Angel Reese's ex-teammate Flau'jae Johnson opens up on rift with WNBA star as she claims they're no longer friends
LSU basketball star Flau'jae Johnson has revealed she is no longer friends with former teammate Angel Reese because of a 'locker room' dispute between the pair.
Johnson and Reese formed a successful partnership on the court together at LSU, which helped the school win a national championship in 2023, before the latter left college and moved up to the WNBA a year later.
At the end of her rookie season in the big leagues, the Chicago Sky forward admitted she is no longer as close with her old Tigers teammate despite there being 'no hard feelings between them.'
'I still support Flau'jae. We aren't as close as we used to be,' Reese said on her Unapologetically Angel podcast. 'There's no hard feelings or anything.
'It happens,' she continued. 'You don't have the best relationships with everybody, and don't always continue relationships with people. So I wish her the best always, I'm always going to support her. There's no love lost but we aren't as close as we used to be.'
Yet nine months on from that claim, Johnson has suggested their lack of closeness these days is actually due to something that played out behind the scenes at LSU.
'We're not friends, but I mean that bond that we had, that thing that we did together, winning a national championship, you can never take that away from us,' she said on The Breakfast Club.
'And so sometimes stuff happens, you wish it don't happen but it do. And you just gotta grow.'
When asked specifically what happened, the 21-year-old continued: 'Yeah, it was a lot of media, it was a lot of locker room stuff. You know what I'm saying? Stuff that go on behind the scenes.
'But it happens. It happens… Sometimes stuff happens. You wish it don't happen, but it do.'
Back in 2023, Reese's mother, Angel Webb Reese, and Johnson's mother, Kia Brooks, seemed to feud on social media after the former was briefly removed from LSU's lineup.
Webb first posted on Instagram: 'Folks pls do not send me long text msgs with a bunch of grammatical errors it gives me a headache, how do I know you said what you said if I can't understand what you're saying?'
Brooks seemed to take that message as a shot at her, before going on the offensive against Webb and her daughter.
'You definitely know about grammar errors when your daughter got a 2.0 or less GPA, and in fact when writing your smart message you didn't capitalize nor did you use any periods,' she said.
'Stop being petty, fake and hateful. And take responsibility for you and your daughters actions. Your just as responsible you raised her that way. Nobody give a damn who you think you are since you came up off another's brand. Just like God gave it to you he will take right away. Always stay humble and never forget who made you and where you came from!!'
Reese then continued to stoke the fire after graduating from LSU the following year.
'So now what? what was said? oh okay that's what i thought. I graduated from THE LOUISIANA STATE UNIVERSITY IN 4 YEARS ON TIME. I thought somebody without a college degree said sum,' she wrote on X.
She also shared a message from her mother on social media, in which Webb said she had a college degree and railed against 'folks who... have not sniffed a GPA since high school,' in an apparent reference to Brooks.
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