Angel Reese put up 18 points and 10 rebounds Monday, and the stat everyone’s still replaying isn’t hers. It’s Breanna Stewart’s first technical foul since 2017, drawn with about two minutes left after Reese got a piece of the ball on Stewart’s hand and no whistle came.
The Atlanta Dream beat the New York Liberty 95-84 at Barclays Center on Monday, snapping New York’s three-game winning streak and pushing Atlanta to 29-14, according to NBC Sports. Forget the seeding math for a second. A team that just made Stewart lose her composure for the first time in nine years isn’t one anyone wants across the net once the playoffs start, no matter which side of the bracket ends up hosting.
Stewart didn’t hide her anger afterward.
“She slapped s—t out of my hand,” Stewart told reporters, tracing the technical directly back to the no-call and adding that Reese, not the Liberty, should be the one covering the fine. It read less like frustration at a missed call and more like frustration at getting beaten to the ball in the first place.
I watch the WNBA with real respect and zero rooting interest beyond the Mercury, and I still went back and rewatched that sequence three times.
Reactions like that are about getting outworked in the moment that decides a game, more than about a borderline call. And then you look at the rest of the box score. Jordin Canada led Atlanta with 19 points, Stewart finished with 27 and 14 for New York, and Reese quietly closed a double-double that mattered more once you factor in when it happened.
Reese’s season with the Dream has turned into a pattern: opponents losing patience with how physical she plays, officials generally declining to bail them out. She’s also on pace to keep rewriting the WNBA record book on the boards, which is a big part of why teams trying to game-plan around her keep walking away frustrated instead.
Stewart’s Liberty just watched a three-game winning streak disappear in Brooklyn, and they have three days before the regular season ends to figure out how to guard Atlanta’s interior. Three days isn’t a lot of time to fix a problem that’s been building since Reese got to Atlanta.
Reese wasn’t shy about the result, either. She posted her reaction minutes after the final buzzer.
https://x.com/Reese10Angel/status/2102230999967166972
Atlanta is 29-14 and closing in on a top-four seed, with a win over New York or an Indiana loss in the final stretch enough to lock up home court. Nobody in this field is circling a matchup with this version of the Dream.
Stewart got a technical foul for losing a fight that was already over.
