It was a tumultuous season for Angel Reese and the Chicago Sky, but she was at least able to get a victory off the court over some of her online critics.
The Sky finished tied for the worst record in the WNBA with the Dallas Wings. And Reese had her fair share of issues with the team, even being suspended after a Chicago Tribune article where she spoke about leaving the franchise if they couldn’t turn things around.
However, in her second season, Reese did see some improved numbers. Her scoring average rose to 14.7 points per game to go along with leading the league for the second time in as many years with 12.6 rebounds per game. Her shooting percentage also lifted from below 40% to 45.8% in Year 2.
In spite of that, Angel Reese has been an easy target on social media, not just for Caitlin Clark fans, but for viral clips that show her missing a number of short shots and padding her rebounding stats. Memes calling them “mebounds” were born.
So Reese did what any enterprising person would do, she turned the meme on its head and made profit from it. On the latest edition of her podcast, she shared that she made over six figures on her own merch with the “mebounds” tag.
Angel Reese has gotten plenty of attention as the chief rival to Caitlin Clark and has played her role in the overall rise in interest in the WNBA. Let’s not forget she was the one that won their national championship showdown while in college at LSU, which spawned the rivalry. But plenty of that attention has unfortunately had an edge of mockery and disdain to it. She’s even had ESPN push notifications talking about her misses, which we can’t really say that we’ve seen for any other athlete.
So good for her for being able to turn that around and capitalize on it for herself. Now if only the Chicago Sky could start to be competitive and turn it around likewise, Reese will find herself fighting for championships once again.
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