ATLANTA — The drill was simple: Make the next basket and practice is over. The five players on the court for the Atlanta Dream could call whatever play they wanted. Give the ball to whomever. They just had to hit the shot.
Rhyne Howard, Angel Reese, Allisha Gray, Jordin Canada and Naz Hillmon huddled. They pointed to different spots, nodding and shaking their heads as they drew up a play against the Atlanta practice squad.
“Let’s go,” Dream coach Karl Smesko yelled out. “We’re already running late.”
The huddle broke. Howard inbounded the ball to Reese, who was just outside the top of the 3-point arc. She backed down her defender, drawing another one as she shuffled her way to the hoop. Reese jabbed, then kicked the ball out to Canada. The guard hopped to the top of the arc and pump-faked, then swung it over to Gray, who was on the right side of the 3-point line. That was the look they had been waiting for, and Gray knocked it down.
It’s April 23 and the fourth day of training camp, but the Dream — their five core players from last year, plus the addition of the splashiest performer of the offseason — are jelling.
“I mean, can’t believe this is my life,” Reese said during her first Dream media availability. “The paint is wide open, and I can drive [and] come down until somebody stops me. Everybody’s on Lish and on Rhyne, staying with JC, so it opens up the floor … it makes the job easier for me, where I don’t have to always take the shot.”
Reese landed in Atlanta after being traded by the Chicago Sky in exchange for two future first-round picks. It marked the end of a seemingly rocky tenure in Chicago, which drafted Reese with the seventh pick in the 2024 WNBA draft.
The Dream, meanwhile, re-signed their five core players — Howard, Gray, Hillmon, Canada and Brionna Jones — to multiyear contracts during free agency, returning the core of a team that lost to the Indiana Fever in the first round of last year’s WNBA playoffs, a disappointing end to Atlanta’s best season in seven years.
“How could you not be happy here?” Reese told ESPN a few days after that practice. “It just feels great. I always wanted to come to Atlanta. When you think of championship culture, playing next to these players, the coach [we have], it just made sense. … I didn’t care about anything else but being here.”
The new chapter for Reese is what she hopes will take her career to the next level. And the Dream see her arrival as taking them from a playoff team to a solid title contender.
“I do believe that Angel is the missing piece that we need to take us over the top,” Gray said.
1:57
McNutt: Angel Reese trade benefits all parties involved
Monica McNutt joins “SportsCenter” to break down what the Sky trading Angel Reese to the Dream means for both teams.
REESE AND SMESKO walked off the court following that fourth day of training camp. Before going separate directions, Smesko raised his hand for a fist bump. Reese shook her head and stopped. She brought out her hand and asked, “Do you remember it?”
They shook hands, fist-bumped and then mimicked a shot and held a long follow-through.
“You’re getting there,” Reese yelled.
“She’s trying to teach me a handshake, but I don’t think I am that cool,” Smesko said, laughing. “I think it’s too late for me.”
Reese comes from a team that went just 23-61 over the past two seasons. Her relationship with the Sky became strained toward the end of last season when she publicly expressed concern over the team’s point guard situation and indicated the team had to get great players this offseason or she might consider moving on.
But Reese and the Sky said she did not request the trade that landed her in Atlanta. She was prepared to return to Chicago as she was still under her rookie contract. But the two parties decided to part ways this spring as the Sky began an overhaul of their roster.
They made it clear to Reese that they would help her land on a team she wanted to go to.
“Other teams were interested, but [Atlanta] is really where I wanted to end up,” Reese said.
Reese has been friends with Gray since 2024, when the two were on the same All-Star team. She has had a relationship with Howard since the first season of Unrivaled in 2025. While they were in Puerto Rico with USA basketball for FIBA qualifiers in March, Reese picked Howard’s brain about the Dream organization. Reese has known Jones since college, attributing Jones for the reason she went to Maryland.
Reese wanted to be a part of this group. She wanted to play for Smesko. She wanted to be in the city of Atlanta.
And the Dream wanted her just as badly. Months before the Sky decided to move Reese, Atlanta general manager Dan Padover called Chicago GM Jeff Pagliocca with a request: “If you are ever considering moving Angel, give me a shout because we have interest,” Padover recalled to ESPN.
At that time, nothing was imminent, but a few weeks later, rumors began to spread that Chicago was looking to find Reese a new home. So Padover called again, and the trade started to come together.
Padover ran the idea of acquiring Reese by Smesko, Gray and the other franchise players. All of their responses were the same: a resounding yes.
“She would bring a lot of stuff that really would take the Dream to another level,” Smesko said. “It was one of those things that just seemed like if there’s a way to pull it off, let’s do it.”
FAR BEFORE TRADING for Reese became a viable option, the Dream’s top offseason priority was locking up the team’s cornerstone players.
Padover was confident the players who laid the foundation for Atlanta’s success wanted to return, but with more money available than ever before in the new collective bargaining agreement and a lot of player movement expected to happen, he wasn’t sure.
But everyone wanted to run it back.
“I wasn’t looking anywhere else,” Gray said. “Yeah, the five of us could have left and gotten a big payday, but we want to play [with each other]. We want to win with each other, and we 100% believe we can.”
Within 24 hours of free agency opening, Padover extended offers to Gray, Howard, Hillmon, Jones and Canada. About 24 hours later, all five deals were closed as each player signed multiyear contracts worth at least a million dollars.
“For five people to say, ‘No, I want to stay, and I want to stay for a while, I want to try and win here,’ I think that’s unique,” Padover said. “On a human level, it makes you feel good because it is a team trying to accomplish something and keep beating on that door.”
