It comes with a price, this veneer of toughness and brashness that Angel Reese has fashioned. She hears the slights and sees the not-remotely-veiled slurs and she squashes them away, hiding the hurt in a little corner of her soul because she recognizes this is bigger than she is. She smiles and pretends she’s above it all because she knows there are little Black girls and young Black women who are watching her and thinking if Angel Reese can be authentic and unapologetic, they can be, too.
But it hurts, and it’s left Reese with scars as real as any she’s ever gotten on the basketball court. The pain from Monday night’s loss to Iowa in the Elite Eight was exacerbated by knowing the vitriol that was sure to follow. Think about that. A 21-year-old getting death threats and hate simply for being herself. Why? Because she’s Black? A woman? Both? Is it because she’s confident and not afraid to show it? Or that she knows her worth and refuses to accept anything less than it?
What could possibly enrage the keyboard warriors so much they feel the need to direct their particularly toxic brew of racism and misogyny at her? Entitled people who don’t know her to act as if they do, passing judgment and condemnation on her? Celebrity has been Reese’s constant companion since last year’s Final Four. But so, too, is the hate.
Reese is not making a plea for sympathy. Johnson and Van Lith volunteered their support for her, and she was asked for her reaction. But the vulnerability she showed is a reminder how much of our humanity we’ve lost and the cost that comes as a result. “I think Angel is one of the toughest people I’ve been around,” Van Lith, who is white, said. “People speak hate into her life. I’ve never seen people wish bad things on someone as much as her, and it does not affect her. She comes to practice every day. She lives her life every day. She lives how she wants to live, and she don’t let nobody change that.
“That’s the key to life right there. Y’all do not get to her. Let me say it again. Y’all do not get to Angel Reese. So you might want to throw the towel in because you’re wasting your energy.” If you don’t acknowledge that race is the overarching factor in all of this, you’re in denial.
Reese is savvy enough to recognize that sports are as much about entertainment as they are athletic skill, and fully embraced her role in the show. She’s as prodigious a trash-talker as she is a rebounder, and the enduring image from both of the NCAA’s tournaments last year is Reese waving her ring finger at Caitlin Clark at the end of LSU’s win over Iowa in the national championship game.
It was never personal. Reese was just doing what basketball players, male and female, have been doing since the game began. Doing what Clark herself had done. But when Clark did it, she was celebrated. When Reese did it, she was not. “I don’t fit in a box that y’all want me to be in. I’m too hood. I’m too ghetto,” Reese said after last year’s title game. She was willing to play the part, however, because she believes it’s for a greater good.
Like Clark, Reese is a star in this constellation of young women who are turning sport and society on its head. At the most basic level, they are driving interest in women’s sports and making people give female athletes the respect and recognition they’ve too long been denied. But Reese carries the additional burden of representation for young Black women. By owning her talents and success, Reese is showing those young women it’s OK to express themselves. To be proud of who they are and not back down to anyone, on the basketball court or off.
“The crown she wears is heavy,” Johnson said. “She’s the type of teammate that’s going to make you believe in yourself. The leap that I took to my freshman to sophomore year? Angel gave me that confidence.” Reese sniffled and cried quietly as Johnson and Van Lith spoke passionately on her behalf. She’s tried to shield everyone else, both those who see her up close and those who watch her from afar, from the crap that’s become a constant part of her existence.
But she can no longer hide the obvious. Before LSU’s game against UCLA in the Sweet 16, the Los Angeles Times published a column dripping with racism and misogyny. The rage at Reese and her audacity, in particular, was palpable, and it lingers even after the paper rightly updated the piece to remove the worst of the characterizations.
Villains? Dirty debutantes? Because a college senior just wants to play the game she loves and have a little fun while doing it? “I just try to stand strong for my teammates because I don’t want them to see me down and not be there for them,” Reese said. “I said the other day I haven’t known a day of peace since (the national championship). And it sucks. But I still wouldn’t change. I wouldn’t change anything.
“I would still sit here and say I’m unapologetically me,” she said. “Hopefully the little girls that look up to me, I give them some type of inspiration … (to) keep being who you are, keep waking up every day, keep being motivated, staying who you are, stand ten toes, don’t back down, and just be confident.” Reese had one more message, a reminder that she is, more than anything, human. That’s more than the trolls who’ve made her life hell this last year can say.
