots from 3-point range.
Reese was part embarrassed, part furious. Teammates cheered, and after a couple misses, Reese got the consecutive makes. Practice resumed.
Smesko’s calculated risk was this: If Reese could step out of her comfort zone and handle pressure before her teammates in that moment, then she surely would be able to do the same in arenas with thousands of people watching. Sure enough, he was right — and Reese, whose penchant for missed layups has drawn waves of criticism over the start of her pro career, is now playing with renewed offensive confidence for a Dream team that opens the WNBA Finals against the Golden State Valkyries on Saturday.
“Now it’s so easy, my confidence is through the roof,” Reese said. “When I shoot them, it just feels like practice.”
Let’s be clear: Reese isn’t a knockdown shooter quite yet.
She shot 19% from beyond the arc in the regular season. Smesko told her changing the shot would be difficult and the numbers proved him right. He also told her that she would see improvement by the All-Star break, and again, he was right.
Now in the playoffs, albeit with a small sample size, she’s shooting 39% from deep. And in the semifinals against New York, she hit four 3s in a three-game series where the average Atlanta win margin was a mere five points. Every little bit mattered.
“Start with the reality: This wouldn’t have worked unless she was open to making significant changes in her shot,” Smesko said. ”Because of the labor agreement not happening until a couple of weeks before the season, we didn’t get a chance to work together until then. We needed a realistic plan. Who’s willing to make drastic changes to her shot two weeks before a game is going to be played? I think a lot of people probably would have just waited for another offseason, but we decided to do it anyway.”
Reese was dominant offensively in the three-game sweep of the Liberty: 20.7 points per game on 48% shooting from the field and 89% from the foul line.
She and Smesko work together constantly on the shot. They have a plan to keep doing so going into next season. And it shouldn’t surprise anyone if the league’s defensive player of the year turns into a legitimate, consistent 3-point threat in 2027.
“The sky’s the limit,” Smesko said. “It’s a lot more comfortable already. And once we can really have the time just to dedicate ourselves to a couple things, I mean, what she’s capable of becoming ... it’s going to be amazing.”
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Tim Reynolds, The Associated Press