Angel Reese Is Already Talking About Year 4

LAS VEGAS

There were no WNBA games on Tuesday, and the next one is six months away. The league still managed to have a day. Its most decorated young forward spent Tuesday counting the records from a season that ended ten days ago, and the player every lottery team is dreaming about spent it collecting national awards in the morning and winning a game by 61 points at night. Here is the WNBA on November 10.

Reese counted the records, then pointed at Year 4

Angel Reese’s first season in Atlanta ended on Halloween night at Chase Center, where the Dream lost Game 7 of the Finals to Golden State, 68-63. On Tuesday, she shared Togethxr’s rundown of what she did on the way there, and added her own caption. “BLESSED!” Reese wrote on her Instagram stories, per Athlon Sports. “Thank you God! Can’t wait for YEAR 4!”

The rundown earns the capital letters. Reese won Defensive Player of the Year in her first season with the Dream. She became the first player in league history to grab more than 500 rebounds in a single season, and her 32 double-doubles set the single-season record. In the Finals she pulled down 132 rebounds, the most any player has recorded in a Finals series, and she became the youngest player ever to post back-to-back 20-point, 10-rebound games in the Finals, per Togethxr’s accounting carried by Athlon.

The series line behind those records: Reese led Atlanta in the playoffs at 11.0 rebounds and 1.7 blocks a game, finished second on the team in scoring at 16.1 points, and ranked third in both assists (2.6) and steals (1.4), per Athlon. ESPN’s offseason guide adds the shape of it — 21.7 points a game on 56 percent shooting across the first three Finals games, and a career-high 16.4 points a game in the regular season, in her first year playing for Karl Smesko after a different head coach every season going back to her senior year at LSU.

Year 4 talk is not cheap here, because Atlanta does not have to rebuild anything. The Dream reached the Finals for the first time since 2013 and won Finals games for the first time in franchise history, and ESPN notes the entire core — Allisha Gray, Rhyne Howard, Reese, Naz Hillmon, Brionna Jones and Jordin Canada — is signed on multiyear deals, with Jones due back from the leg injury that cost her most of this season. The gap between Atlanta and a championship turned out to be five points in a Game 7 on the road. Reese has clearly done the same math.

Watkins took home the awards in the morning and the game at night

Tuesday started with USC announcing that JuJu Watkins had been named the Associated Press national player of the week — her sixth career AP honor — and the USBWA’s Ann Meyers Drysdale national player of the week, her eighth. The Big Ten had already named her its co-player of the week on Monday, per 247Sports. All of it traces to one afternoon: Sunday’s home opener against Utah State, her first regular-season game at the Galen Center since March 2025, when she tore her ACL.

The line still reads like a misprint. Watkins scored 32 points with a career-high 16 rebounds, six assists and five steals in 27 minutes of a 118-40 win, and USC was plus-61 while she was on the floor, per USC Athletics. It was the first 30-point, 15-rebound, five-assist, five-steal game by a Big Ten player in 25 years. It was also her 22nd career 30-point game, three short of Cheryl Miller’s program record of 25 — two games into her comeback season, after 588 days away.

Then came Tuesday night, and the encore was a demolition. No. 3 USC beat the College of Charleston 105-44 at the Galen Center, leading 29-8 after one quarter and never letting the Cougars into it, per Sportradar’s final box score. Watkins played 23 minutes and finished with 20 points on 7-of-13 shooting, six assists and four steals. Jazzy Davidson and Saniyah Hall scored 24 apiece, and USC is 3-0.

Which brings the whole week to Sunday. USC visits No. 1 South Carolina on Nov. 15, the first real measuring stick of Watkins’ comeback. That night at 7:30 p.m. ET on ESPN, after UConn plays Louisville, the league holds its 2027 draft lottery — Houston and Toronto tied at 32.9 percent for the No. 1 pick, per the Associated Press. Watkins is the presumptive top pick if she declares, and the new fifth-year eligibility rules mean she could also stay at USC. Six front offices will spend Sunday night watching her play South Carolina and then watching ping-pong balls decide who gets to ask her.

The champions can afford to be picky

Golden State’s winter starts from a position no expansion team has ever held. ESPN’s offseason guide notes the Valkyries return their top three playoff scorers — Finals MVP Gabby Williams, unanimous Sixth Player of the Year Janelle Salaun and Veronica Burton — with Kiah Stokes still under contract and Iliana Rupert due back after missing 2026 for her pregnancy. The one unresolved file is the one we covered Monday: first-ever draft pick Juste Jocyte has told the front office she does not want to come back. A champion with its core signed and one unhappy 20-year-old at the end of the bench is a front office that gets to shop for a star scorer on its own terms — as long as whoever arrives can defend, because Golden State has owned the league’s best defense two years running and is not changing that for anybody.

New York’s coaching search is a defense search

The Liberty fired Chris DeMarco on Nov. 3 after one season, and on Tuesday the shape of the search came into focus. On The Athletic’s No Offseason podcast, WNBA writer Sabreena Merchant said the Liberty still have real internal evaluation to do on whether their core has what it takes, and raised the need for a coach who will demand accountability from the best players on a regular basis. Annie Costabile and Zena Keita pointed at the same end of the floor, per EssentiallySports’ account of the episode: New York finished seventh in defensive rating and allowed 86.4 points a game, second-worst among the eight playoff teams.

The awkward part is who that defense is wasting. Breanna Stewart averaged 20.8 points, 8.3 rebounds, 3.3 assists, 1.4 steals and 1.3 blocks this season, per EssentiallySports, and ESPN had her at 40.3 minutes a night in the playoffs — a 30-year-old superstar carrying a load that heavy for a No. 8 seed that got swept in the semifinals. General manager Jonathan Kolb is now running his fourth coaching search since 2019, and New York will open next season with its third head coach in three years. Whoever gets the job inherits Stewart, Jonquel Jones and Sabrina Ionescu under contract, and exactly one brief: fix the defense before the window does something rude.

The small print

Indiana’s Makayla Timpson announced a brand ambassadorship with Columbus Creative Solutions that will build out her “KK21” and “KK” clothing brands, per Athlon Sports. It is a fitting offseason note for a player whose role kept growing: the No. 19 pick in the 2025 draft appeared in 43 games with 14 starts this season, averaging 5.7 points and 4.9 rebounds in 19.1 minutes, then started all three of Indiana’s playoff games in the first-round loss to Las Vegas.

And the league’s other big hire is still open. Commissioner Cathy Engelbert retires at the end of the calendar year after nearly seven years, and the search for her successor is the offseason’s top priority, per the Associated Press. Whoever takes the job inherits a record 50-game schedule next May, a new officiating replay center in New Jersey, the relocated Houston Comets — and a locker-room relationship with the players that the AP politely describes as cordial at best. Sunday’s lottery is the first item on the winter calendar. It will not be the last thing this league argues about before May.