Pleasant Dreams - An Atlanta Dream Blog

The Official Closing of the Blog

2010-11-20T11:05:00.000-05:00

If you haven't guessed, there's been a dearth of activity here at the Pleasant Dreams Blog. Generally, when the Dream basketball season ended it was hard to fill the blog with content. Furthermore, changes in my life made it difficult to find opportune times to post, as you can read in this previous comment.

But now, I've decided to make the big decision to change my location. I will no longer be blogging at the Pleasant Dreams Blog. I shall instead be blogging at Swish Appeal, a website which is devoted to both professional and college women's basketball. When the 2011 Atlanta Dream season starts, you will find all of the content devoted to the Dream at that blog instead of at this one.

Furthermore, I am also covering women's college basketball for the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets. If you ever wanted to hear what my voice sounds like, or listen to my unfortunate stutter, you can go to this post and hear the dulcet tones of Petrel bothering Georgia Tech head coach MaChelle Joseph.

But you won't just find me there. You'll find a lot of great writers too numerous to mention, and I'd better not mention any of them because if I leave one of them out I'll never hear the end of it. (And besides, I've linked to their posts at this blog before so you might recognize them anyway.) Site registration at Swish Appeal is free, but you do have to establish an identity there in that you have to sign up for a user name. (This drives posters away for some reason. I can't figure it out.) I will say that the writing is top-notch, and not because I'm writing for it.

The platform at Swish Appeal is much more flexible than the one at Blogger.com, and it's just a damned sight simpler to post there - as a matter of fact, you can use the "Fanposts" feature and post your own content if you've got an issue that you feel you can't confine to the comments at Pleasant Dreams.

I was very reluctant to close down the blog. But no, the blog isn't closing down. It's just moving.

Am I going to stop following the Atlanta Dream? No way. I'm just going to write about it somewhere else from now on. If you need to locate me, you can still write to me at the address listed at the top of the blog. I have really enjoyed spending time with all of you, and hope to look for you at Swish Appeal.

The blog content will not be folded. This blog will stay up as long as Blogger.com continues to support it. The archives shall remain public. But, barring some unforseen circumstance it shall no longer be updated. So update your blog rolls for those of you that use that feature.

And now...we wave the magic wand, we wish Pleasant Dreams to all of you, and we move all of our Atlanta Dream love and paraphernelia over to Swish Appeal. See you there and GO DREAM!

--Pet

Iziane to Play in Turkey

2010-10-11T20:14:00.002-04:00

We now have as complete a player update of Atlanta Dream players overseas as we can get from the Atlanta Dream website.

The previous list:

Alison Bales: Union Hainaut, France
Erika de Souza: Perfumerias, Spain
Yelena Leuchanka: AZS Gorzow, Poland
Sancho Lyttle: Perfumerias, Spain
Angel McCoughtry: MKB Euroleasing, Hungary
Brittainey Raven: Lattes Montpelier, France

In addition, we have Iziane Castro Marques signing with Besitkas in Turkey. However, I found a website that states that Iziane is playing with the "Arsenal" team, and the Turkish Basketball Website is no help. We'll assume that the DFO knows the score.

This leaves four players. Shalee Lehning will be in her second year as an assistant coach at Kansas State. The lead sentence is "Shalee Lehning enters her second season as an assistant coach on Deb Patterson's staff", confirming that she'll be on the sidelines of K-State in the off-season.

Armintie Price will also go back to coaching in the off-season for Mississippi State. Price - known as Armintie Price Herrington on the Ole Miss coaching staff page - might be working as a guards coach this year.

We still know nothing about what Coco and Kelly Miller will be doing this off-season.

Update on the Dream Overseas

2010-09-21T21:45:00.001-04:00

Note: an update on the teams where we can find Atlanta Dream players in the off-season. New information on Alison Bales and Brittainey Raven.

Sancho Lyttle and Erika de Souza will be playing for Perfumerias in Spain. Perfumerias finished second in the Spanish League last year and Ros Casares - Erika's previous team - finished first. Erika will be joining Sancho Lyttle for the first time this year and this makes Perfumerias an automatic championship contender...not just of the Liga Femenina, but of Euroleague as well.

Angel McCoughtry will move to the MKB Euroleasing team, in Hungary. McCoughtry was the second-leading scorer in Euroleague behind Diana Taurasi, taking her Good Angels Kosice team to the Euroleague quarterfinals. MKB Euroleasing has finished four straight years at the top of Hungary's A Division but last years 5th place finish in Group C in Euroleague was a disappointment. It looks like Euroleasing will repair that mistake.

Yelena Leuchanka has just signed with AZS Gorzow of Poland. Gorzow made the jump from Eurocup to Eurloleague last year but finished in last place in Group C. Only the Polish PLKK is any consolation, where Gorzow has come up short in the PLKK finals for the last two years. Gorzow is hoping for an extra push.

Right now, we don't know where Iziane Castro Marques, Coco Miller or Kelly Miller will end up. Castro Marques played for Krakow and Kelly Miller played for Spartak Moscow. Coco Miller went...with her sister, where she trained with Spartak Moscow but I suspect she did not play there. Marques will not be playing for Krakow this year, but she'll be playing somewhere undoubtedly; the Miller twins are a bigger question mark.

Shalee Lehning and Armintie Price have other options for the off-season. Lehning has a coaching in with Kansas State, Price has one with Mississippi. Lehning (from my understanding) hadn't made up her mind about Europe yet, at least not at the beginning of the 2010 WNBA season. I don't know about Price.

Alison Bales will be playing with Union Hainaut Basket in France. Another player joining Bales will be Brittainey Raven, who I believe (but can't prove) will be playing for Lattes Montpelier. Both teams are at the highest level of French basketball. I also understand that Raven is there on a three-month contract and won't be eligible to play until November 6th when Lattes Montpelier takes on Challes.

Some Links of Mine

2010-09-20T22:14:00.001-04:00

A couple of articles I've put up at Swish Appeal:

About Spanish League basketball: Erika and Sancho Lyttle will be among those playing for Spanish teams in the off-season. The link is here.

About Vicky Bullett: ...and what remarkable accomplishment puts her up with Lisa Leslie, Lauren Jackson and Yolanda Griffith. The link is here.

Creed Loves His WNBA

2010-09-19T11:32:00.001-04:00

Oh Dream, What Now?

2010-09-18T10:18:00.003-04:00

As anyone who is an Atlanta Dream fan knows, this season was an emotional roller coaster. From Chamique Holdsclaw declining to report to training camp, to a 6-0 start, to the end-of-the-season tailspin, to the brand new post-season lineup to the sweep through the Eastern Conference playoffs, through Angel McCoughtry's 42 in one game and 35 in another, to the Dream losing in the narrowest sweep in WNBA history in front of a sellout Atlanta crowd, you quite literally didn't know what was going to happen next.

When you go to the Finals for the first time, but you lose, the question is "should you be bitter or should you be happy"? My answer is that whatever you are, you shouldn't be that happy - or, if you are happy, you certainly shouldn't show it. You don't want the Dream to be like the Chicago Cubs, one of those teams that just seems happy to be participating win or lose. No, we are most emphatically NOT just "happy to be there". We want to WIN.

But even though we are not happy, we can take satisfaction in many things. We might walk out with a sad contenance, but we can also walk out with pride. It is quite possible for the two to coexist. No one predicted the Dream as WNBA Finalists - but we were. There were some in the tight-knit community of women's basketball fans - you know who you are - who predicted that not only would the Storm sweep but that they would romp, a "sit back, grab the popcorn and enjoy the fun" moment. Undoubtedly, some of those viewers choked on a few kernels.

The Dream could have beaten any team in the WNBA except the Storm. I believe we might have even been able to beat the 2009 Phoenix team, but you never get to choose the team you play. The 2010 Storm was one of the best WNBA teams in history, and they would have beaten several past WNBA champions if you want to match championship squads historically. The 2010 Seattle squad probably couldn't have beaten those turn of the century Los Angeles Sparks championship teams but they could have beaten just about anyone else. In a way, the Atlanta Dream were much like the Boston Red Sox - except that the Dream have only had the opportunity to draw one all-world opponent whereas the BoSox kept drawing them over and over and over again.

The good thing about the Dream's championship run is that it the team might have earned the attention of a few more local faces. Marynell Meadors in her post-game press conference stated that Dream was getting more attention from the girls high school community. From my own personal experience I know that more people know about the Dream that I would have previously expected.

Hopefully, the experience will leave everyone hungry for more. My hope is that Kathy Betty has enjoyed the experience so much in her rookie year of WNBA ownership that she'll just want to keep repeating it over and over. My estimation is that WNBA teams can lose as much as $1.5-$2.5 million per year - not a lot of money in the sports world but a very expensive purchase. Betty stated in an interview that she loved the team but also realized that it was a business, and her goal - and necessity - was to put the team in black ink.

Aaron's Inc. helped. They didn't go in for a jersey sponsorship but they helped in a lot of other ways. We saw the Aaron's Inc. mascot, Lucky, at several Dream games. One thrilling event was the Aaron's Dog Drop, where several tiny versions of the mascot were parachuted down into the crowd from the attic of Philips Arena. Those little dogs cost money.

I'm reminded of a complaint on Twitter from some anonymous lout that went along the following lines - "Ha ha, you had to discount your tickets 65 percent for your Finals game. FAIL." Watch out for that FAIL taunt, because it can a double-edged sword. First, our Finals game was sold out with over 10,000 in attendance. Second, it seems like the previous complaint of the haters was that the WNBA couldn't sell out its Finals games. Now, they've had to adjust their whining - now, they claim that we sell them out but we sell them out too cheaply. The crowd might not have paid full price - but trust me, those seats were filled and that crowd was definitely active. So the haters get a BACKFAIL.

Great year for the Atlanta Dream. Sad year, but also a year of accomplishments and a lot to build on and look forward to next year. (And by the way, WNBA, the officiating was terrible. At least it didn't affect the Finals that much, since the bad was dolloped out in equal portions to the Dream and the Storm.)

"So Pet," you might ask, "what now?" Well, Angel McCoughtry and Marynell Meadors get on a plane to the Czech Republic to join the United States team at the FIBA World Championships. Everyone else on the Dream not involved in FIBA scatters like paper in the wind. Most hop on flights overseas to join their European teams for "off-season" professional play. Shalee Lehning and Armintie Price might hook up with Kansas State or Mississippi again to join their coaching staffs. Alison Bales might crack open the books and take a few more med school courses. The majority of them who don't live in Atlanta won't be seen again in the United States - save for the rare vacation - until 2011.

Marynell Meadors will probably go back to her home in Florida (I believe) after the FIBA championships for a little while before swinging into Phase Two - watching a lot of college games and keeping her eyes on the free agency status of players all around the league. Some Dream players probably won't be back next year, despite the success of 2010 - it's rare for rosters to remain fixed year after year after year. The actual nuts and bolts of the front office will reduce itself to a skeleton crew without the need to handle the day-to-day issues associated with the regular season. For Kathy Betty, the goal will be to raise both awareness of the Dream in the Atlanta community and to seek sponsorship money.

As for me, I'll probably end up following the Dream players - in spirit, anyway - on their various world-wide journeys, reading websites in a bevy of languages to determine how well overseas players are faring. I'll be watching Georgia Tech women's basketball, and my goal is to plan things so that I can watch even more women's basketball games than I did the year before. The Yellow Jackets play Tennessee on a neutral court and Connecticut in Atlanta, so it will be a fascinating season.

And the blog...oh yes, that....

In Zen, there's a concept called "beginner's mind". This, in Wikipedia, is defined as "having an attitude of openness, eagerness, and lack of preconceptions when studying a subject, even when studying at an advanced level, just as a beginner in that subject would". During my first two years of writing the Pleasant Dreams Blog, I was definitely in a state of beginner's mind, because I was a beginner. I had never followed basketball up to that point, and everything was new and interesting and fun to learn.

However, mastering the intricacies of basketball is virtually impossible even for those who get paid for it. In terms of fandom, I'm years behind and I am coming to grips with the fact that I shall simply never catch up - the teenage years when I could have soaked up the sport like a sponge or even attempted to play it are gone for good. I can only see linearly on a court, and not multilinearly. I'm still applying my baseball mind to basketball, and so I can't recognize pick and rolls and can only barely recognize the concept of rotation defense. I can at least tell a zone from a man-to-man...but so can a lot of other people. My understanding of the game, in many respects, is that of a clever elementary school student. I've had to try to listen as much as I could to people who knew more than I did, but fight the temptation to substitute my knowledge for theirs. There's no point in being free of preconception when you just pick up someone else's preconceptions.

The changes in my life over the past year in terms of employment and home combined with hitting the hard part of the basketball learning curve wiped out my beginnner's mind. Reporting on the sport became tedious, my attention focused in a thousand directions, my energy lackluster. I wasn't open, I wasn't eager, and I was full of preconceptions. So I walked away from the blog in an attempt to recover my beginner's mind and my time away from the blog and from other issues has partially helped...but I'm not where I'd like to be, not yet.

So I will continue to go on walkabout, and stay away from serious blogging. I might contribute to Swish Appeal every now and then and I'll provide links at this blog to any new Swish Appeal articles. I might have something else to write here at Pleasant Dreams during the interim, but the goal is to break away from the old habits and seek new approaches. "Strive on with diligence," as Buddha might say.

For those who have hung on for the journey, thank you. I don't know where the journey is going to end, but I still love the game. I'm sure that whatever happens, it's going to be wonderful.

(P. S. : As to specific thoughts about the particulars of this series and off-season moves that might be made, this might come later.)

Exhaustion

2010-09-17T07:56:00.003-04:00

So close.

Eight points.

Angel is great.

There will be one big post on the weekend.

All love to the Dream.

