After a spectacular first season where she set the WNBA single-season record for rebounds and received All-Star honors for her performances, Angel Reese suffered a dismal outing in her sophomore year with the Chicago Sky.
The start of the 2025 season told a different story, and those first nine games were a nightmare for her and the team. Other than the two wins against the bottom-dwelling Dallas Wings in that time, they were outscored by an average of 20 points per game.
Reese, on her part, was struggling to play her game and was scoring just 34% of her shots. In fact, it was so bad that in her 2nd game, she only posted a lowly two points despite playing 27 minutes in that matchup. To add salt to injury, Angel Reese ended up missing Chicago’s final four regular-season games due to suspensions and injury, which effectively summed up her season.
However, the Maryland native has now given some perspective into why her second year in the WNBA turned out that way.
Angel Reese on how surgery affected her start to sophomore season
Reese revealed that she started her second WNBA season despite not being 100% healthy for it. The Chicago Sky player made this known while speaking during the inaugural episode of season 2 of her podcast “Unapologetically Angel”.
“I didn’t finish the Unrivaled season, because I had to have surgery on my hand. It was a completely different surgery,” she said.
“That’s why I wore a brace all (WNBA) season… I started the season off with my hand wrapped. I wasn’t supposed to be ready for training camp.”
Sky star Angel Reese reveals on Unapologetically Angel she had 2nd hand surgery after Unrivaled and was not supposed to be ready for the start of year 2!
This explains the slow start she had in first 8 games or so.
Reese says she kept her head down and continued to work 👏🏾 pic.twitter.com/Bwz08eaaJT
— TimeoutSPORTS__ (@TimeoutSPORTS3) October 2, 2025
According to Reese, even though her hand was not fully healed after the surgical operation, she still tried to help her team in the league. Nonetheless, she still averaged 14.7 points, 12.6 rebounds and 3.7 assists for the team this season.
Now, with the Sky eliminated from the playoffs, the forward will finally have time to get back to full health ahead of next season.
Since his first foray into online journalism in 2019, Peter Okereke has written widely on Entertainment and Pop Culture … More about Peter Okereke