Angel Reese has stayed quiet in the media most of this season. On Thursday, she decided that silence was no longer an option.
The Atlanta Dream sit tied atop the Eastern Conference at 12-8, yet not one Dream player was named a starter for the 2026 WNBA All-Star Game. Reese called the shutout “disrespectful,” and she made it clear the frustration was not really about herself.
“I expect to be disrespected,” Reese said, via ESPN’s Kareem Copeland. “For those two though, I think they work so hard and they put a lot of work in, and the way that they’re guarded every game and they have to adjust. The reason why we’re where we are is because of those two.”
She was talking about Rhyne Howard and Allisha Gray, the backcourt duo she believes deserved more credit.
Angel Reese finished the comment with a line that summed up her mood: “For us not to have anyone was just a slap in the face, but they’re not going to say anything. I am.”
The All-Star starters are set by a weighted formula. Fans control 50 percent of the score, players get 25 percent, and media voters make up the final 25 percent. Howard landed fifth among guards, Gray sixth, and Reese was seventh among frontcourt players. Just outside the cutoff, all three.
What stings for Atlanta is how the numbers broke down. Howard ranked ninth in fan voting but second among players and fourth among media, proof that the people who share a court with her rate her far higher than the crowd does. Gray landed seventh with fans, sixth with players, and eighth with media, a steady but unspectacular spread across every group.
Reese’s numbers tell a stranger story. She ranked sixth with fans, sixth with media, and sixth with players, remarkably consistent across three groups that rarely agree on anything. Consistency, in this case, still left her on the outside looking in.
Angel Reese entered the day leading the league in rebounding at 11.6 boards a game, tied with Jessica Shepard as the only players averaging a double-double this season. Shepard made the starting five. Reese did not. She also pointed to her teammates’ numbers, noting Howard leads the WNBA in steals and Jordin Canada sits second in that category.
The Angel Reese’s Case Extends Beyond The Box Score
Gray and Reese rank ninth and tenth in the league in defensive win shares, with Canada and Howard not far behind. That kind of two-way production across four players on one roster is rare, and it is part of why Atlanta has climbed into championship conversation despite a rocky stretch that includes four losses in five games.
Angel Reese was careful not to take anything away from the players who did earn starting nods.
“Congrats to the ones that were nominated, they were well-deserved,” she said. “But it’s a very big shocker to see that none of us were starters, especially where we are as a team in the league.”
She still expects Atlanta to be well represented once reserves are announced, and given the numbers, that expectation seems safe. But Angel Reese’s larger point was about voice, both hers and her team’s.
“I haven’t really said much this year in the media, because honestly it’s been tough for me over the last two years,” she said. “But I feel like it was important for me to speak for my teammates that don’t necessarily speak for themselves all the time.”
The Dream have built their season on balance rather than a single superstar carrying the load, and that balance is exactly what got overlooked in the fan vote. If Atlanta keeps climbing the standings, the roster’s depth will be harder to ignore when the reserves, and eventually the postseason bracket, get decided.