Four Dream Links

2010-08-30T22:26:00.000-04:00

The Dream have escaped the first round of the Eastern Conference playoffs, sweeping the top-seeded Mystics. The Dream will play the winner of the Indiana Fever/New York Liberty matchup on Wednesday night in the Eastern Conference finals.

Since I'm pretty lazy right now, here are some links:

Angel McCoughtry was named to the WNBA All-Defensive First Team, joining Tamika Catchings, Sylvia Fowles, Tanisha Wright and Cappie Pondexter.

Craig Cappy over at SportsPageMagazine.com has a gallery of images from the Dream's Game Two victory over Washington.

Another SportsPageMagazine.com article, this time about Atlanta's win. Angel McCoughtry compared the Dream to "superheroes" - are the Dream the Justice League or the Avengers? Or the X-Players?

Kathy Orton over at the Washington Post called the Dream's lost "nightmarish". At least Orton's not like the other Washington Post reporter who didn't know there were 40 minutes in a WNBA game.

Atlanta Dream Finally Make it to Playoffs, Thump Chicago 98-74 on Road

2010-08-15T10:10:00.001-04:00

For those of you out there still reading the blog, the long wait is over. The Atlanta Dream's 107-69 win over the Sky on the road finally clinch another playoff spot for the Atlanta Dream, snapping a four-game losing streak where the Dream sometimes played so poorly that I despaired of them winning another game. Currently Atlanta is in fourth place with two home games left - each one against a team that has beaten us at home (Tuesday the 17th against Chicago, Sunday the 22nd against Washington). Trust me, the regular season isn't over yet; home field advantage will be crucial and we don't have that yet.

The box score is here. If you read closely, that box score is a thing of beauty - five players in double figures, Brittainey Raven finally getting over 10 minutes in the game, Alison Bales with a double-double, the Dream shooting 56.1 percent. The Sky's shooting of 55.9 percent at teh line was absolutely horrible, with Dominique Canty missing seven times in 11 attempts.

In the same link above under "GAME STORY" you'll find the AP writeup. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, not sending Pierce W. Huff, simply grabs the story off the AP wire. At least they reported it.

``They decided that that was enough,'' Atlanta coach Marynell Meadors said. ``They came out and played like they have been playing throughout the season, with a lot of enthusiasm and passion for the game. They shared the ball extremely well and played some really good defense.''

The Chicago Daily-Herald had the best headline: "Sky Rolls Over, Plays Dead in Loss". Quoteth Sylvia Fowles:

"Tonight we came out and played like boo-boo. I thought we were going to be ready to play." The Sky played like Boo-Boo; the Dream played like Yogi and the Park Ranger.

The Chicago Tribune reports "Coach 'embarrassed' by Sky's play in loss to Dream". Jack McCarthy writes it up:

"We should be embarrassed for (this) kind of play" Sky coach Steven Key said. "The hard part is that we know that's not us as a team. That's not the way we practice, that's not the way we played all season long."

I think Steven Key's going to have a lot to worry about in the off-season, more than just some embarrassment.

Canada.com provides a simple report.

I'm not so much excited as I am...relieved. We're in again, and thank God. We'll worry about where we're in later.

Dream-Fever Gallery

2010-08-09T19:19:00.000-04:00

There's a new gallery at SportsPageMagazine.com of the Fever-Dream game that took place last week. Go over and take a look at Susan J. Wilden's work.

I hate pink games, since we keep losing them.

The Atlanta Dream - 2010-11 Off-Season

2010-08-07T18:08:00.001-04:00

A heads-up on the post-season plans of the Atlanta Dream. Right now, we know where four players are going.

Sancho Lyttle and Erika de Souza will be playing for Perfumerias in Spain. Perfumerias finished second in the Spanish League last year and Ros Casares - Erika's previous team - finished first. Erika will be joining Sancho Lyttle for the first time this year and this makes Perfumerias an automatic championship contender...not just of the Liga Femenina, but of Euroleague as well.

Angel McCoughtry will move to the MKB Euroleasing team, in Hungary. McCoughtry was the second-leading scorer in Euroleague behind Diana Taurasi, taking her Good Angels Kosice team to the Euroleague quarterfinals. MKB Euroleasing has finished four straight years at the top of Hungary's A Division but last years 5th place finish in Group C in Euroleague was a disappointment. It looks like Euroleasing will repair that mistake.

Yelena Leuchanka has just signed with AZS Gorzow of Poland. Gorzow made the jump from Eurocup to Eurloleague last year but finished in last place in Group C. Only the Polish PLKK is any consolation, where Gorzow has come up short in the PLKK finals for the last two years. Gorzow is hoping for an extra push.

Right now, we don't know where Iziane Castro Marques, Coco Miller or Kelly Miller will end up. Castro Marques played for Krakow and Kelly Miller played for Spartak Moscow. Coco Miller went...with her sister, where she trained with Spartak Moscow but I suspect she did not play there. Marques should definitely be playing in Europe next year; the Miller twins are a bigger question mark.

Shalee Lehning, Armintie Price and Alison Bales all have other options for the off-season. Lehning has a coaching in with Kansas State, Price has one with Mississippi. Lehning (from my understanding) hadn't made up her mind about Europe yet, at least not at the beginning of the 2010 WNBA season. I don't know about Price. Bales could simply return to school in the off-season to pursue a possible medical career.

No word on Brittainey Raven yet, or what her post-season options are.

Some Link Aggregation

2010-08-07T12:06:00.000-04:00

Some interesting links:

The Atlanta Dream is holding a massive girls sleepover! That's right, in cooperation with Girl Talk (www.desiretoinspire.org), after the game against the New York Liberty on Friday night...well, there's no reason to leave Philips Arena until the very next morning. Go here to the Atlanta Dream website to find out more information!

Pierce W. Huff of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution gives us some more insight regarding the concussion Sancho Lyttle suffered when she went down during the Atlanta-Chicago game and didn't wake up for a minute.

“The two weeks I was out, it was hard because when I was practicing and bending over, I was getting dizzy,” she said. “After that, I kind of worked myself into the lineup.”

Brittainey Raven tells the WNBA about her family's struggle with breast cancer.

I have a breast cancer ribbon on my wrist in honor of my grandmother. When I see that I just remember all the things she’s taught me and all the good times we had.

Dream Win Only One of Three Over Last Week: Split Series With Fever, Lose to Mystics at Home

2010-08-07T11:17:00.000-04:00

Let's give a brief summary of how the week went:

August 1st: The Dream got on top of the Fever 90-74 which was a big win for Atlanta. That win split the series 2-2 and set up the final regular season game to take place on Friday. Winning team takes the tie-breaker in the Eastern Conference. Four Atlanta Dream players scored in double-digits. Atlanta's win continued the pattern of each team winning its games at home. With the win, Atlanta took over first place again in the East.

The box score is here.

A blurb from Sports Network can be found here.

The Associated Press blurb is here.

August 3rd: The Dream lose to the Mystics at home, 86-78, becoming only the second team this year to beat Atlanta at home. The Dream hit a dead zone in the fourth quarter after leading by six points at one time, and the last minute of the game was an exchange of free throws after exchange of free throws after exchange of free throws. It was one of those games you joke about where the last minute takes fifteen minutes, but the result was no joke for our beloved Dream.

The loss ended Atlanta's four-game win streak. The win gave the Mystics posession of second place, albeit briefly.

The box score is here.

Here's the Associated Press writeup.

Lauren Harper of The Examiner tells her side of the story from the Dream perspective with some quick hits. Andrew Tomlinson from the Washington branch of the Examiner tells the story another way.

Jshuane Melton of the DC Sports Box tells the whole story from the Mystics perspective.

August 6th. The Dream lost a heartbreaker in Indiana last night, 95-93. This loss gives the Indiana Fever the season tie-breaker, beating Atlanta in the season series three games to two. The Atlanta loss threw the Eastern Conference into turmoil, with four teams separated from each other by just a single game. The Dream and Fever are tied for first place, but if the season ended today Indiana would finish first and the Dream second due to the tiebreaker.

With less than a minute left, Alison Bales hit a free throw to put the Dream up 93-92. Ebony Hoffman of the Fever would hit one of two free throws to tie the game 93-93 with 30.1 seconds left. The Dream got the ball back but Katie Douglas stole the ball from Sancho Lyttle with six seconds left. The Fever put the ball in the hands of Tamika Catchings - who would score 30 points that night - and Atlanta was forced to foul.

Catchings hit both shots. 95-93 Fever. With 1.1 seconds left, Alison Bales managed to get off a shot and get the foul from Loree Moore. Bales needed to hit both shots to give the game a chance of going overtime.

She missed the first one...and the second one. Game over. I'm glad I wasn't there, I probably would have broken down in tears.

The box score is here.

David Woods of the Indianapolis Star writes it up.

Pat Lovell of the Examiner gives his impressions.

Hopefully, more blogging later. Next home game is this Tuesday, against the Seattle Storm. We don't need a "statement win". We just need a win.

Dream Crush Sun in Mohegan, Now Tied for First in East

2010-07-31T19:36:00.000-04:00

Believe it or not...McCoughtry actually made the basket.

(As always, you have to see Larry Morgenweck's gallery for SportsPageMagazine.com, which is located right here on the website.)

Over the second and third quarter of their game against the Connecticut Sun, the Dream went on a 25-0 run over the second and third quarters to defeat the Sun 94-62 on the road. No, that's not a typo. That's twenty-five consecutive unanswered points.

The loss is the worst loss in the Sun's franchise history, stretching back to 1999 when the Connecticut Sun was the Orlando Miracle. The reason might have been Connecticut's 23 turnovers. Tina Charles was held to six points; Kelsey Griffin scored zero points in 19 minutes of play. Erika de Souza had 13 points and 13 rebounds; Angel McCoughtry scored 20 points and six rebounds.

The win puts Atlanta in a tie for first place in the Eastern Conference. The next game tomorrow will be at home against the other first place team, the Indiana Fever. Winner of that game walks off the court the Eastern Conference leader. The loser just walks off.

The box score is here.

The fallout:

The brief Associated Press blurb.

Matt Stout of the Norwich Bulletin gives his initial impressions.

John Altavilla of the Hartford Courant provides two pages detail and Hartford Courant says that Connecticut head coach Mike Thibault finds the loss a real head-scratcher.

Ned Griffin of The Day.com writes about Connecticut's long day.

The New Haven Register and Jim Fuller share some video of the press conference.

Bob Phillips of the Examiner gives his take on the massacre.

Dream Defeat Tulsa on Road, Move Into Second Place in East

2010-07-29T19:18:00.001-04:00

One of the best teams in the Eastern Conference took on the worst team in the WNBA and won 105-89. It was the second most points scored by the Shock this year. The Dream move to 16-9 on the year and are just one game behind the Indiana Fever in the Eastern Conference and are in sole possession of second place. For the Shock, they've lost 17 of their last 18.

Iziane Castro Marques scored 23 points to lead the Dream on 8-for-14 shooting despite suffering a broken nose. My understanding is that she suffered the broken nose in practice by colliding with Brittainey Raven. Some wiseacre wrote elsewhere that it was the most impact that Brittainey Raven has had on the Atlanta Dream all year.

The box score here. You can see the Live Access archive here.

The Associated Press sings the same old song for Tulsa.

John Hall of Tulsa Today reports the "shocking" results.

Kevin Henry of the Tulsa World gives his take on the thumping.

Jeff Brucculeri of the Examiner provides an assessment and Lauren Harper of the Examiner provides her own interesting facts.

And finally, an article in Tulsa Today about 120 Shalee Lehning fans who made their way from Sublette, Kansas (Lehning's hometown) and Manhattan, Kansas (the home of Kansas State) to cheer their local hero.

Some more linky stuff later.

New Atlanta Dream Pictures

2010-07-29T18:47:00.002-04:00

There's a new Dream photoshoot up on the Atlanta Dream Facebook Page. There's a picture of the Dream with Charles Barkley and about eight pictures of Yelena Leuchanka preparing for her future modeling career.

Give it a look. As you can see, Leuchanka presents a striking figure.

Dream Defeat Liberty in Atlanta; Four Game Losing Streak Ends

2010-07-27T21:55:00.000-04:00

Iziane's levitating act! "Watch me make this ball disappear!"

(As usual, Craig Cappy provides a great gallery of pictures right here from SportsPageMagazine.com. Click and see the pics!)

The box score is here.

Pierce W. Huff tells the story for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Some basic stuff about the Tulsa game soon.

Dream Assistant Coach With Meadors Since the Beginning

2010-07-23T08:09:00.000-04:00

When Marynell Meadors became the head coach of the Charlotte Sting in the inaugural 1997 season, one of her assistant coaches was...Sue Panek. When Meadors returned as a head coach in 2008 with the Atlanta Dream, what happened with Panek?

There's a great article in a Pennsylvania newspaper about Panek, which explains:

“It was funny because in 2007 around Thanksgiving, I was watching ESPN, and they said that Marynell Meadors was named head coach and GM of the Atlantic Dream,” Panek said in a telephone interview from Atlanta. “I was thinking about whether I should call her, whether I wanted to get back (in the WNBA). The next morning, she called me and asked me if I wanted to join her in Atlanta.”

And what does Panek do as an assistant coach?

“My duties cover a broad range,” Panek said. “I am responsible for the day-to-day operations of the team, from setting up travel and hotel accommodations, requesting VISAs for foreign players, taking care of the equipment, setting up practice times, both when we are on the road and in Atlanta.”

Give the article some click love. And if you see Sue Panek sitting behind the Atlanta Dream bench, say hi!

Dream Drop Fourth Straight in Loss to Mystics, Fall Out of First

2010-07-22T19:55:00.000-04:00

So where did Price's right hand go?

(Donna H. Perry of SportsPageMagazine gives us a bevy of pictures. And SPM has great photographers, so they're all worth seeing. Click the link.)