The Dream organization is in a drastically different place than it was six years ago, when the team was surrounded by tension. The players openly campaigned for the opponent of then-Dream co-owner Kelly Loeffler in the 2020 U.S. Senate race after she openly objected to the league’s promotion of the Black Lives Matter movement.
Larry Gottesdiener bought the team in 2021 and told Padover that he was willing to be patient with the rebuild as long as each year the Dream took a step toward becoming a contender. The first was in 2022 when they drafted Howard with the No. 1 pick and Hillmon with the 30th.
“Rhyne and I got here when it was gutted,” Hillmon said. “We brought in the drywall.”
Padover doesn’t know if drywall is the correct analogy, but their arrival laid the foundation for every move they made after. The players — especially Howard — took it upon themselves to recruit whom they wanted to team up with.
“We didn’t want to have the franchise feel like nothing,” Howard said. “We didn’t want it to keep feeling like what we came into. We wanted to make sure that we weren’t just here for work, but here for family.”
First, she recruited Gray, whom the Dream traded for in 2023.
“Rhyne wanted me, so when they pulled up the car, I jumped in the seat,” Gray said. “I wanted to go on this; I wanted this ride.”
Then Howard pushed for Canada, who was traded to the Dream in 2024. Ahead of last season, Jones signed as a free agent. Atlanta also hired Smesko as its new head coach after a long and successful career at Florida Gulf Coast. He brought a different style to Atlanta, emphasizing a quicker pace and higher shooting volume.
“We went through such a learning process last year,” Smesko said. “But there’s so much more ease with what we are supposed to be doing.”
And as many other teams integrate new coaches and navigate roster turnover, the Dream believe this will set them up for more immediate success to start the season.
“It was so nice to bring the core back because not many teams were able to do that. It gives us a head start because we already have that chemistry,” Gray said. “Then, the addition of Angel — she has fit right in. You can’t even tell she’s new.”
The level of togetherness, on and off the court, has become palpable from outside their walls. It’s what Reese saw from afar and craved.
“When they want you here, it’s hard not to get excited,” Reese said. “To see how they’ve continued to grow every single year, they didn’t stay at the bottom. They have gotten better every single year. Anything they need to be better at, they have done.”
ATLANTA TRAILED THE Fever by one point with 7 seconds to go in the decisive Game 3 of their first-round playoff series. If they could get just one more clean look, they could advance to the semifinals for the first time since 2018.
Howard tried to inbound the ball to Jones, but there was no safe pass to make. Indiana’s Lexie Hull deflected the ball and gained possession. As the Fever chest bumped and celebrated their upset of the No. 3 seed, the Dream were sent into the offseason, falling in the first round for a third consecutive season.
Gray walked toward the bench with both hands on her head. What they hoped would be a deep playoff push — possibly a run to the Finals — ended in the first round at the hands of a team playing without multiple stars.
“It’s one of those feelings you never want to feel again,” Gray said seven months later.
The Dream allowed themselves to feel the pain of the disappointing defeat for a bit but then used it to help guide them toward what needed to happen next.
“Both said the same thing,” Padover said. “It told me: Don’t discount everything we have to get us here and how great of a year we had … [but] if we have an opportunity to help us elevate, we need to. We need to go for that.”
Smesko is looking for Reese, who has centered her game around rebounding, to help Atlanta secure more second-chance opportunities and to grab defensive boards to spark its transition game. In 2024, she became the first rookie to lead the league in rebounding (13.1 per game) with a single-season record 446 boards. She also was the WNBA’s top rebounder in 2025 (12.6).
Atlanta is already an elite rebounding team, leading the league in total rebounds per game (36.6) and defensive rebounds (27.7) last season. The Dream were third in offensive boards with 8.9 per game. Reese helped the Sky rank as the WNBA’s second-best rebounding team and second best on the offensive glass.
Smesko coached against Reese during the 2022 NCAA tournament when he was leading Florida Gulf Coast and she played at Maryland. She was just a sophomore, but even then her rebounding stood out to him.
“She was the best offensive rebounder I’ve ever seen in college,” Smesko said. “You just don’t see people that are that relentless.”
But he also wants to unlock more of her offensive game.
“We create a lot of space and a lot of movement, so there’s going to be a lot of opportunities to either score off cuts or invert some pick-and-roll,” he said.
Unlike when she was in Chicago and playing next to another traditional big in Kamilla Cardoso, Reese is surrounded by shooters and playmakers in Atlanta, which creates a lot more space for her to play in the paint.
“She fills a lot of holes for us,” Gray told ESPN. “A lot of people look at her as just a rebounder but she’s more than that. She can defend the ball, get the ball and take it the full 94 feet. She can score in transition and hit the 15-foot short jump. There is so much to her game, and I feel like with Angel, adding her to this team, it’s what we were missing.”
Before training camp began, Smesko sat down with Reese in his office to go over what she saw as her strengths, how she wants to get better and how she thinks she could fit in his system. Then he went over his point of view.
Smesko is an analytics junkie. His film sessions often end in quizzes, forcing the players to apply the information they received. Reese said it’s a different style of coaching than she is accustomed to and forces her to be uncomfortable. But it’s also the kind of coaching she has been hungry for, the kind of guidance she wanted.
“Coaches and GMs who really believed in me were something that I was really, really wanting after my first two years,” Reese said. “I felt like [the Dream] loved each other. I could feel the sisterhood on the court and off the court.
“I think there’s no ceiling to what we can do.”
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