LSU star forward, Angel Reese, has announced that she will declare for the 2024 WNBA draft. “Of course, I like to do everything big,” LSU basketball star Angel Reese tells Leah Cooper, Digital Style Director at Vogue.
(Ally Green. Teen Vogue.)
A week before the start of the NCAA tournament and only a few days after LSU's loss in the championship, the 21-year-old shared her next steps with the world via Vogue Magazine in a fashion spread. She could have made her announcement through a sports outlet but “I didn’t want anything to be basic,” she says, speaking via Zoom from her off-campus apartment in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. She said she felt inspired by Serena Williams, since she had announced her retirement in 2022 via Vogue in a fashion spread as well.
“I’ve done everything I wanted to in college,” Reese says: “I’ve won a national championship, I’ve gotten [Southeastern Conference] Player of the Year, I’ve been an All-American. My ultimate goal is to be a pro—and to be one of the greatest basketball players to play, ever. I feel like I'm ready.”
The LSU Tigers fell to Iowa in the Elite Eight round of the 2024 NCAA Tournament on Monday night. Reese's last game with the team was an ending to an exceptional college run. Reese played two seasons at University of Maryland and transferred to LSU to play under Kim Mulkey, and that's when things started to pivot.
The 6’3” forward quickly became one of the highest-earning student athletes of the NIL era, inking deals with Amazon, Beats by Dre, Goldman Sachs, and more. Her dominance on the court led her team to winning the championship game in 2023, where they won the first NCAA basketball title in school history, with Reese named the tournament's most outstanding player. A trash-talking gesture in the championship game, meanwhile—watched by a record-breaking 9.9 million viewers—boosted her to viral fame.
“You don't really realize it in the moment,” Reese says about all the attention on her during the matchup, “but obviously the things you say and do can change everything. I literally woke up the next day and I was a celebrity.”
Reese attended the ESPY Awards, winning the title of breakthrough athlete, covering a swimsuit issue in Sports Illustrated: and gifting herself a brand new Benz for her 21st birthday. She also made a cameo in a popular music video with Latto and for "Put It On Da Floor."
But of course, the criticism is a part of it all as well. We are still in the early days of college athletes being able to be compensated for use of their name, image, and likeness. With that, the naysayers have labeled it all as distraction, and say the student athletes cannot compete to the best of their abilities with fame knocking at their door. Some even said LSU's opening season loss to Colorado was proof to that point, but Reese remained unbothered. “I wrote down: ‘People are going to doubt me thinking I got too Hollywood, I got too big-headed,’” she tells Cooper. “But I said I was going to be SEC Player of the Year, and I was SEC Player of the Year.” Reese ends her college career having set numerous records, including the NCAA single-season record in double-doubles.
Reese says the Mulkey pushed her. “She gets on me hard, and that’s something I need. We have that kind of relationship where we can bump heads but also be on the same page: We just want to win.”
Reese says her decision to go pro was not made lightly—especially considering all that she’s leaving behind. She may never experience a fan base like the one she has in Baton Rouge, she tells Vogue; the resources in most WNBA organizations, from the staff down to the locker room facilities, pale in comparison to those at LSU. Reese, though, is accepting of this. “I want to start at the bottom again,” she says. “I want to be a rookie again and build myself back up; I want to be knocked down and learn and grow at the next level.”
Reese is also keenly aware of the cutthroat nature of the level she aims to reach. There are just 144 spots across 12 teams in the WNBA, with only 36 new athletes drafted into the league each season. If Reese is among those picks during the draft on April 15, as she’s predicted to be, “I’ll be working with grown women,” she says. “I’ll be working with women that have kids, women that have a family to feed. I’m going to have to work my butt off every single day and grind. And who wouldn’t want that? I don’t want anything in my life to be easy.”
Congratulations to Angel Reese on this big decision! She has continued to push through all adversity she faced during her career at LSU. We hope to see her thrive in her next chapter the very soon!
#angelreese #wnba #lsu #womensbasketball #womenssports #espys #blackgirlmagic #batonrouge #baltimore
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