What we feared has come to pass. With an 82-72 loss in Washington, the Dream were swept on their four-game road trip, losing to Minnesota, Connecticut, Indiana and Washington in succession. With their fourth straight loss, the Dream fall out of first place and are now in third, 1/2 of game behind both Washington and Indiana.

It has been two years since the Dream lost four straight games or four straight road games (*). That's right, the last time the Dream performed this poorly was the horrible 2008 season. The last time they lost four straight was at the tail of a 10-game losing streak where they lost fourteen of fifteen along the way.

The further bad news is that Shalee Lehning has injured a quadricep. She didn't play in the Washington game and the recent news - Lehning is out for two weeks. For those out there who claimed that Lehning brought nothing to the Dream and that Kelly Miller would have been a better choice at point guard...well, your theory is going to face the acid test.

The box score for those who wish to see.

Here's the write-up from the Associated Press.

Another write-up from the Washington Post posting the sad tale.

I'm going to be at the game on Sunday, cheering on the Dream. It's time to get past this bump in the road and beat the Libs. After all, New York and Atlanta have a historical animosity, don't they?

_____

(*) If you count the final loss of the 2009 season at Gwinett as a "road" game - which it really was - we had four straight road losses the previous year.

The Finale Rack

2010-07-22T19:27:00.000-04:00

I've been having trouble blogging...as you might have noticed recently. What you might not have known is that over the three years I've followed the Atlanta Dream I've had my paws in three separate pies: this blog, an unnamed National Sports Website, and Swish Appeal, a new website hosted by SB Nation and devoted to women's basketball.

It's taken a long time to figure out what the problem has been. Namely, "how come I can't blog?" I felt more and more disorganized with less and less to say. Furthermore, this affected the other areas in which I was writing. I wondered if I had hit some sort of mental wall and if I should just walk away from blogging with maximum apologies all around.

Part of this was, as close followers of the blog know, caused by a change in my work environment. For the first two years of Pleasant Dreams, my work environment was rather lax in how it monitored by personal time. I had unlimited access to the internet and there were no expectations as to how I should be using my time. This gave me the time to be able to devote attention to all of these aspects of my blogging life, as well as to follow the WNBA on the internet and elsewhere, to play with statistics and to otherwise make blogging about women's basketball fun.

Then, last year, things changed. My unlimited access to the internet became very limited all of a sudden. No blogging from work. And then, after a while, no substantial use of the internet from work, either - the bean counters were now counting every bean. This killed not only the chances for me to post from work, but even to work on the background of posts from work. Of course, I could do this at home - but home was supposed to be a time of relaxation and reflection, not a time for furious blogging. Trust me, when you're slaving over a computer for eight hours at work, it can be tedious coming home and doing the exact same thing you did at work, shutting yourself away from everything. It becomes something you don't look forward to doing.

So I soldiered on. I would try to eat three pies at one setting, to extend this analogy past its breaking point. I would keep all of these plates spinning, and do the best I could. Pleasant Dreams slowed down to a trickle. I was unhappy with the work I was turning in at the sports website, although it was getting some play from big women's basketball websites. Swish Appeal seemed almost forgotten.

Most of the time, I just blamed myself for the failure. "The reason this isn't working, Pet, is because you don't care. If you cared you could make this work." Then I read a recent article called Solitude and Leadership. The article discussed, among other things, the concept of multitasking and said something that might seem obvious to you but which was rather surprising to me.

One thing that made the study different from others is that the researchers didn’t test people’s cognitive functions while they were multitasking. They separated the subject group into high multitaskers and low multitaskers and used a different set of tests to measure the kinds of cognitive abilities involved in multitasking. They found that in every case the high multitaskers scored worse. They were worse at distinguishing between relevant and irrelevant information and ignoring the latter. In other words, they were more distractible. They were worse at what you might call “mental filing”: keeping information in the right conceptual boxes and being able to retrieve it quickly. In other words, their minds were more disorganized. And they were even worse at the very thing that defines multitasking itself: switching between tasks.

That described me to a "T". My mental filing and organization system had simply broken down. "Disorganized" wasn't the half of it. By trying to do three things well, I ended up doing none of them well. The problem wasn't that I was inept at spinning plates, or that I was neglecting my plate spinning duties, or that I didn't care if the audience was assaulted by flying shards of broken glass. The problem was that I was spinning too many damn plates to be good at keeping any individual plate spinning.

Don't spin so many damn plates! Don't expect to do so much! That was the solution. Focus on one thing, and one thing only.

The question then became - "what thing? Where should I be putting my time and effort?" The answer, after thinking about it, became obvious. Parts of my blogging life had to be pared down. And until I can figure out what goes where in my life, there has to be a temporary walking-away process.

I will continue to maintain my obligations in the women's basketball blogging world, as best I can, until the end of the Atlanta Dream's 2010 season. I will keep the plates spinning - not very well, or not very carefully - until then. After that, I will be ending some of my obligations, formal and otherwise. I will continue to attend Atlanta Dream games during the 2010 season and, when able, write about them.

However, when the season is over, this blog will go into hibernation. There might be a few months or so after the season where I just...think about things. So don't expect any posts of any sort here after the final ball bounces for the Dream in 2010. I'll keep occasionally blogging here during the season, but beyond that, who knows?

So thank you for your patience. We'll be seeing out the rest of the season together, and I know that we're going to playoffs...and beyond that! Until next time, what did Casey Kasem say? "Keep your feet on the ground and keep reaching for the stars?" Sounds good to me!

Dream-Sun Gallery

2010-07-19T19:43:00.000-04:00

Oh yeah? Well God is my referee!

Larry Morgenweck has a gallery of Atlanta Dream images up at SportsPageMagazine.com.

See! Iziane's unfortunate haircut!
See! Renee Montgomery's kickline!
See! The Great Wall of Leuchanka!

(But you gotta click the links to see it.)

Sorenson's Dream Hasn't Come True...Yet

2010-07-18T13:53:00.001-04:00

Here's a link to an article about Steffi Sorenson, who played for Florida Gulf Coast when it was a Division II school and walked on at Florida. Apparently, either last year or this year, Sorenson tried out for the Atlanta Dream but....

Sorensen also recently tried out with the Atlanta Dream and was told she could play in the WNBA but not right now.

No surprise there. After all, what's one last critic in a lifetime full of them?

In all fairness to both sides, it would have been very difficult to make this 2010 Atlanta Dream team.

Dream Fall Behind on Road, Lose 96-80 to Sun

2010-07-18T12:19:00.003-04:00

The Dream saw a lot of that last night.

The Dream's woes continue with a 96-80 loss to the Sun yesterday in Connecticut. This was the second game of a tough Eastern Conference back-to-back pair of road games, and after a good first quarter the Dream lost every subsequent one. This loss is on the back of a 89-70 loss the day before.

The last time the Atlanta Dream lost three straight games? You have to go back to the tail end of last year, when we lost our final regular season game on the road to the Mystics and were then swept by the Shock in the playoffs. Before that, you have to go to a 10-game losing streak at the end of 2008.

To add insult to injury, Delta Airlines lost (or at least temporarily misplaced) the coaching staff's luggage. Marynell Meadors was forced to patrol the sidelines wearing a warm-up suit.

The loss drops the Dream into a tie with Washington for the Eastern Conference lead. All of the teams of the Eastern Conference are within 3 1/2 games of each other. Using the WNBA's tie breakers, it would go Mystics, Dream, Fever and then Sun in the Eastern Conference playoffs.

The game story from the Associated Press is here.

The box score is here.

John Altavilla reports on the loss here. Matt Stout provides a post-mortem from the Norwich Bulletin.

Egad. When will the bleeding stop?

UPDATE: Ned Griffen of The Day has his say. Also, Stout wrote a longer article so the link above is changed.

Dream Lose 89-70 in Indiana; Third Loss in Four Games

2010-07-17T12:02:00.001-04:00

The Fever shove us aside.

No one said road trips would be easy. They sure ain't easy for the Dream, who are currently 0-2 on a four-game road trip, losing 89-70 in Indiana last night. The loss was the worst Dream loss of the season - Sam James (in charge of Fever Week) posted on a message board that Marynell Meadors didn't come out to meet players after the game...well, not immediately, anyway. They'd better shake it off fast, because they play in Connecticut today.

Oddly enough, the Dream are still #1 in the Eastern Conference. At least, other teams seem to be having problems too. Furthermore, Sancho Lyttle is back. Hurray!!

What happened? The Dream got blown out in the fourth quarter, scoring only 10 fourth-quarter points. Angel McCoughtry coughed up the ball seven times. Iziane shot 2-for-11 and disappeared. Marynell Meadors was charged with a technical with 4:34 left in the fourth quarter.

Kent Sterling tells the story here.

The Associated Press reveals everything here.

Gallery from SportsPageMagazine.com. Every gallery they do is worth a visit, so go there.

Here's hoping we turn it around tonight. Go Dream!

Dream's Comeback Against Lynx Falters

2010-07-15T19:38:00.002-04:00

I am Angel, hear me roar.

My understanding is that the Dream lost 83-81 in Minnesota on Tuesday afternoon. It's Thursday night, and I still haven't seen this game.

Why? Well, the real reason is time. Frankly, my blogging on all fronts is facing a severe time crunch. I used to be able to devote several hours a day to blogging about the Greatest Team in History; now, if I can get one hour in it's almost a miracle. There is a good chance that this blog might be in the "decline" phase - which depresses me to no end.

So what am I going to do? I'll keep the blog going at least until the end of the 2010 WNBA season. Posts will be when time and opportunity permit. Come the end of the season, we'll face a blog revaluation.

The box score is here.

Roman Augustoviz reports the whole story for the Minneapolis Star-Tribune.

Dave Campbell of the AP throws down.

Jesse Johnson provides a gallery at SportsPageMagazine.com, the magazine that you have to visit.

Dream shooting 1-for-18 from beyond the arc. Erika and Iziane with technical fouls. What's up with that?

Atlanta Dream At The Half

2010-07-15T19:26:00.001-04:00

The Atlanta Dream Facebook Page has a podcast from Bob Rathburn and LaChina Robinson regarding the frist half ot the Dream's season. Unfortunately, I can't link to the podcast directly, but you can definitely find it on the Facebook page.

Lauren Harper writes about the Dream's first half of the season on the Atlanta Dream official website. Is the Dream founding a tradition? Read and find out.

Atlanta vs. Minnesota, Wednesday July 14

2010-07-13T21:38:00.000-04:00

Who: The Atlanta Dream (14-5) take on the Minnesota Lynx (6-11) in a East-West matchup.

The Dream are led by Angel McCoughtry, who is scoring 20.4 points per game. Sancho Lyttle (14.2 ppg/10.6 rpg) is an All-Star caliber post, and Iziane Castro Marques (17.8 ppg) will be playing on the Brazilian national team at the end of the season with Erika de Souza (12.3 ppg/8.6 rpg). The Lynx depend on point guard Lindsay Whalen (10.8 ppg/5.0 apg) and Seimone Augustus (17.3 ppg) leads Minnesota in scoring.

What: The second of two regular season games against the Lynx. Atlanta won the first game 76-58 at home on July 1, 2010.

Where: The Target Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

When: Tip-off is at 1 pm Eastern time, Wednesday July 14 in Minneapolis. If you have a powerful radio antenna, you could pick it up on Minneapolis radio - the BOB, 106.1 FM - but if not, you'll just have to depend on WNBA Live Access.

Why: The Dream have come out of the six-game home stand with a week off and one game ahead of the Washington Mystics and have the second best record in the WNBA. But even with the Lynx's shoddy 6-11 record, and even despite Minnesota needing a telescope to see conference leader Seattle, the Lynx would still go to the playoffs with that record. That's how weak the Western Conference is right now, and Atlanta needs all the wins it can get.

So will Sancho Lyttle play? Lyttle, if you remember, left the Dream/Sky game with a concussion and missed both the following game against Connecticut and the All-Star Game. The Dream's game notes list Lyttle as "Day to Day" so whether or not Lyttle takes the court depends on how confident Dream head coach Marynell Meadors feels in a potential Dream victory.

Don't count out Minnesota, though. They've won four out of their last six games and clobbered the Silver Stars by 23 points in their last home win. Remember our six-game home stand? Well, the Lynx are in the middle of their own six-game home stand and this is just their second game. Furthermore, the Lynx have never beaten the Dream in Minneapolis. The Dream got their first road win - ever - there in 2008, and also won in 2009. I don't know if the Dream remember that with all the roster changes in Atlanta, but I'm sure that the Lynx do.

Covers.com has Atlanta by two points, listing both Sancho Lyttle and Rashanda McCants as questionable to play tomorrow. Masseyratings.com predicts that Atlanta will win by 12. It's your call.

Izi Among the All-Stars

2010-07-10T13:12:00.001-04:00

From the Atlanta Dream Facebook Page. See? Everyone loves Izi, even Lauren Jackson.

Dream Beats Visiting Sun in Amazing Overtime Game on Wednesday

2010-07-10T12:58:00.001-04:00

The 'do makes Iziane look like Robert Blake.

(The picture above, of course, is from Craig Cappy of SportsPageMagazine.com. Click the link and check out Iziane's new hairdo!)

The Atlanta Dream saw the Connecticut Sun, and they showed that if you have a Dream...you can accomplish anything.

The 108-103 overtime win at Philips Arena set a score of records. Let me list all of them.

* Most points ever scored by the Dream in a game.

* Third most points scored against the Dream in a game.

* Most combined points scored in a Dream game.

* Career high for Iziane Castro Marques (32 points).

* Career high for Tina Charles (27 points).

