The Atlanta Dream had one mission going into Game 2 of the 2026 WNBA Finals: Win and take the momentum back home.
The Dream entered Game 2 winless 一 0-10 all-time 一 in WNBA Finals games. The Golden State Valkyries hadn’t lost a game in regulation in two months.
Both of those things changed on Monday. The Dream prevailed in the rematch, 79-65, to head back to Georgia with the series evened at one game apiece.
It was The Angel Reese Show that carried Atlanta to the end. Reese scored 30 points on 10-of-16 shooting and grabbed 16 rebounds, joining Breanna Stewart and Jonquel Jones as the only three players in league history to record such a stat line in a Finals game.
In Game 1, the Dream moved away from Reese in the second half despite her scoring 14 points in the first. She only took two shots in the final two quarters. Head coach Karl Smesko admitted postgame to reporters that his team “didn’t get (Reese) the ball enough.”
As it turns out, getting the ball to Reese was the winning formula all along. She scored 15 of her 30 points in the second half. The Dream’s engine moved smoother with her at the center of it.
“That Game 1 was tough for us,” Reese said after the game. “But we moved on, turned the page and got back to who we are.”
There was a calmness to Atlanta that didn’t exist in Game 1, despite foul trouble early on in Game 2.
Rhyne Howard was tagged with her fourth foul with 4:14 to go in the first half. Reese racked up what was already her third foul midway through the second quarter, to which Smesko could be seen on camera telling his star forward to ‘calm down.’ At that point, she had already recorded 12 points in her first 14 minutes on the floor.
Calm she remained 一 Reese checked back in and added 3 more to give her 15 at the half. When she committed her fifth foul in the fourth quarter, she motioned to Smesko as if to tell him she had it all under control.
With Reese leading the way, the Dream flipped the script that Golden State handed them in Game 1 一 a 10-0 run in the second quarter swung the momentum to the visitors and silenced the previously raucous crowd at Chase Center. The noise only thinned further when Jordin Canada’s heave from half court banked into the basket and extended Atlanta’s lead to 14 as the third quarter ended.
Canada added 13 points and 10 assists, while Allisha Gray had 18 points with a team-high +20 rating.
Golden State’s scorers never got going, and that was the nail in the coffin for them. Gabby Williams, the only Valkyrie to score in double digits in Game 1 with 26 points, had 14 points in Game 2 but shot just 3-of-15 from the floor. Veronica Burton added 11 points but took just nine shots, and Tiffany Hayes led the bench with 14 of her own.
“We shot terribly,” Burton said in the Valkyries’ postgame presser. “We missed shots that we make all the time.”
“I genuinely believe (turnovers) dictated the entire game,” she added.
The Valkyries turned the ball over 18 times and Atlanta capitalized with 13 points off of them. Dream defenders held them to just nine total points in the third quarter.
The WNBA Finals now head to Atlanta’s State Farm Arena, with Game 3 set to tip off at 8pm ET on Wednesday on USA Network and Peacock.
