Angel Reese desires ladies’s basketball followers to know that she and her teammates have additionally performed a job within the sport’s rising reputation.
The WNBA star addressed the Chicago Sky’s Saturday, June 1, loss towards the Indiana Fever and Caitlin Clark’s impression on the league while speaking to reporters on Monday, June 3.
“I feel so many individuals are watching ladies’s basketball proper now. It began from the nationwide championship sport, and I have been coping with this for 2 years now and perceive that, yeah, unfavorable issues have in all probability been mentioned about me. However actually, I will take that as a result of look the place ladies’s basketball is,” she mentioned.
Andy Lyons/Getty
“Persons are speaking about ladies’s basketball that you just’d by no means would suppose could be speaking about ladies’s basketball. Persons are pulling as much as video games. We have got celebrities coming to video games [and] sold-out arenas simply due to one single sport,” mentioned Reese. “And simply that, I will take that function. I will take the dangerous man function, and I will proceed to take that on and be that for my teammates, and I do know I’ll go down in historical past.”
“I’ll look again in 20 years and be like: ‘Yeah, the explanation why we’re watching ladies’s basketball is not only due to one particular person, it’s due to me too, and I need you to understand that,” continued Reese. “Prefer it’s simply not trigger of 1 particular person. Loads of us have executed a lot for this sport.”
Andy Lyons/Getty
Reese, who was the seventh choose within the 2024 WNBA Draft in April, was fined $1,000 for “failing to make herself accessible to the media for interviews” after Saturday’s sport, the WNBA mentioned in a press release, in response to the Associated Press and The New York Times.
“As well as, the Sky group has been fined $5,000 for failing to make sure that all gamers adjust to WNBA media insurance policies,” the league’s assertion added, per the retailers. Together with Reese, her teammate Chennedy Carter’s foul given on account of knocking Clark to the bottom within the third quarter was additionally upgraded to a flagrant 1 violation.
Brian Spurlock/Icon Sportswire through Getty Photographs
Whereas talking to reporters on Monday, Reese mentioned she was taking “accountability.”
By no means miss a narrative — join PEOPLE’s free daily newsletter to remain up-to-date on the very best of what PEOPLE has to supply, from superstar information to forcing human curiosity tales.
“That was one thing on my behalf that I wasn’t capable of do for the time being simply due to the timeline of it however [I’m] ensuring shifting ahead I will take day out for you guys,” she added.