* Most rebounds ever in a WNBA game (100 - Atlanta 51, Connecticut 49)

* Eighth most points ever scored in a WNBA game (211)

* Ninth twenty-point, twenty-rebound game in WNBA history. (Charles: 27 points, 20 rebounds)

* Fifth "teammates score 30 points each" game in WNBA history. - (Castro Marques 32, McCoughtry 32).

Box score is here.

Pierce W. Huff from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution tells us about the game.

Report from George Henry of the Associated Press.

Here's the report from the Norwich Sun.

Yeah, not much posting recently. Trying to squeeze real life in. At the end of the season, something's got to give.

Some Explanation of the Yelena Leuchanka Picture

2010-07-08T21:54:00.000-04:00

Like Atlas holding the world.

I wondered why Yelena Leuchanka was wearing that strange green and yellow dress in the picture below. It turns out that Leuchanka is pursuing a modeling career.

If you go to Access Atlanta you can take a peek at some of the pictures in Leuchanka's future portfolio. Give the click a click and show you care!

Atlanta vs. Connecticut, Wednesday July 7

2010-07-06T22:44:00.000-04:00

Who: The Atlanta Dream (13-5) take on the Connecticut Sun (10-7) in an Eastern Conference game.

The Dream are led by Angel McCoughtry, who is scoring 19.8 points per game and has been named to the USA Basketball women's team. Sancho Lyttle (14.2 ppg/10.6 rpg) and Iziane Castro Marques (17.1 ppg) were both named to the WNBA All-Star Team. Erika de Souza (12.1 ppg/8.4 rpg) will be playing on the Brazilian national team at the end of the season. The Sun have rookie sensation Tina Charles (15.2 ppg, 12.1 rpg) as well as Renee Montgomery (12.4 ppg, 3.9 apg), both Connecticut graduates who will also be playing for USA Basketball.

What: The second of four regular season games against the Connecticut Sun - the remaining games will also take place in July. The first game was on May 21, 2010 at Philips Arena and ended with a 97-82 Dream victory.

Where: Philips Arena in Atlanta.

When: Tip-off is at 7 pm Eastern time, Wednesday July 7th in Atlanta. You should be able to watch the game on Sports South in Atlanta. And of course, there's WNBA Live Access for those who have computers.

Why: Think about it: we have four All-Stars playing this game (for this year, USA Basketball roster members are treated as All-Stars). McCoughtry. Castro Marques. Charles. Montgomery. You're really seeing some of the best players that American basketball has to offer.

However, one name is missing - Sancho Lyttle. The last time we saw her, she was leaving the floor of Philips Arena after being knocked unconscious by Sylvia Fowles in the final quarter of the Dream-Sun game on Saturday. According to covers.com, Lyttle is not expected to play in this game and most likely, Alison Bales will start in Lyttle's place tomorrow night.

One bonus for the Dream - the Sun are coming off a back-to-back on the road where they lost 79-66 to the San Antonio Spurs. So the Sun get on a plane, fly to Atlanta and face the Dream less than 24 hours later. The Dream have had to deal with these fatigue-related issues; for once, the opponent gets to deal with the short end of the stick.

Covers.com has the game as a 5.5 point favorite for Atlanta. So does masseyratings.com. Of course, this is the Eastern Conference and anything can happen.

McCoughtry, Erika, Iziane are The Stars at The Sun

2010-07-06T22:18:00.000-04:00

The final rosters have been named for the USA Basketball vs. WNBA game that will take place on Saturday July 10 and which will be televised by ESPN at 3:30 pm ET.

Three Atlanta Dream players have made the various rosters.

Playing on the WNBA Team:

Jayne Appel San Antonio Silver Stars
Rebekkah Brunson Minnesota Lynx
Becky Hammon San Antonio Silver Stars
Iziane Castro Marques Atlanta Dream
Katie Douglas Indiana Fever
Lauren Jackson Seattle Storm
Crystal Langhorne Washington Mystics
Sancho Lyttle Atlanta Dream
Michelle Snow San Antonio Silver Stars
Penny Taylor Phoenix Mercury
Sophia Young San Antonio Silver Stars

Playing on the USA Team:

Sue Bird Seattle Storm
Swin Cash Seattle Storm
Tamika Catchings Indiana Fever
Tina Charles Connecticut Sun
Candice Dupree Phoenix Mercury
Sylvia Fowles Chicago Sky
Angel McCoughtry Atlanta Dream
Maya Moore University of Connecticut
Renee Montgomery Connecticut Sun
Cappie Pondexter New York Liberty
Diana Taurasi Phoenix Mercury

Marynell Meadors will also be serving as an assistant coach of the USA Team. I would have liked to see Erika somewhere on the team, but McCoughtry, Sancho Lyttle, and Iziane represent the Atlanta Dream just fine. I'll definitely be watching on Saturday.

Dream Seeks Victories...and Profit

2010-07-06T20:04:00.002-04:00

Henry Unger over at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution writes about the Dream's financial state. There are some interesting paragraphs:

Betty purchased the team, which had lost about $3 million, in late October, saving it from a likely relocation to Tulsa.

That implies that the Dream lost around $1.5 million a year during the two years of the Terwilliger Era, which correlates with what I've heard before about how much a typical WNBA team might lose.

Some of her hard work is paying off. Betty has reduced the red ink by cutting expenses, securing sponsors such as Aaron’s, Coke and Grady, and hiring an experienced sports exec, Toby Wyman, as chief operating officer.

For any reader that hasn't met Betty, you should. She radiates charisma. Is it sexist to say something about "brains and beauty"? I hope not.

But, even with a first place team, attendance is well behind where it needs to be. To break even, the Dream needs to draw about 8,500 paying fans, Betty said. This season, it has been averaging “just under 7,000,” which is similar to last year’s performance.

Interesting. I don't know if we can make 8500. Even the Braves couldn't fill up their stadium during their championship years; Atlanta sports fans that aren't solely University of Georgia football fans are hard to come by.

Next week, Henry Unger reports about Fitz Johnson and the Atlanta Beat. I'll look forward to it.

Erika on Univision

2010-07-06T19:57:00.002-04:00

A picture of Erika de Souza visiting Spanish-language Univision for an interview. Both Erika and Iziane Castro Marques were interviewed. The picture is from the Atlanta Dream Facebook Page.

Good that they showed up on Univision, but I hope Univision didn't think that they spoke Spanish. Erika and Iziane speak Portugese as native Brazilians.

1997 WNBA Champions

2010-07-05T20:02:00.001-04:00

Some old school video of the 1997 Houston Comets. Enjoy.

Dreamy Cake?

2010-07-05T19:25:00.001-04:00

Posted by @hunnibee10 (Brittainey Raven) on Twitter.

My question: did Raven eat the whole cake? Save some for me!

Never Depend on a Referee

2010-07-05T19:05:00.000-04:00

I think it was Dean Oliver who said that bad refereeing was inconsistent refereeing. This is something very different from making bad calls. Let me explain.

All in all, referees have an almost impossible job to do. Basketball is a game of motion in a relatively compact space. There's a lot going on between ten people on a court, and most of the time the referees do a good job of controlling it. (Although coaches would have you believe otherwise.)

It's the nature of the beast that a basketball referee is going to give a bad call sometime. The problem with basketball is that a bad call directly impacts the score of a game, since about 40 percent of possessions end up with someone scoring. A bad call of traveling can wipe two points off a team's score because the ball might have ended up in the basket otherwise. Likewise, missing a foul call can add two points to a team's score that shouldn't have been added.

Most of the time, this evens out. For an unbiased referee, the number of bad calls created is evenly divided among both teams, not impacting either club significantly. Bad refereeing has greater impact against good teams (because the points a bad team gets added to its score probably won't make up enough points to push a bad team into the win column) and against teams that have players who get into foul trouble: a bad foul call can make the difference between a player's foul tally being four, or five, or six and this impacts how many minutes that player should play.

The best referees recognize the impact of a bad call. Generally, referees are loathe to admit any mistakes for several reasons. First, they don't want the game to degenerate into Debate Club. Second, they want to assert their authority as the game's arbitrators. Third, basketball should be a game and not a science where 100 percent accuracy must be the rigid goal. But even so, a bad call can be reversed in some cases (but usually, must be changed right away) and when not, a referee can make up for a bad call by calling a ticky-tacky call on the other side. "Oops, I erased your basket on a bad offensive charge call. Sorry. When the other team comes back across the court, I'll call a 3-second violation and give you the ball back."

If a referee makes bad calls in the manner above, those referees might be bad...but at least, they'd be consistently bad, a sort of "unbiased bad" that impacted no one team more than the other.

The above is complicated by the fact that each referee seems to have a different view as to what kind of contact in basketball is acceptable. Theoretically, basketball is a non-contact sport but incidental contact is impossible to avoid. Some referees are willing to let players get mugged on the court. Other referees will blow the whistle if a player looks at another player cross-eyed. After a few minutes, a good coach will figure this out. They know that "the refs are going to let us play" and that the team can go out there no-holds-barred or that the refs are whistle-happy and that contact should be avoided.

During the Dream/Sky game, it appeared that the referees - #4 Sue Blauch, #21 Byron Jarrett, and #58 Josh Tiven - were of the latter school. It was a busy night for whistles. All in all, the Chicago Sky made a ludicrous 41 trips to the free throw line and the Dream made 39 trips. I don't think I've seen a WNBA game in the three years of following the sport where the teams made 80 combined trips.

Furthermore...the game didn't seem to be all that much of a physical game. (Let's ignore the Lyttle knockout for now.) Meadors didn't claim that the entire Chicago Sky was a bunch of goons. She didn't even claim Sylvia Fowles was a goon. (Nor, as far as I am aware, did Steven Key or any of the Chicago Sky players complain.) I didn't get that impression looking at the game, although I've only been following the sport for three years and I know that there are things I don't see.

Okay, so the refs were trigger happy. Big deal. Maybe McCoughtry and de Souza would have had to worry as well as Fowles, for all three of those players have a tendency to rack up fouls. Each team could have worked around that.

The problem, however, was that the refs were inconsistently bad in this case. The problem was Sylvia Fowles.

Now, let's back up. In no way, shape, or form am I stating that I thought Sylvia Fowles was deliberately trying to hurt Sancho Lyttle. What I am saying is that it doesn't matter if it was intentional, because Fowles's free-swinging elbows had an impact on the game that the referees simply ignored. For refs willing to blow the whistle every minute or so they never seemed to be looking in Fowles's direction.

Fowles hit at least three or four players that night with her elbows, and these weren't incidental contact hits either. These were "you're watching stars and planets rotate about your head" hits. We know about the Lyttle hit. Yelena Leuchanka also got hit, and I believe that Fowles clipped one of her own players (it might have been Mistie Bass).

There were two technical fouls called in this game. One was against Yelena Leuchanka. The crime was in complaining to the referee that Fowles had clipped her with her elbows. For that, Leuchanka got tee'd up. What the hell?

The second one was against Carol Ross, the Atlanta Dream assistant coach. This one requires some background. With about three minutes left in the game, and with Kelly Miller taking a couple of free throws, Sancho Lyttle was substituted. With the players lined up on both sides of the lane, Fowles was closest to the basket and Lyttle was standing next to her.

Miller missed the second free throw, and on the rebound, Fowles caught Lyttle under the left eye with the elbow. Lyttle collapsed to the floor, and was seemingly conscious for long enough to notice "I've been hit", grabbing her face. Afterward she collapsed into unconsciousness and was completely immobile for over a minute.

Words were exchanged, undoubtedly. I wasn't close enough to the bench to hear what was going on. Here's the important part: when you've got a player unconscious on the floor because she's been elbowed by an opposing player that the refs have not only refused to call a technical on, but have actually pinged one of your own players for bringing the matter up...well, would you expect words not to be exchanged?

Furthermore, Lyttle was immobile. We didn't know what her condition was. What if she didn't regain consciousness? That was a real stop-your-heart moment out there on the court. You can expect Atlanta's players and coaches to be...well, angry. That's part of concern for your teammate, that's one of the things that makes you a human being. And occasionally, you're going to lose your temper because of it.

Referees are mediators, and they have to make judgment calls. But just a few seconds later, the ref (was it Tiven) dinged Ross for a technical foul.

One person sitting next to me - whose basketball judgment exceeds mine - said that in all of her years of watching basketball, she had never heard of a coach getting a technical in a case when one of her own players had been knocked unconscious. Those are the times when you make allowances for temper, and those are not times to be martinets.

It was bush-league refereeing, and Tiven (or whoever it was that called the T) deserved every single boo that rained down on him. Way to go, dude. My, you're a big, big man for enforcing the rules. Except of course, the rules that prohibit you from swinging your elbows willy-nilly. But you're really great at teeing up a coach in emotional distress after one of her players got her head possibly smashed in. I'm sure that every player feels much safer that the game is in your hands.

From the WNBA official rulebook.

"The restrictions placed upon the players by the rules are intended to create a balance of play, equal opportunity for the defense and the offense, provide reasonable safety and protection for all players and emphasize cleverness and skill without unduly limited freedom of action of players or teams." (italics are my emphasis)

Maybe next time, Lyttle should bring a can of mace to protect herself. She'd be much safer than she'd be under the protection of any so-called WNBA "referee".

Of course, the referees could have simply canceled the technical. Why not? Referees - good ones, anyway - overturn each other's calls all the time. Or at the very least, apologized for it. Didn't the referee who killed that perfect game in baseball this year apologize for it? I didn't think the worse of him for doing so. It takes a big human being to admit that they're wrong and that they blew a call. The WNBA is infected with the pettiest referees (Price) that I think I've encountered in any sport I've followed outside of the WNBA. When it would behoove one to bend, they refuse to budge - I call it "doubling down on the stupid" - and I think less of them rather than more of them.

