WNBA: Angel Reese follows tradition of Black athletes with new podcast

Angel Reese is on top of the world.

As she closes in on completing her first season with the Chicago Sky, she has established herself one of the most consequential rookies in WNBA history. She has surpassed expectations, as well as records.

This past Sunday, she broke the single season rebounding record set by Sylvia Fowles with 418 rebounds. She also broke the record for the most offensive rebounds in a single season with 165, surpassing the mark of 162 set by Yolanda Griffith in 2001. Over the summer, Reese was on a hot streak of 15 consecutive double-doubles. In mid-August, she became the fastest player to record her twenty double-doubles.

Her tenacious play and fervent passion to win has placed her among the elite.

As if her on the court exploits weren’t enough, she is taking those tangibles toward her off the court endeavors. She has signed lucrative deals with Reese’s, Reebok, Beats by Dre, Xfinity, Raising Cane’s and Wingstop. Reese is blossoming as a fashionista with her appearances at events like the Met Gala and by wearing big-name brands such as Louis Vuitton. Her flamboyant style, poise and agency parallels the likes of Florence Griffith Joyner, Venus and Serena Williams and Aja Wilson.

Now she is taking a huge step in the world of podcasting with the launch of her weekly series “Unapologetically Angel,” part of Playmaker’s network of podcasts. She released the first episode on Thursday.

It is her chance to set the record straight on a number of things, particularly her relationship with Caitlin Clark. Ever since the historic 2023 NCAA national championship game between LSU and Iowa, Reese has been on the receiving end of racists insults and death threats on social media, as well as in person. The starting point came after she did the “you can’t see me” gesture at the conclusion of the game, which some perceived as a slight toward Clark.

The racialized and gendered discussion surrounding the two has reached a fever pitch, with some contending that they despise each other. In fact, the opposite is true, as Reese shares on her podcast. She also addresses the treatment she has received by some fans. Reese explains:

Caitlin is an amazing player and I’ve always thought she was an amazing player. We’ve been playing each other since high school. So I think it’s really just the fans, her fans, the Iowa fans, now the Indiana fans, that are, like, they ride for her and I respect that, respectfully, but sometimes it’s very disrespectful. I think there’s a lot of racism when it comes to it and I don’t believe she stands on any of that.

Reese taking back ownership of her story not only meets the current moment, but it also extends a larger historical tradition of Black athletes under siege using their own forms of media to speak their minds without compromise.

In the early 1970s, Muhammad Ali regularly appeared on the groundbreaking Black variety series Soul! as he was coming off battling the US government for his refusal to be inducted into the US Armed Forces at the height of the Vietnam War. At the same time, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar made an appearance on the Black news series Black Journal to speak about his conversion to Islam, pushing back against specter of suspicion and confusion from mainstream white society. Both knew full well that the dominant media narrative wasn’t an objective space for them, but Black media spaces were where they would feel validated.

In 2014, Derek Jeter launched The Players’ Tribune, which gave athletes the freedom to tell their stories in their own words. That same year, LeBron James started his media company Uninterrupted with the goal of athletes expressing what it means to be “more than an athlete.” In the era of social media, athletes have greater power in their ability to take back their narrative through podcasting, streaming, tweets, videos and posts.

It’s a medium that the WNBA players took advantage of in 2020 when they were successful in electing Senator Raphael Warnock and ousting then-Atlanta Dream owner and Georgia Senator Kelly Loeffler from office and, eventually, from her share of the team after she made statements critical of the Black Lives Matter movement.

Angel Reese is following the same template, and it couldn’t have come at a better time. Just as she is paving a path on the floor, she plans on doing the same in this realm. Before a recent Sky game, she told Swish Appeal:

That’s kind of why I started my podcast. Being able to take the narrative and being able to have my voice and stand up for who I am and know who I am. Also another place for other people to come on my podcast and give their voice, being able to be a safe space for people. So that’s what I look forward to with my podcast. I think in general in life I’ve always been unapologetic and it could be taken in a good way or bad way, but I’ve always stood up for who I am and being able to be super confident within myself. So I just think that’s why people love me because I am who I am and that’s why people continue to gravitate towards me.