Angel's blessing: What Reese said about Isobel Borlase

• ‍Isobel Borlase scored eight points off the bench in Atlanta's 68-63 Game 7 loss
• Angel Reese says Borlase had a hell of a year in her first WNBA season
• Bendigo Spirit are 0-2 and unsure when their MVP will join them for WNBL27
• See all of Isobel Borlase's WNBA, WNBL and World Cup statistics below

Rookie and WNBL26 MVP Isobel Borlase provided a spark off the bench in Game 7 of the WNBA Finals, keeping the Atlanta Dream within reach of its first championship.

Borlase, 22, played 14 minutes, 11:50 of them in the second half, and scored all of her eight points after halftime on 3-for-6, with two rebounds. But the Dream fell to Miela Sowah's Golden State Valkyries, 68-63, in San Francisco.

Superstar teammate Angel Reese, who is an investor in a Brisbane consortium's bid for the WNBL's 10th team licence, talked about Borlase's impact in her first WNBA season while still processing Game 7's heartbreak.

"Trust me, Izzy had a hell of a year," Angel Reese said.

And she is right, not just about Borlase working her way into the Dream rotation to play big minutes in the biggest game of the WNBA season.

The Melbourne-born 1.8m guard captured her first WNBL MVP for the Bendigo Spirit, signed a USD $288,600 deal with the Dream after being selected with the 20th pick of the 2024 Draft, poured in a career-defining 30 points for the Opals against Italy at the 2026 FIBA Women's World Cup, and then returned to Atlanta to play a key role in the Dream's run to the Finals.

Dream coach Karl Smesko drastically shortened his rotation as the Finals went on. He went seven deep in Games 6 and 7. Smesko said Borlase earned her minutes in the second half and they showed a glimpse of what is to come.

"I thought she came in, especially in the second half, and hit a three," Smesko said.

"She was being aggressive with her offence, trying to get good shots.

"We stuck with her, thinking we needed a little offensive boost, and she looked comfortable.

"This year, I think she's had an amazing year - in her Australian league, the World Cup, her first year in the WNBA. All the growth she's had this year is just a remarkable 12 months.

"I think the sky's the limit for what she can become."

Borlase's Bendigo Spirit coach Kennedy Kereama told basketball.com.au in an exclusive interview early in the Finals: "Probably one of the greater and most important skills she's continuously evolving while she's over there is that maturity level.

"I'm not saying Izzy's immature by any stretch of the imagination, but that ability to go to the WNBA, because it is a tough environment where you are expected to perform, and it can be really volatile.

"To see a young woman over there who has incredible skills go over and thrive in an environment that I think would be so far out of her typical comfort zone, it's just not the typical demographic she's grown up with in South Australia, here in Australia.

"I'm not saying American values are any different. I think every country has family values, but it's different.

"To see her go over there, ride the highs and lows, and be able to consistently show up and do her job, I couldn't be prouder of the work she's done.

"Certainly, every time I speak with her, it sounds like she's gotten another year older in the sense of how she's communicating and carrying herself.

"She's well beyond her years at her age, as far as her ability to comprehend, articulate herself and talk to you about what she's seeing and where she needs to make improvements.

"I think that, for me, has been a huge surprise. Not surprise, but it is a surprise, because when we first got Izzy to Bendigo, I was really intrigued to get an understanding of what her self-accountability levels would be like.

"She's very self-accountable. I think every athlete you work with at this level is always their own worst critic, but I think she genuinely is searching for: 'Well, I didn't do this well today. What is the solution? How are we going to go about working on these areas?'

"For me, that's probably a really great opportunity for her, because she's gone to the WNBA and got that opportunity to go away, work and defend in training every day, whether it's Allisha Gray or Rhyne Howard, who are two of the best scoring wings in the league, or maybe if she gets switched onto a Jordin Canada.

"But she also has the physical strength to defend a Naz Hillmon at a training session, because Izzy's always had strength well beyond her years.

"I look at that opportunity for her to go away and really work at her defensive skill set and how she can impact the game that way, because I think she genuinely is a very capable defender.

"A lot of the time, we worship her offence, and the leap she's made in that is huge. That's a big part of the reason why she's had success and was the MVP. She had some great teammates who helped set her up for success in that sense.

"But I think the big part's going to be defence and continuous playmaking off the ball, not just off the ball, with the ball in her hands.

"That's something we've really tried to encourage her to do: continue to work on her shooting, her ability to create off the bounce and her ability to facilitate, knowing that when she comes over here, teams will typically sell out. She'll draw crowds.

"Making good decisions in pick-and-roll play and how teams defend her has been a really big part of the evolution of her game."

The 0-2 Bendigo Spirit have three games in eight days - Monday, November 2 against Geelong, Saturday, November 7 against UC Capitals and on the road to the Perth Lynx on Tuesday, November 10, 2026. The dust hasn't yet settled on Game 7, so it's unclear when Borlase will join Australian Opals World Cup teammate Jade Melbourne in country Victoria for her first game of WNBL27.