The WNBA refs are our dirty little secret. We get the kind of refs that we have because we can't afford any better. They're not just bad, they're not even consistently bad in some cases. The problem is that when players hit the floor unconscious, the dirty little secret comes out in the open. It's bad enough that we know how bad the W's referees are...but President Orender, does the entire world have to know about it, too?

Dream Lose to Sky, Lyttle Knocked Unconscious

2010-07-05T00:00:00.003-04:00

Atlanta vs. Chicago, Saturday July 3

2010-07-03T14:55:00.000-04:00

Who: The Atlanta Dream (13-4) take on the Chicago Sky (7-9) in an Eastern Conference game.

The Dream are led by Angel McCoughtry, who is scoring 19.8 points per game. Sancho Lyttle (14.5 ppg/10.6 rpg) is an All-Star caliber post, and Iziane Castro Marques (17.1 ppg) will be playing on the Brazilian national team at the end of the season with Erika de Souza (12.0 ppg/8.0 rpg). The Sky are led by Sylvia Fowles (18.7 ppg, 8.8 rpg) who is an MVP attender, and the Sky are backed up by Jia Perkins (10.4 ppg) and rookie Epipphany Prince (9.8 ppg, 19.6 mpg).

What: The third of five regular season games against the Chicago Sky and the last meeting until the middle of August - out of three three final games of the regular season for the Dream two will be against Chicago. The teams have split so far this season, with Chicago winning in Atlanta 80-70 on June 4 and Atlanta returning the favor in Chicago for the Dream's first win in the Windy City, 93-86 on June 15th.

Where: Philips Arena in Atlanta.

When: Tip-off is at 7 pm Eastern time, Saturday, July 3rd in Atlanta. You should be able to watch the game on Sports South in Atlanta and on NBA TV elsewhere. Comcast 100 in Chicago should also be showing the game. And of course, there's WNBA Live Access for those who have computers.

Why: Atlanta and Chicago might not be rivals, but the Sky always seem to know the answer for any question Atlanta poses. The Dream have won five straight and six out of their last seven but this is the Dream's fourth game in seven days and the only thing anyone can talk about is fatigue. It's something that Dream fans should be worried about given Chicago's success against Atlanta - the Sky are the only reason the Dream are undefeated at home this year. The Sky have won three of their last four games including an impressive 92-80 win against Connecticut in Chicago .

Something to look out for: the first half score. If the Dream are leading at the half, it's a good portent. The Dream have a 5-0 record in games where they've led at halftime...which means that 12 times this year the Dream were behind at halftime.

Another thing to watch is free throw performance. The Dream shoot 68.1 percent from the free throw line. It's not the worst of all time, by far - the 1998 Mystics shot 64.5 percent from the free throw line - but it is pretty bad, 11th out of 12 teams in the league. Iziane Castro Marques is hitting 62.5 percent from the free throw line and Erika de Souza is hitting 51.4 percent of her free throw shots. (Last year Erika hit 65.3 percent of her free throws.) You know it's a bad year for Erika when Armintie Price is outperforming her at the stripe.

Atlanta is favored by 6 1/2 by covers.com...but is only favored by one point by masseyratings.com. If you can get out there tonight and support the Dream, they'd appreciate it.

Sir Charles and Others of Note

2010-07-03T11:41:00.002-04:00

Speaking of Atlanta Dream Facebook Fun, those fine young people who run the Atlanta Dream's Facebook page have a new album called Look Who Came to See Us, highlighting the celebrities who have visited the Dream over its three-year existence as an Atlanta institution.

Among the names:

Josh Smith
Dwight Howard
TI
Sean May
Jason Terry
Julius Erving
Vivica A. Fox
John Smoltz
Charles Barkley

Go over there, give it a lock, join Facebook and then favorite the Atlanta Dream!

Yelena Leuchanka in Simmering...Green?

2010-07-03T11:34:00.001-04:00

The Atlanta Dream Facebook Page recently posted this picture of Yelena Leuchanka. The caption on the page is "Yelena's AJC Fashion Shoot". I've not heard of such a fashion shoot, so I would like to see more photos. (The dress is...uh...no comment.)

I'm always of mixed feelings regarding "fashion shoots" involving WNBA players. I'm always reminded of either that scene in A League of Their Own where the Peaches are at some sort of charm school where the instructor recommends "a lot of night games" as the only possible cosmetic improvement for Marla Hooch, or Slapshot where Johnny Upton flashes the crowd "because I want you to have a heart attack and die so that we never have to do this s**t again."

Lynx Come Up Shortest of All Against Dream on Thursday

2010-07-03T11:21:00.001-04:00

In case you didn't know yet, the Atlanta Dream moved to 13-4 on the regular season with a win over the visiting Minnesota Lynx by a score of 76-58 on Thursday Night.

The actual game night box score is here.

Pierce W. Huff of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution explains the victory.

All in all, the Lynx score 29.9 percent for the night. I'd have to go over a lot of old box scores, but I don't remember the Dream ever holding an opponent to less than 30 percent. That the Lynx broke 50 was a surprise; if the Dream hadn't put Brittainey Raven in without about eight minutes left in the final quarter they might have been able to hold the Lynx to under 50...that is, if they weren't dead tired.

Twice in the Dream's history - last year against Connecticut and this year against Indiana - we held an opposing team to 62 points. That was our previous record, and the Lynx now how the Dream franchise record for Fewest Points Scored by an Opposing Team in a Game.

Monica Wright: 1-for-8 from the floor. When is someone going to fix that?

Good job, Dream. I don't expect us to beat Chicago tonight, but I'd sure love to see it. I'll be there!

Atlanta vs. Minnesota, Thursday July 1

2010-06-30T21:06:00.000-04:00

Who: The Atlanta Dream (12-4) take on the Minnesota Lynx (5-10) in an interconference game.

The Dream are led by Angel McCoughtry, who is scoring 20.4 points per game. Sancho Lyttle (14.8 ppg/10.4 rpg) is an All-Star caliber post, and Iziane Castro Marques (16.8 ppg) will be playing on the Brazilian national team at the end of the season with Erika de Souza (12.1 ppg/8.3 rpg). Minnesota has five players who average double figures. Minnesota's Candice Wiggins (13.8 ppg) is out for the season but the Lynx have Rebekkah Brunson (13.6 ppg/10.8 ppg) and Seimone Augustus (17.7 ppg).

What: The first of two regular season games against the Minnesota Lynx - the two teams will meet again 13 days later in Minneapolis. Last year the teams split the season series, with the Lynx winning in Atlanta 91-85 on June 30, 2009 and Atlanta beating Minnesota 91-77 on the road on July 15th, 2009. Over the lifetime of the Dream, the record against the Lynx is 2-2, with each team always winning at the other's home court.

Where: Philips Arena in Atlanta.

When: Tip-off is at 7 pm Eastern time, Thursday, July 1st. Atlanta. You should be able to watch the game on Sports South - if not live, then game-delayed - but the game should also be on WNBA Live Access. For you clean living Minnesotans, the game should be broadcast on the BOB, 106.1 FM.

Why: The Dream have won five of thier last six games. The only loss was in Indiana, and the Fever only won by three points, 94-91. The Dream look as strong as ever, at least on paper.

However, the Dream will play four games in a week - Sunday, Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday - and even with home field advantage it has to take its toll in terms of sheer fatigue. Enter Minnesota, which is 5-10 but three of Minnesota's five wins come against lowly Tulsa. However, three of Minnesota's five wins also come on the road and the Lynx have won three of its last four. Unfortunately for the Lynx, they're the worst shooting team in the WNBA by a good margin, hitting only 39.5 percent of their field goals - hitting buckets at the rate of the 1998 Washington Mystics. Their opponents also hit 45.9 percent of field goals against the Lynx, the best in the WNBA.

(Note: Can you believe that the 2000 Miami Sol only hit 36.5 percent of its field goals? Ugh.)

The Minnesotans will have four days of rest coming in, but rest doesn't always help a team. The Dream are favored by 8 1/2 by covers.com and by 12 points by MasseyRatings.com. Let's hope that the Dream win their fourth straight tomorrow night.

Gallery: Dream vs. Mercury

2010-06-30T20:31:00.002-04:00

Yelena Leuchanka's 13 points against Phoenix were a career high.

Craig Cappy over at SportsPageMagazine.com has a gallery up of pics from the Dream's victory over the Mercury on Tuesday night.

If you like Dream pictures...and I know you do...then you know what to do. Click, and enjoy.

Dream Move to 12-4 on Season With Comeback Win Against Mercury

2010-06-30T08:10:00.000-04:00

Very tired. Got back in late last night. The Dream sparked a 11-0 run over a couple of quarters late in the game to beat the Mercury 94-88 at Philips Arena. The Dream is 6-1 at Philips over the season and remain 1 1/2 games up in the Eastern Conference.

The box score is here.

Pierce W. Huff of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution gives his writeup.

Associated Press writeup by George Henry is here.

Seth Pollack of SB Nation writes about the Mercury's woes.

Probably will have no time to write about this. Busy week. Minnesota shows up in Atlanta on Thursday Night and it's time to deliver a whuppin on them Lynxes. I'll be there!

Breakin' The Glass

2010-06-28T22:00:00.003-04:00

Breakin' the Glass is a documentary about the American Basketball League. For those new to the WNBA, the American Basketball League is the league that came just before the WNBA started and briefly competed with the W. Some of the footage in this documentary is just priceless - it's very hard to find actual ABL game footage. (See a very young Katie Smith!)

All three parts of the documentary are on YouTube. See it while you still can!

Atlanta vs. Phoenix, Tuesday June 29

2010-06-28T20:45:00.002-04:00

Who: The Atlanta Dream (11-4) take on the Phoenix Mercury (5-9) in an interconference game.

The Dream are led by Angel McCoughtry, who is scoring 20.5 points per game. Sancho Lyttle (15.1 ppg/10.9 rpg) is an All-Star post, and Iziane Castro Marques (17.2 ppg) will be playing on the Brazilian national team at the end of the season with Erika de Souza (12.3 ppg/8.7 rpg). The Phoenix Mercury might be without Diana Taurasi (22.9 ppg) but the high-scoring Mercury also have Candice Dupree (13.1 pgg/7.6 rpg) and Penny Taylor (15.9 ppg/4.9 apg).

What: The second of two regular season games against the Phoenix Mercury. On May 28th, the Dream won 96-93 at the US Airways Center in Phoenix, Arizona.

Where: Philips Arena in Atlanta.

When: Tip-off is at 7 pm Eastern time, Tuesday June 29th. The game will be shown on NBA TV - at least the Dream's website claims that it will - but will probably be blacked out in Atlanta. However, you should be able to watch the game on Sports South - if not live, then game-delayed.

Why: For those who like to joke about a WNBA game ending with a score of 8 to 4 - you need to update your jokes by about 15 years. The Mercury average 91.8 points per game, and the Dream are #2 at 82.7 points per game. In the NBA, this would be 110 points and 99 points per game.

However, the Mercury have a couple of problems. The first problem is that even though the Merc score 91.8 points per game, they give up 91.9 points per game, more than any other team in the WNBA. Somewhere, the Mercury have forgotten how to play even minimal defense and they've lost their last four games. Second, Diana Taurasi hurt her back on the road in an 95-85 loss to the Mystics in Washington. She went to the locker room in the third quarter and didn't return to the game. She's currently listed as day-to-day and might not play in the Atlanta game, which could make it a five-game losing streak for the Mercury. You have to go back to 2005 to find a Phoenix Mercury team that lost five straight games.

A win against the Mercury would give the Dream a 3-3 record lifetime and would be the first ever season sweep by the Mercury. The last time the Mercury played in Atlanta the Dream won 106-76, the biggest win in Atlanta Dream history in terms of points scored and in winning margin, so let's all knock on wood. Atlanta is favored by 6 1/2 points by covers.com and by 10 points by masseyratings.com. If you want to see a fast-paced, high-scoring game against the defending WNBA champions that the Dream have a good chance of winning, tomorrow night is your night!

Marynell Meadors to be Assistant Coach at WNBA vs. USA Game

2010-06-28T20:18:00.001-04:00

On July 10th, the usual WNBA All-Star Game format will change to "WNBA vs. USA Basketball" at an event called "The Stars at the Sun" which takes place in Connecticut. The purpose of the game is to give the USA Basketball team a really good team to warm up against.

The USA Basketball Team - in case you forgot - is coached by University of Connecticut coach Geno Auriemma. His assistant coaches will be Meadors and Jennifer Gillom, the head coach of the Los Angeles Sparks.

The WNBA All-Star Team will be coached by Seattle's Brian Agler. Nancy Darsch, his assistant with the Storm, will be his assistant with the WNBA Team.

The game takes place on July 10th on Saturday at 3:30 pm ET and will be televised by ESPN.

Sparks Owner Writes About the Dream/Sparks Game

2010-06-28T20:14:00.001-04:00

If you were unaware, Kathy Goodman - an owner of the Sparks - has a blog on the Los Angeles Times website, where she writes about the Dream's recent victory.

We did not play a good game on Thursday night against the Washington Mystics, so I was, not surprisingly, a little pessimistic coming into Sunday’s game against the Atlanta Dream, which is atop of the Eastern Conference. I took some time on Saturday to get a little perspective and inspiration by visiting the Martin Luther King Center and the Carter Center in downtown Atlanta. By game time, I was fairly philosophical and just wanted us to play some good basketball, win or lose. So why is it the Sparks had to start so strong and get my hopes up all over again?

...

