Former Washington Wizards star Gilbert Arenas defended Chicago Sky forward Angel Reese for making comments about her team recently.
Reese threatened to leave the Sky if they will continue to be a losing team during the 2026 WNBA season. Angel asked team management to take the upcoming offseason and free agency period seriously because she might be forced to want out of Chicago if they don't get better next season.
Arenas thinks Reese was right to call out her own team.
"Her expressing that the team needs to get better, what main players never said that before?" asked Gil. "We need to get good players and we need to go get great players. That is normal. And the fact that you are open to listening to trades, your team is done. That woman will not want to be there no more. And I can tell you right now, the other center that is friends with her, she's gonna want out. So you lost both bigs, people."
After Angel made those comments, the Sky went on to suspend her for the first half of their game against the Las Vegas Aces last week, citing "statements detrimental to the team" as the reason for the ban.
In their official statement, the Sky said that they resolved the matter internally and are moving on from the incident as a team.
However, trade rumors emerged from the story and immediately gained weight. And although Sky general manager Jeff Pagliocca seemed to deny them, his statement did not really rule out dealing Reese . Meanwhile, Arenas thinks that Reese is a goner and so is Kamilla Cardoso, who is close to her.
And Gil has a suggestion on where he wants them to play next.
"If I'm Indiana, Caitlin [Clark], you're safe. Everybody else, who do you want over here?" added Arenas.
It is uncertain if the Indiana Fever are even interested in pairing up Angel and Caitlin and whether they would agree to letting the Sky pick anybody on the team except Clark to get Reese and maybe even Cardoso. However, Angel once said that she hopes to play with Caitlin one day.
"Me and Caitlin have been playing against each other since we were kids. It's just a full circle moment of how women are viewed when it comes to trash talking and it's okay, in men's sport. So we're going to normalize that in women's sports as well," Reese said . "I think we're two great competitors. We brought a lot of fans to this league and I thought, we're going to continue to do that and one day, hopefully, we can be teammates."
Game-wise, Angel's inside presence is going to be a great complement to Caitlin's outside game.
But that's hypothetical and now that both are two of the biggest names in the WNBA, they might be better off playing against each other than together.
Because even if some argue that the real rivalry is Caitlin vs Paige, it's the Angel-Caitlin rivalry that has taken the league to where it is today.
This story was originally reported by Basketball Network on Sep 14, 2025, where it first appeared in the Latest News section. Add Basketball Network as a Preferred Source by clicking here.
