Valkyries Staff Trolls Angel Reese With Crying Shirts And Pacifiers At Championship Parade

During the Golden State Valkyries' championship parade in San Francisco, team staff wore T-shirts featuring Angel Reese edited into the crying Michael Jordan meme alongside distributed pink pacifiers tagged with a message to Atlanta.

The shirts showed Reese's face morphed into the iconic crying Michael Jordan meme.

They also included her trademark "too small" hand gesture.

Fans spotted the shirts on Valkyries staff members riding buses along the Embarcadero.

Former Golden State Warriors player Festus Ezeli was seen holding one of the shirts up aboard a team bus.

A fan shared a photo of a pink pacifier with a small paper tag attached.

The tag read: "if found return to: ATL."

The fan who posted it said these pacifiers were actually being handed out during the parade.

The taunts trace back to Game 3 of the WNBA Finals.

After the Atlanta Dream beat the Valkyries 68-63 to take a 2-1 series lead, Reese did the "too small" taunt toward Golden State's bench.

The gesture was aimed at Valkyries forward Aminata Gueye, who had guarded Reese for much of the series.

Reese finished that game with 21 points and 12 rebounds.

She looked like she was on her way to a title.

Then the series turned.

Reese never scored more than 15 points in any of the final four games.

Golden State won Game 7 to secure the franchise's first WNBA championship.

After the win, the Valkyries did not let the moment pass.

Gueye posted a photo of Reese mid-taunt on Instagram on Saturday night, right after the Game 7 win.

Tiffany Hayes made the same "too small" gesture on an Instagram live while the team celebrated in the locker room.

The parade on Wednesday was the next step in the victory lap.

Thousands of fans in lavender lined the Embarcadero, in some spots ten rows deep.

The team arrived by ferry across the bay.

Cameras caught the Reese-themed merchandise almost immediately.

Reese was not the only target of the Valkyries' celebrations.

Center Kiah Stokes stepped off the ferry wearing a shirt that copied ESPN's title-odds chart from late July.

That chart listed the Fever, Aces, Lynx, Liberty and Dream as the top five picks to win the championship.

Golden State was sixth at the time and did not appear on the list.

ESPN Insights responded on X with a joke: "Sorry we were a little late to the party."

The chart came out when the Valkyries were 10-7 at the midpoint of the season.

They were 3-6 against playoff teams at that point.

They had no true star and finished the year without a single All-WNBA player, a first for a champion.

ESPN's chart gave the Fever a 24 percent chance, the Aces 23 percent, and the rest lower.

Then the Valkyries went 13-4 after the chart came out.

They finished the regular season 32-12 as the No. 2 seed.

By August 10, ESPN's own analytics had the Valkyries as title favorites.

As of November 4, ESPN's updated chart gave them a 100 percent chance of winning the Finals.

Stokes, who won her fourth championship, also set a Finals record with 19 blocks.

The Reese taunts and the ESPN shirt drew mixed reactions across the league and among fans.

Some saw the pacifiers and crying-meme shirts as fair payback for Reese's Game 3 celebration.

Others thought handing out baby items crossed a line, even in the heat of a rivalry.

The WNBA has not issued any statement about the parade merchandise.

Neither Reese nor the Atlanta Dream have publicly commented on the shirts or pacifiers.

The Valkyries have not addressed the items beyond what was visible during the parade.

The pacifier tag — "if found return to: ATL" — was the most direct jab.

It turned Reese's own gesture into a souvenir for fans who lined the parade route.

The crying Michael Jordan meme added another layer, making the reference unmistakable.