As the fourth quarter began, I was wondering whether I would have preferred it if I thought we had never had a chance in the game. Atlanta was first in the East; the Dream had scored over 100 points when we played them in Staples earlier in the season; I didn’t have a real reason to be hopeful. Except that first half. When we played the kind of basketball I knew our team could play. If they played like the first-half Sparks, we’d be good. If they played like the team that played the first three minutes of the third quarter, it would be hard. Although we started the final period by pushing the lead to four, in less than two minutes, Atlanta forced a tie. Philips Arena, which had been fairly quiet during the game, erupted. Within another minute, the Dream took the lead for the first time and never looked back. Castro Marques, who had been held to four points in the first half, exploded for 21 in the second half. Yelena Leuchanka, coming off the bench for DeSouza, scored six of her eight points in the fourth quarter, all in the paint.

Maybe Ms. Goodman needs to invite our owner, Kathy Betty, to a Sparks game in Los Angeles. Or failing that, I'll go. All I need is a round-trip plane ticket, c/o the Pleasant Dreams Blog.

Career Points in an Atlanta Dream Uniform

2010-06-27T20:26:00.002-04:00

A recent post was made at the Atlanta Dream message board stating that Iziane Castro Marques has become the first player to score 1,000 points in an Atlanta Dream uniform. So I decided to check on that.

Here is the list of career points leaders while wearing an Atlanta Dream uniform...and congratulations, Izi!

Iziane Castro Marques 1015
Angel McCoughtry 743
Erika Desouza 699
Sancho Lyttle 669
Betty Lennox 595
Ivory Latta 534
Chamique Holdsclaw 348
Jennifer Lacy 285
Tamera Young 270
Katie Mattera 220
Michelle Snow 185
Shalee Lehning 157
Coco Miller 150
Alison Bales 133
Kristin Haynie 94
Kasha Terry 92
Stacey Lovelace 91
Armintie Price 87
Camille Little 62
Kelly Miller 59
Kristen Mann 45
Yelena Leuchanka 44
Ann Strother 39
Nikki Teasley 39
Chioma Nnamaka 16
Brittainey Raven 11

Dream Sweeps Sparks for the Season with 89-81 Win

2010-06-27T19:56:00.000-04:00

With the help of Dizzy Izi who scored 25 points, the Dream beat the Los Angeles Sparks for the season sweep. The Dream are 4-2 lifetime against the Sparks.

Pierce W. Huff puts it on virtual paper at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

The Associated Press releases the news.

The Dream needed a 13-0 run against the Sparks in the fourth quarter to put it away. Atlanta goes up to 11-4, and keeps a 1 1/2 game lead in the Eastern Conference. Up next: Phoenix on Tuesday night.

I might write more, or I might not. Very busy around the old homestead.

WNBA Caturday

2010-06-26T21:15:00.001-04:00

Malcolm the Cat tries to figure out the Western Conference, but is unable to run an Excel spreadsheet due to paw size.

One of the Greats

2010-06-26T21:08:00.004-04:00

Guess who was spotted in Atlanta? Janeth Arcain! Hi, Janeth! Dream fan Scarab took a picture of Arcain with the #1 Atlanta Dream fan! (*)

There are so many great Brazilian players in Atlanta they're going to have to make the Dream's colors gold and green.

(*) - Address all disputes to Atlanta Dream Blog, Atlanta, GA :D

Atlanta vs. Los Angeles, Sunday June 27

2010-06-26T15:20:00.001-04:00

Who: The Atlanta Dream (10-4) take on the Los Angeles Sparks (3-9) in an interconference game.

The Dream are led by Angel McCoughtry, who is scoring 20.6 points per game. Sancho Lyttle (15.3 ppg/10.9 rpg) is an All-Star post, and Iziane Castro Marques (16.6 ppg) will be playing on the Brazilian national team at the end of the season with Erika de Souza (12.6 ppg/9.0 rpg). The Los Angeles Sparks will have to depend on Tina Thompson (13.6 ppg/5.7 rpg) and Delisha Milton-Jones (12.6 ppg) with Candace Parker out for the rest of the season.

What: The second of two regular season games against the Los Angeles Sparks. On May 30th, the Dream won 101-82 at the Staples Center in Los Angeles.

Where: Philips Arena in Atlanta.

When: Tip-off is at 3 pm Eastern time, Sunday June 27th. The game will be shown on NBA TV, but will probably be blacked out in Atlanta. However, you should be able to watch the game on Sports South - if not live, then game-delayed.

Why: This is a rare down year for the Sparks - the Sparks are at 3-9 and are threatening to win the Maya Moore sweepstakes in the 2011 WNBA Draft. Candace Parker will have surgery on her easily-dislocated left shoulder and will miss the rest of the season. Parker was averaging a double-double with 20.6 ppg and 10.1 rpg. Betty Lennox - remember her? - will probably have knee surgery sometime next week and she'll be out for four to six weeks. The Los Angeles Sparks are clearly a team in disarray.

Remember last year when Pat Summitt brought all of her close personal friends to fill up Philips Arena? Tennessee faithful hoped to see Chamique Holdsclaw and Candace Parker square off last year. What a difference a season makes. Parker's out, Holdsclaw and Snow have skedaddled to San Antonio and unless the rosters shuffle before tomorrow there won't be a single player with a Tennessee Lady Volunteer pedigree on the court.

Los Angeles's performance could depend on Tina Thompson, the final survivor of the inaugural 1997 WNBA season - so if you need a reason to come, it would be to see a legend playing at Philips. Thompson scored 24 points at home against Connecticut and lost by three; the Mystics stomped out the Sparks by 15 in Washington when Thompson was held to nine points. If Thompson has another bad game, the Dream could (hopefully) pick up their 11th win before the season is even half-over.

If the Dream wins tomorrow, it will be the first season sweep of the Sparks in the Dream's history and give the Dream a 4-2 lifetime record against Los Angeles. (It will also be the Dream's first ever home win against LA.) Covers.com has Atlanta as a 10-point favorite, but I'm not counting this game as wrapped up until the final buzzer sounds.

New Gallery at SportsPageMagazine: Dream/Shock

2010-06-26T10:30:00.002-04:00

So this is what all the Marion Jones hype's about?

A new gallery has been posted at SportsPageMagazine.com with pictures from the Dream/Shock tussle. (Or maybe it's an old gallery. I'm a few days behind.)

My recommendation: visit and enjoy.

Lyttle Becomes a Spanish Citizen

2010-06-26T10:19:00.001-04:00

According to lokosxelbaloncestofemenino.com, Spain has made Sancho Lyttle a naturalized Spainsh citizen.

From Francisco Caamaño, the Minister of Justice in Spain:

In exceptional circumstances it as having excellent physical and technical qualities to excel in basketball, what may help to raise the national team's potential future projects, as their selection for the World Cup. (Yes, bad translation.)

In short, Lyttle now qualifies for the Spanish National Team. Spain wants to raise its women's team's international profile...and they might have just found a way to do it.

John Smoltz vs. The Dream

2010-06-26T10:01:00.002-04:00

Picture above from Vino Wong at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Former Atlanta Braves pitcher John Smoltz has been keeping himself busy in retirement. According to an article by Pierce W. Huff in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

The unofficial “John Smoltz Life After Baseball Tour” found Smoltz in an unfamiliar spot Friday, practicing with the Dream at Georgia Tech.

The practice was Smoltz’s way of promoting the Dream and drawing attention to women’s professional sports, and when it was over he realized that he chose the right professional sport to pursue when he was younger.

“I don’t know if I made [Michigan State men’s basketball coach Tom Izzo] proud as much as I enjoyed the experience today with some of the greatest female basketball players in the world,” Smoltz said. “You look from afar, and you don’t realize how quick, how strong and how talented they are. So, it was a great experience.”

...

“I think [Smoltz] is a great athlete,” Dream general manager/coach Marynell Meadors said. “Our players absolutely fell in love with him.”

Hey, athletes are the first ones to respect what other athletes do. They know how difficult it is. I hope Smoltz had a great time and that he'll come to a few games.

Ó Pátria amada!

2010-06-26T09:56:00.002-04:00

Q: Who are the only two Brazilians playing in the WNBA?

Just a wonderful picture posted by the Atlanta Dream Facebook Page. So if you're into social media, give it a visit. You'll find that it's chock-full of goodness like the picture above.

Dream Treat Kids to 96-90 Victory over the Shock

2010-06-23T21:26:00.001-04:00

We led by 18 at one point, but Tulsa caught us with our pants down. After they closed to within a couple of baskets, it was a struggle for the rest of the game. And then McCoughtry went nuts in the second half and managed to lead the Dream to victory. It was her ninth game where she's scored 20 plus points.

The box score is here.

USA Today and Charles Odum writes about the victory.

The news from the Associated Press.

The staff of the Tulsa World probably saw the game on television.

Tulsa's Channel Eight has the story.

The Sports Network makes its report.

The reason it's taken so long to report on the result is...I've just seen the game. I saw the replay on Sports South, being very careful not to find out the score before the game was over. It was very annoying when Sports South would cut a few minutes out of the game for time. In the bottom half of the second quarter - thank God they jumped ahead three minutes, because I didn't have to watch a major part of Tulsa's 21-6 run in the first half.

If you've noticed...I've been a little bit busy. Hopefully, more on this game later. 10-4 and #1 in the East, baby! Now it's time to whip the Sparks on Sunday!

Dream Put on Hard Hats and Dig Selves Out of Hole

2010-06-21T21:02:00.001-04:00

This is from a web page from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution about how hot it is during the summer.

Clearly, Taj McWilliams and Armintie Price are willing to establish position on the court no matter what it takes.

The Dream and its Increasing (?) Attendance

2010-06-21T20:50:00.001-04:00

Pierce W. Huff writes for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution about the Dream's...increasing attendance?

It's all in a marketing day's work. As they have season, the Dream last Thursday continued with their all-out promotional blitz, using team appearances, community functions and ticket giveaways to make themselves better known to the local community. The goal: increase ticket sales, even if it means personally meeting every Atlantan to do so.

The hard work is already paying dividends.

With average attendance up to 5,784, the Dream are drawing 1,300 more fans per game than last year. Attendance has increased in each of its past three home dates. The Dream plays Tulsa at noon Wednesday, the unusual start time due to the WNBA's annual Kids Day.

“There had been a very low awareness of this brand and this organization,” said Toby Wyman, the Dream’s president and chief operating officer.

Really? I thought attendance was down. Of course, it could be that the 4,284 number from last year - 5,784 minus the 1,300 more we're supposed to be drawing this year - is the real, secret number of fannies in seats from last year. (The number that only the DFO and Donna Orender knows about.) In which case, stand back for Wednesday because they're going to blow right past 5,784 in actual attendance during Kids Day.

8/2010 - Beat 1, Red Stars 0

2010-06-20T20:57:00.001-04:00

(Pictures by Craig Cappy, the guy who takes the Dream's pics for SportsPageMagazine.com. The gallery is right here. My own pictures are at the bottom of the post.)

Okay, you're probably more than a little confused by now. You're thinking "Excuse me? This is an Atlanta Dream basketball blog. This isn't some soccer blog. I've never even heard of the Atlanta Beat. What about the Dream's loss in Indiana?"

To which I reply, "Chill, pickle. Relax. It's Father's Day, a festive occasion. I write about lots of things on this blog, so why can't I write about soccer if I want to?"

This story has its start with a visit I made last year to my in-laws in Dallas, where I met Ethan. Ethan was the writer of a blog called Actionless Activity back then which I enjoyed reading for its insightful comments about the WNBA. I don't get down to Dallas that often, so it's the only time we've ever spoken in person. I went back to Atlanta to continue working on Pleasant Dreams, and he started writing the Mister Women's Sports blog.

Anyway, Ethan has been following soccer since 2007 and he had hoped to come to Atlanta and see an Atlanta Beat game and invite me along. Myself, I was indifferent to soccer. I did not loathe it, I did not despise it, I could simply take it or leave it. I didn't begrudge anyone their soccer fandom but I saw myself tied down enough to the WNBA and I didn't want to make the effort in following some other sport.

A few days ago, Ethan offered me some free tickets to the Beat's game against the Chicago Red Stars. He wasn't going to be able to come to Atlanta, so he sent his free tickets on to me. So, my question was, "should I spend several hours of my weekend watching a women's soccer game?" I did agree to go to this game, I was 99 percent sure that WNBA Live Access would deliver another staggering failure and I really had no reason not to go to it. After asking my wife to accompany me - who turned me down flat - I took off for sunny Kennesaw State University to find their soccer stadium.

Yes, KSU has a stadium devoted to soccer. In a public-private partnership, the university shares its stadium with the Atlanta Beat. I didn't know anything about soccer going in, so I decided to look up a few facts.

I knew that this was the first year of the Beat and that they were 0-5-2 going in. Winless.

I knew that the Atlanta Beat had been a successful franchise when the old WUSA was still in business, and that this franchise was named after that one.

I knew that Hope Solo was on the Atlanta Beat squad, and that she's a goalkeeper of some note.

I knew that Atlanta had an infusion of new blood due to the folding of St. Louis Athletica, another WPS franchise.

That's about all I knew. I couldn't find out any information about how to watch soccer from internet sources, but one website gave me some good advice. Namely, that soccer is a game of action and reaction: "Every action from a soccer player causes a reaction", just like a law of physics. If you see players that are running around mindlessly without the ball, it isn't mindless running around - they want to set up something. Players sprinting across the field caught my eye as much as players without the ball.

So here's a list of my random observations about the Beat/Red Stars game and about the whole experience in general:

1) My seat at the game was behind the goal. I thought at first that this was a good thing. That I'd get to see the offenses of each team up close and personal.

Then, with the first errant warm-up kick, I realized my foolishness. I would indeed see the offense up close and personal, because if a player sent the ball off the pitch while trying for a goal, the ball was quite likely to end up bouncing off my skull. More than one ball ended up in the seats, and we were warned by the announcer to watch the ball. If I go again, I'll wear a protective helmet. I felt sorry for anyone sitting near a goal who was nursing a beer.

