Angel Reese’s nightmare stat in first season with Dream makes no sense originally appeared on The Sporting News. Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here.
Angel Reese does a lot of things well on a basketball court.
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But it’s astounding how poor of a finisher she is around the basket. It’s not just anecdotal. The stats back it up.
This season, Reese is 18-for-37 on shots that Basketball Reference quantifies as “at rim,” a rate of 48.6%.
Those aren’t all uncontested layups, but Reese is shooting less than 50% on shots she takes from right around the basket.
Reese is 6-foot-4, lanky and athletic. There’s no way the number should be that low.
Caitlin Clark, for reference of a guard, is shooting 64.3% on shots at the rim (9-for-14).
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The frontcourt player the Chicago Sky kept instead of Reese, Kamilla Cardoso, is 27-for-38 this season at the rim (71.1%).
Reese’s rate is inexcusably poor.
She’s not going to make up for it by being a jump shooter, either. The best Reese can do is grab her own miss and try to put the rebound back up and in.
Reese has the hustle traits to not totally give away every possession on which she misses from close range, but it’d be so much easier to simply make the easy shots.
She’s had trouble with this dating back to college at Maryland and LSU. It’s not just because the level of difficulty increased in the WNBA.
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Reese can be a winning player for the Atlanta Dream, but her lack of efficiency, even from right next to the hoop, isn’t going to help her cause.
