Angel Reese addresses statement made after national championship

In her postgame press conference following LSU’s national championship victory over Iowa this week, Angel Reese made a heartfelt statement about how people talked about her throughout the season. It made its way around the internet shortly after, and she addressed it head-on a couple days after.

Reese appeared on the I Am Athlete podcast with Brandon Marshall and Ashley Nicole Moss and opened up about what she said. It wasn’t a spur of the moment thing. She had planned to talk about everything as the season went on. She heard people talk about how she played, how she talked and what they thought of her game.

That’s why she took the opportunity to say it “for the girls who look like me.”

“I mean, all season I’ve been wanting to make a statement because I’ve been criticized all year about who I am and how I play and how I talk on the court,” Reese said. “So I think it was no better moment than now that after winning a national championship. I had the plan. I just needed the platform. So I had it. I had it all written down. I knew what I was going to say, and I just let the rest come from my heart.”

Angel Reese on the support she received: ‘I think it’s just growing the game’

Reese also said she heard from multiple famous people after her comments, and she talked about what it meant to have that happen. She pointed out how the game of women’s basketball is growing — the viewership for the Women’s Final Four shattered records, after all — and this is just another step in that process.

“I think it’s just helping grow the game,” Reese said. “I’m just happy all these people are actually respecting a Black woman and what she has to say. I didn’t do it for publicity. I did it because that was what was on my heart. And all year, I just felt like I needed to say that for the girls that feel like they don’t have a voice.

“I feel like I have the platform, I have the voice and a lot of people listen to what I have to say. Being able to be in that position, like I said, I wrote that down earlier on. And I knew, ‘This is my moment, I have to say this and I know that a lot of people can actually be impacted by this.'”