2) It was indeed a minor league experience...in the best sense of that term, and not in the sense of "second rate". Local community eating popcorn and soda and watching a soccer game together. Sunny day, not a lot of hustle and bustle. A pastoral spectacle instead of the indoor arena spectacle of basketball or the crowd-is-half-intoxicated spectacle of football. (For clarification "football" will refer to the carry-the-ball sport known elsewhere in the world as American football, and "soccer" will refer to what the rest of the world calls "football".)

3) Noisemakers. They had them. Oh, not the vuvuzela that is causing all that controversy, but some local company was handing out cowbells as a promotional item. Can you imagine the crowd at Philips Arena armed with anything louder than thundersticks? To paraphrase the call to arms broadcasted randomly at KSU, "Guess what? Philips Arena's got a fever, and the only prescription...is more cowbell!!"

More cowbell. Think about it, Kathy Betty.

4) The Red Stars were wearing white/blue shirts with blue shorts. Across the bosom were three non-descript looking Red Stars. You need to red up that kit a bit.

5) At some point in the game, I saw a Swiss flag to the left of me. This was to honor Ramona Bachmann, a Swiss native who is playing for the Swiss National Team. A crapload of players were missing in Atlanta - including Hope Solo - but I didn't quite understand why. I still don't really.

6) I was surprised at how much smaller everything looks in soccer when you get away from the TV set. When you watch TV, it distorts how you watch games. On TV, the pitch looks absolutely gigantic, but when you're there, the pitch looks much smaller and you get a better view from your seats than you do on TV.

I suspect that one of the reasons that soccer never took off in America (besides virulant xenophobia) is that fact that there's nothing "incremental" in soccer. Soccer is purely continuous and play doesn't stop for the most part. It's a flowing sport and the TV screen can only show you a small part of that flow. It's also why hockey isn't really a great TV sport.

7) When the ball hits the protective barrier near the stands -- WHHAAAAAPPPP! The clang gives you an idea of how fast that ball is traveling when it's being kicked.

We were reminded that there was a first aid section on the West Concourse and that EMS was present during the game. Good idea.

8) I was surprised at how lily-white the crowd was. Well, this is Cobb County, Georgia, the former congressional seat of Newt Gingrich. After attending all of those Atlanta Dream games where you see people of all races and all backgrounds, it was very odd to find myself suddenly in the middle of white-bread suburbia again.

Race is inextricably bound up not just with basketball in the United States, but with all sports. If you want to generalize, soccer is a sport for yuppie professionals, and basketball is the sport which has traditionally been the ticket out for urban youth. I am now really starting to wonder if the (unspoken) reason that the WNBA gets so much hate is not that its women playing basketball, but black women playing basketball.

9) There were lots of kids there, many of whom were wearing various-colored soccer kits. Maybe they could be called "soccer kittens".

10) There wasn't a whole lot of fun stuff going on with the loudspeaker. Which might have been a good thing, since you weren't distracted by wacky vocal antics during the game. However, they could have done a lot more with their jumbotron, which only showed three things:

a) the Atlanta Beat logo (rotating) and the score

b) the occasional substitution, and

c) a lot of promotion of local business.

What? No toilet races? My wife would tell you that it isn't a sports experience without toilet races.

11) And now, about the game.

I was surprised most by Mami Yamaguchi, who is listed as a midfielder from Japan. I saw great footwork that reminded me of how Chamique Holdsclaw moves the ball at her best. I don't know if Yamaguchi is the Chamique Holdsclaw of Japan, or the Chamique Holdsclaw of the WPS or even the Jennifer Lacy of the WPS. All I know is that I saw some weird shit done with a soccer ball that I don't think I've seen before. Those players must practice by moving the ball past fallen logs in the forest, because I could swear that Yamaguchi was deliberately bouncing the ball off of her defender's shins.

12) So how does someone who doesn't watch soccer characterize this match? It was sort of like a boxing match. The Red Stars were a jabber, like Floyd Mayweather trying to win the match on points. They had control of the ball for much of the first half, and I suppose they thought that if they controlled the ball on their half of the court, sooner or later it would fall into the enemy net based on sheer random chance.

As for the Beat, they were sluggers. They didn't have the ball much in the first half, but when they did they would set up a combination and go for the throat, trying to set up the jab. If you look at the box score, Atlanta took 17 shots and the Red Stars took only four.

13) 42 minutes into the match, Monica Ocampo set up Tina Ellertson. The writeup says it was a header, but I thought it went off the body. However, there was much cowbell ringing.
13b) The writeup also lists why Hope Solo wasn't there - "humanitarian mission in South Africa". Does that mean "left to watch the World Cup?"

14) Halftime was a little weird. The pitch was turned over to several kids teams who split the field among themselves. It looked like a youth soccer practice out at Marist High School.

There was a dance contest among three fathers. The prize was a ride in a limo. I'm sure it was a nice promotional idea, but it was kind of hard to tell what was going on from where I'm sitting.

14b) One young woman was wearing a jersey numbered #78. I can guess what player is her favorite player - Hope Solo, a popular goalkeeper (in some quarters) for the Beat.

15) And with the Beat up 1-0, the hope was that we could keep the advantage in the second half. Neither team changed their strategy much, but it seemed that the Beat had better control of the ball. With the Red Stars unable to throw any punches - so to speak - the crowd waited and anxiously watched the clock run down.

When the clock hit 90 minutes - the time of a regulation soccer game - the announcer announced how much extra time would be added. Time in a soccer match isn't on the jumbotron, it's kept by a timekeeper. Time runs continuously, but for some kinds of stoppages the timekeeper adds extra playing time. For example, during the first half of the game five minutes were added.

The timekeeper announced that the minimum amount of time would be added - one minute. One minute later, the Beat had their first victory and there was much rejoicing.

16) Total attendance: 3,589. I suspect that attendance is counted in the same way as it is in the WNBA. However, the crowd was very into the game and the little kids - and there were a zillion of them - were going crazy waving their rally towels.

Did I have fun? Yes. Would I see another game? Let's put it this way: I wouldn't be adverse to seeing another game. The problem is that the WPS season runs concurrently with the WNBA season, and it's hard for me to even squeeze WNBA games into my schedule. But hey...it could happen, and I wouldn't mind it happening.

Pictures:

Nearing the venue....

Where it all happens.

Buy your Atlanta Beat gear here!

Lots to do, too.

My view from my seat.

Jumbotron watches ALL.

Switzerland, Represent!

Red Stars are a blur warming up.

Focus!

Notice the Japanese flag.

Action (?) on the pitch.

Celebrate!!

Dream Lose 94-91 on Road in Indianapolis

2010-06-20T17:38:00.004-04:00

Now we know what the "#20" on her jersey stands for.

Actually, it could have been worse. We only lost by three points, and the home field advantage in the WNBA is around 3.5 points, so on a neutral court we would have had a shot at winning this.

Sancho Lyttle had 20 points and 20 rebounds. This is only the eighth time in WNBA history that someone had 20 points and 20 rebounds, and the first time it's been done in almost four years. The complete list from P. D. Swanson:

20+ Points & 20+ Rebounds, Game
22 / 20 -- Natalie Williams, Utah at Sacramento, June 22, 2002
29 / 21 -- Chamique Holdsclaw, Washington at Sacramento, June 25, 2002 (2OT)
24 / 21 -- Lisa Leslie, Los Angeles vs. Orlando, July 22, 2002
22 / 24 -- Chamique Holdsclaw, Washington at Charlotte, May 23, 2003
23 / 20 -- Lauren Jackson, Seattle vs. Charlotte, July 31, 2003
21 / 22 -- Cheryl Ford, Detroit at San Antonio, May 22, 2004
21 / 23 -- Michelle Snow, Houston at Minnesota, August 4, 2006 (OT)
20 / 20 -- Sancho Lyttle, Atlanta at Indiana, June 19, 2010

You can find the box score here at the WNBA.com site.

Justin Albers reports for the Examiner.com.

Ted Schultz of the Indianapolis Star has his writeup.

The Associated Press reports here. They also have a gallery of photos.

So did I watch this one? No. I've officially given up on WNBA Live Access this year, so I went instead to the Atlanta Beat game, the Women's Professional Soccer (WPS) game here in Atlanta. The Beat got their first franchise victory, beating the Chicago Red Stars 1-0. I'm one of the few people who was physically present during the Dream's first win and the Beat's first win.

Game thread from Swish Appeal is here.

I'll write more about this game later, very busy weekend for me.

Interesting: Sam James of Fever Week reported this juicy tidbit of gossip:

Someone on press row heard Dream coach yell Angel McCoughtry on the bench

Apparently, Angel did or has given up on the game. The coach was yelling at her:

“Get this through your head, we are never out of a game! We never quit!”

Ah, the placid calmness of the Atlanta Dream. Particularly, Atlanta Dream fandom where such issues are handled with a spirit of patience and tranquility.

Atlanta vs. Indiana, Saturday June 19

2010-06-19T16:33:00.001-04:00

Who: The Atlanta Dream (9-3) take on the Indiana Fever (7-4) in an Eastern Conference Game.

The Dream are led by Angel McCoughtry, who is scoring 19.9 points per game. Sancho Lyttle (15.3 ppg/10.1 rpg) is an All-Star post, and Iziane Castro Marques (16.2 ppg) will be playing on the Brazilian national team at the end of the season with Erika de Souza (12.6 ppg/9.7 rpg). The defending Eastern Conference champions are back on track with Tamika Catchings (16.5 ppg/6.7 rpg) leading the team and with Shavonte Zellous (6.8 ppg) on the team after being acquired from Tulsa.

What: The second of five regular season games against the Indiana Fever. The Dream won the first of these games - their home opener - against the Fever on May 15th by a score of 66-62.

Where: Conseco Fieldhouse in Indianapolis, Indiana.

When: Tip-off is at 7 pm Eastern time, Saturday June 19th. The game will be available on Live Access.

Why: As in the year before, the Indiana Fever started 0-2, including the loss to Atlanta mentioned above. They've been 7-2 since then and have reasserted their dominance in the Eastern Conference. In order for the Dream to show that it's the best of the East, it will have to beat the Fever on their home court...where they play three times this year. A win moves the Fever to just 1/2 game behind the Dream in the tough Eastern Conference.

The 66 points to which the Dream were held were the lowest the Dream were held to since a meaningless regular-season ending loss against Washington last year. Before that, you have to go to July 2008 to a 79-66 loss against the Sacramento Monarchs - a team that no longer exists. Indiana is all about killer defense, with Catchings one of the all-time great defenders and the Fever holding their competitors to just 69.4 points per game. The Fever has come off home wins against what are proving to be two of the toughest teams in the WNBA - Connecticut and Seattle - and you know the Fever would like three in a row.

One interesting bit of trivia is that Tamika Catchings has hit 33 consecutive free throws, a franchise record. The Fever are favored by 5 points by covers.com, but I don't think the Dram will be intimidated. They have a 6-2 road record and are used to putting it together on the road, so if you see the Dream behind at halftime don't panic - the team have only led at halftime three times this season. Indiana is great at blocking shots, but Atlanta has great post players of its own and Indiana is a poor shooting team (42.2 percent), so it might require some defensive intensity for the Fever to win again.

Plenette Pierson: 11 Practices in Five Days

2010-06-16T20:44:00.000-04:00

From New York City, Pierson gives some hints as to what Tulsa ball is all about in her latest blog entry:

Well lets take it back for a moment, Tulsa training camp was the hardest preseason workout that I've ever been thru in my career. I mean at one point in 5 and a half days we had 11 practices. Talk about being prepared! 40 Minutes of Hell is no joke, Im sad that I didn't get the opportunity to fully understand the system and enjoy wrecking havoc on other teams. While trying to figure out Coach Richardson's system, we had a disagreement that was hard for both parties to recover from. Both sides tried to reconcile our differences but ultimately it was my decision to make a move and start over new somewhere. I felt as if I wasn't able to contribute to the success of the team and that I was holding them back. Everyone knows that when you are unhappy with circumstances that are presented to you, it can make something you love to do something that you dread doing. That was the point that I was at and I expressed that to Coach Richardson and he made the trade. Im officially a New York Liberty!

So it wasn't Richardson's decision, it was Pierson's. I thank Pierson for clearing that up.

"Geno and Pat, Having a Chat"

2010-06-16T20:35:00.001-04:00

At the induction ceremony at the Women's Basketball Hall of Fame, the two biggest names in women's college basketball coaching had a little chat. You can read the accompanying article here. A bigger picture is at the link.

The fun part would be having a caption contest.

"Yeah Pat, since I started a swear jar, my language has cleaned up considerably. What do you use to keep from cursing?"
"I just drink Bloody Marys on the rocks."

New Dream-Sky Gallery

2010-06-16T20:10:00.000-04:00

"Izi's the one you should worry about!"

SportsPageMagazine.com is breaking the photographic barrier with a new gallery of Dream-Sky photos. Click the link and show you love the Atlanta Dream...and Atlanta Dream pictures!

The DFO is Blogging Again!

2010-06-16T20:06:00.000-04:00

Lauren Harper has a new entry at Dream Diary: The Official Atlanta Dream blog. The blog had fallen by the wayside for a long time, and hadn't been updated since February 1st.

The entry is about how far the Dream have come. It seems that the article was written a little while back, as the Dream are listed as a 7-2 team. But I'm very happy to see the Official Atlanta Dream blog back, if only for a little while.

Atlanta Beats Chicago 93-86, First Ever Dream Win in Chicago

2010-06-15T22:55:00.003-04:00

We needed to prove we could win in Chicago...and we did. Great win by the Dream!

(Didn't see it. Screw WNBA Live Access. It doesn't work for me.)

We have five players in double figures in the box score. Iziane Castro Marques shot 10-for-16 and had 31 total points.

The Dream go to Indianapolis on Saturday. Let's win there!

