told reporters<\/a>. “They changed my life, and I’m so grateful for them. And I’m so thankful for them. It is tough in the moment, but we’ll be back. And I always say, ‘Delayed not denied.’ This is only year three\u2014[my teammates have] a lot more years left too\u2014but I’m just really grateful I got to go to war with this group. I would do it again, all over again.”<\/p>\nReese, 24, had another strong showing in Game 7, finishing with eight points, 12 rebounds, two blocks, a steal and an assist. Her success in the WNBA Finals was a pretty good barometer of how the Dream played in general\u2014the team was 3-1 in games she posted a double-double and 0-3 in the contests she didn’t accomplish the feat.<\/p>\n
Game 7 was perhaps less about the Dream than it was about Golden State’s Gabby Williams, however, who went off for 30 points and earned the Finals MVP award for her efforts.<\/p>\n
For Williams and the Valkyries\u2014who won a title in just their second WNBA season\u2014the message after the game was understandably more jubilant. <\/p>\n
“Man, all it took was good people,” Williams said after the game. “That’s it. “All we heard last year was, ‘We don’t have no stars, we don’t have no talent.’ Yeah right. We’ve got good people. We’ve got winners. We’ve got people who are willing to put their bodies on the floor to win a game. They don’t care about scoring, they just want to play defense and rebound and do whatever it takes. We’ve just built a beautiful culture here.”<\/p>\n
Reese and the Dream will feel pretty good about the culture they’ve built as well despite falling just short on Saturday. Atlanta had identical 30-14 records the past two seasons but in 2025 failed to advance past the first round.<\/p>\n
But adding Reese in a trade with the Chicago Sky for a pair of first-round picks ahead of the 2026 campaign took the Dream to a new level. The third-year star was the Defensive Player of the Year, an All-Star and an All-WNBA second-team selection. Her impact was undeniable. <\/p>\n
It didn’t quite result in a title, but Reese and the Dream established this season that they are a force to be reckoned with going forward.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Atlanta Dream came up just short in Game 7 of the WNBA Finals on Saturday night, losing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":902218,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[99],"class_list":["post-902217","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/902217","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=902217"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/902217\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/902218"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=902217"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=902217"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=902217"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}