Video Clip of Atlanta-San Antonio

2010-06-14T21:15:00.002-04:00

The The Painel do Basquete Feminino blog is on top of things today, linking to a video clip review of the Atlanta-San Antonio game posted by WNBA.com on YouTube.

For those who didn't want to read all that text below, the YouTube clip above sums it up.

Atlanta vs. Chicago, Tuesday June 15

2010-06-14T21:10:00.002-04:00

Who: The Atlanta Dream (8-3) take on the Chicago Sky (4-6) in an Eastern Conference Game.

The Dream are led by Angel McCoughtry, who is scoring 20.8 points per game. Sancho Lyttle (15.3 ppg/10.6 rpg) is an All-Star post, and Iziane Castro Marques (15.3 ppg) will be playing on the Brazilian national team at the end of the season with Erika de Souza (12.2 ppg/9.4 rpg). The Sky are led by Sylvia Fowles (19.3 ppg/8.1 rpg) and rookie Epipphany Prince (9.1 ppg).

What: The second of four regular season games against the Chicago Sky. The Dream lost the first of these games this year at home against the Sky 80-70 on June 4th.

Where: Allstate Arena in Chicago.

When: Tipoff is at at 8 pm Eastern time, Tuesday June 15. The game will be available on Live Access.

Why: With the Dream back on top in the Eastern Conference and hitting free throws, the next question should be - how come the Dream can't beat the Chicago Sky? The Dream are 1-7 all time against Chicago, and after losing to the Seattle Storm the Dream lost their second straight game of the season against the Sky at home.

The Sky have been streaky this year - starting the season off 0-4 and then winning the next four games, including beating the Storm and the Dream. The Sky have now lost two straight again, and both of those losses were double-digit losses against Eastern Conference teams (L 85-70 vs. New York, L 95-78 vs. Mystics). It might be a little bit tougher for Chicago as Shameka Christon got hit in the face with an elbow in the Washington game three minutes in and her status is still questionable. Christon averages 8.5 points per game.

Over those two losses by the Sky their opponents have shot 57 percent against the team, so Atlanta should feel hopeful that they might get their first win ever against Chicagon on their home ground. A good team should be able to beat anyone. However, the Sky are favored by 2 1/2 against Atlanta by covers.com.

Mark 6:4

2010-06-14T20:10:00.001-04:00

The Brazilian Basketball Confederation honored Iziane Castro Marques for her performance against San Antonio where she scored 24 points and 12 rebounds. You can read the translated version right here.

Wait a minute. That was Sancho Lyttle who had 24 points and 12 rebounds and not Iziane Castro Marques. But if you could convince Lyttle to speak Portugese....

(Heads up to the Painel do Basquete Feminino blog.

10/2010 - Dream 90, Silver Stars 83

2010-06-14T19:23:00.001-04:00

Past meets present.

(Pictures provided by SportsPageMagazine.com. Go over and check out the gallery!)

After watching the Seattle game and the Chicago game, I finally got what I was looking for - a suspense-filled game that never failed to keep my interest and ended in a Dream victory. So I'll give you my minute-by-minute impressions.

1) Erika, Iziane, and Yelena Leuchanka were shooting around before the game started. It's kind of an odd trio, since as far as I know Leuchanka doesn't speak Portugese. They seemed to get along fine, though....

2) ...or maybe, it's just Leuchanka's personality. Before the game, Edwige Lawson-Wade of the Sparks walked up to Leuchanka and the two chatted a little while. Without going to basketball-reference.com, I don't quite know the Leuchanka-Lawson-Wade connection. Maybe they played together in Turkey, or somewhere in Europe. I dunno.

3) It seems that every coach except for Marynell Meadors was out there working on drills with the Dream before the game start. I definitely saw Carol Ross. I could have sworn I saw both Fred Williams and Sue Panek out there. With eleven players and three coaches, it looked like the Dream were holding a convention on their side ofthe court.

4) Ross was working with the posts again. This drill involved long passes to the posts from the perimeter, with the goal of the posts to bank it in or otherwise make the bucket. Ross can really heave the ball - I wonder if Ross could hit a 3-pointer if she wanted to?

5) Early on in the crowd, I saw a fan walking to find her seat. She was wearing a Silver Stars T-Shirt - #25, Hammon's jersey.

Reading RebKell, I've discovered that there is an unwritten kind of jersey protocol. As far as I can tell, this is how jerseys are "supposed" to be worn by fans. In descending order of preference:

a) Atlanta Dream jerseys with current players
b) Atlanta Dream jerseys with previous players (Lennox, Latta, Holdsclaw....)
c) Retired Hall-of-Famer jerseys (Cooper, Griffith)
d) Jerseys of the corresponding NBA team, if it exists - for Atlanta, this would be Atlanta Hawks jerseys
e) Jerseys of the enemy team (Hammon, in this case) - the person wearing the jersey can be teased, but abuse is classless unless the wearer of the enemy jersey is provoking abuse
f) A "personalized" Dream jersey with your nickname instead of the player name and a number not in use
g) A "personalized" Dream jersey with your real name and a number not in use
h) A "personalized" Dream jersey adorned with the number of an existing player, but not that player's name - say, wearing Shalee Lehning's number (#5) with your last name instead of "Lehning" (the crime is that you've obliterated the player)
i) Any overly "femmy" jersey in pastel colors - if your jersey is pink because it was worn by a Dream player during their Breast Cancer Awareness game, you get an exception

This protocol isn't listed anywhere, it's just what I happened to have picked up following various threads. Supposedly, a male wearing any WNBA jersey is at the bottom of the list, because it's supposedly the gHey. On the other hand, most of the writers who came up with that rule seem to be douches, so if you're a guy and you want to wear a WNBA jersey, let your freak flag fly, baby!

6) And then, I saw them - Chamique Holdsclaw and later Michelle Snow wearing black and silver. Enemy colors. At Philips Arena. I don't know how to think about that. On the one hand, good for you that you've found another team where you can practice your considerable basketball skillz. On the other hand...black and silver. Enemy colors. Holdsclaw and Snow, you're violating the jersey code!

7) The National Anthem was sung by R&B singer Crystal Renee'. I thought it was okay. It could have been great for all I know; I'm no Simon Cowell.

8) Twice during the game, three superfans were honored by the Dream. The name of one was (I think) Arthur Fisk, and I never caught the name of the other two.

Why are they superfans? They climbed Mount Everest, and displayed the banner of the Atlanta Dream at basecamp. For these fans, the Dream is clearly on Top of the World.

9) Before the game: very quiet for some reason, the calm before the not-Seattle storm.

10) And then, I saw them again. The Brazilians! I tried to get a snapshot with my camera but my camera failed. They always sit in the same section and bear two big Brazilian flags, and are always wearing gold-colored shirts. This means that they are obviously Kansas State fans here to root for Shalee Lehning.

11) San Antonio's starting lineup: Lawson-Wade, Hammon, Young, Holdsclaw, and Snow. The big question - would the Atlanta faithful boo Holdsclaw? The mix was right down the middle, cheers and boos. Call Dream fandom ambivalent.

Atlanta's starting lineup: the usual - Lehning, Lyttle, Erika, Iziane and McCoughtry

12) Participating at the ceremonial ball exchange: Valdosta High School. No word as to if they brought their own posse.

13) A representative of Kia Motors was on hand on center court - Meadors and the Kia representative presented the Eastern Confererence Player of the Month award to Angel McCoughtry. McCoughtry's going to have to build extra shelf space for all of these.

14) Before the game, the jumbotron showed Lehning and McCoughtry singing "Ticket to Ride". No, that's not true. Rather, they were giving directions to the Dream. The game was about to start.

15) If there was a word to characterize the first quarter, it would be intense. I told myself, "it looks like "first team to crack up loses". The refs were determined to blow their whistle, and that meant that the Dream would be tested at the free throw line early on.

Before the game, the Dream's free throw average was hovering at a dismal 64 percent. With nine minutes to go, Sancho Lyttle would be the first Dream player to be tested at the charity stripe. She hit both of her shots - a good portent - and the Dream were up 4-2.

16) The Dream and the Silver Stars were determined to match shot for shot. Lehning hit a 3-pointer from the right side to put the Dream up 9-8...but Edwige Lawson-Wade matched that with a 3-pointer from the top of the arc to bring the Silver Stars back up 11-9.

Before Lawson-Wade got her hands on the ball, McCoughtry had it, and it seemed that McCoughtry had a little trouble with handling the ball.

17) With about 4 1/2 minutes left to play in the first quater and the game tied at 11-11, Sancho Lyttle was called for her second personal foul. It's like clockwork - expect Lyttle to have two personal fouls, right away. I don't know if it's due to Lyttle's (relative) inexperience or if its due to the fact that post players pick up a lot of personal fouls. But, based on non-scientific observation, it appears that Lyttle always picks up two personal fouls early and sits down.

Alison Bales came in to replace Lyttle, Bales being our first option off the bench. Holdsclaw took a breather. Our first option off the bench immediately made a bad pass that helps you understand why Bales, even with her talents, isn't starting.

18) With the Silver Stars up 14-13, Toby Wyman (the Dream's COO) came out to honor the executive director of an organization called L. E. A. D. L. E. A. D. is an Atlanta organization designed to develop leadership, but I don't know what the initials stand for, and I couldn't find out at the website. I believe the honoree was Kelly Stuart, but I can't be positive about the name speling.

19) Sign watch: I haven't seen many fans carry signs into Philips so far this year, but someone was carrying a sign honoring Ali Bales. Anyone can carry a sign honoring Angel McCoughtry, or bring in a couple of Brazilian flags, but when your sign honors the future 2010 Sixth Woman of the Year, that means that you're a hardcore Dream fan. Either that, or a hardcore fan of very tall women.

20) At the beginning of the game, I looked at the empty seats surrounding me and I thought, "Well, that's just swell - a second game with only 2,000 in attendance." But with the first quarter halfway over, the fans were still coming in. I said, "Hmm...this crowd is starting to fill out a little...."

21) San Antonio extended its lead to 17-13 after a 3-pointer right of the arc from Edwige Lawson-Wade. Clearly, Shalee Lehning wasn't the answer to Lawson-Wade, so Lehning was yanked and Kelly Miller came in.

McCoughtry got a layup, and then Kelly Miller fed Erika de Souza for the basket, and suddenly it was a 17-17 game all over again. That's when San Antonio brought Holdsclaw back in.

22) The Dream are still wearing their tattoos to honor Kyle, this game's honoree of the "Armed With a Dream" program from the Atlanta Children's Hospital.

23) A great play near the end of the first quarter. Chamique Holdsclaw had the ball, and was ready to drive to the basket. Her sole defender was Alison Bales. Holdsclaw tried to post up the ball over Bales, but found that 6 feet 7 inches was simply too great an obstacle. The ball didn't fall, and McCoughtry ended up with the ball and sprinted to the other end to tie it at 20-20. The quarter would have ended at 20-20 if not for a 3-pointer by Roneeka Hodges with one second left to end the quarter with the visitors up 23-20.

24) At the end of the game, both teams were fairly evenly matched statistically. The Dream was shooting 42.9 percent, and the Silver Stars were shooting 41.2 percent. However, the Silver Stars were 4-for-7 from the 3-point line.

25) Yelena Leuchanka came out to start the second quarter. Leuchanka is our second option off the bench in the post and clearly, she's no Alison Bales. First, she threw the ball away with a bad pass. Then, she had a shot blocked by Michelle Snow. But eventually, the Dream found her and she hit a wide-open jumper to bring us back to 23-22.

26) Both teams had a sweet mid-range game going, with jumper after jumper falling in. It was 29-26 in favor of the visitors with 6:31 left in the half.

This is when the Dream had their "Stars at the Sun" promotion, to convince fans to vote for Dream players for the All-Star Game. Angel McCoughtry gave the intro, then Lyttle, Iziane and Erika added "and me!" and Lehning wrapped it up. The way Erika said "and me!" you'd suspect that they were the only words in English she knew...but she said them with enthusiasm.

27) With about 4 minutes to go in the half and the score tied, people were still marching in. The crowd was now looking pretty good. I thought that it was going to be...maybe...announced in the 7,000 range. Crowds this big usually get announced in the 7,000 range.

28) After calling their second full-time out, the Silver Stars seemed to settle down. Hammon scored one of those under the basket "loop-de-loops" at Marynell Meadors calls them to put the Silver Stars up 33-29. Hammon was staring to get warmed up.

The Dream were down 35-33, and Lehning made a diving save to the ground that made me wince, given Lehning's history of shoulder surgery. While the Dream were playing, it made it back to me that Candace Parker had suffered a similar shoulder injury and was headed to the hospital. Maybe Lehning needs to play with one of those giant braces that Parker plays in, just as a protective measure.

29) Just before the half was over, Lyttle made her third personal foul. She left the floor. Sophia Young drove to the basket, and Ruth Riley followed with a layup to give the Silver Stars the 39-35 lead. The last basket by the Dream was off a drive by Erika de Souza, and the Dream entered the halftime break down by two points, 39 to 37.

30) Halftime: as the fans aren't privy to what goes on during a halftime speech, we instead got to look at a Zumba party. (I told my wife that I got to see a Zumba party at the Dream game, and she said, "What, the vacuum cleaner?"

Zumba, for those who don't know what it is, is a new exercise craze that looks a lot like Latin dancing. Now, no one has ever confused me with Michael Jackson but if dancing and exercise are your things, you might want to try the Zumba. It looked kind of cool.

They also had more "person bowling". I think I explained this in a previous post. Seven gigantic plastic pins are set up at one end of a court, and a person sits on a small wheeled platform at the other end. His or her partner pushes the person on the platform down the court into the plastic pins.

I don't think they got more than three pins in either attempt. No strikes or even spares. Clearly, it will be a long time before person bowling becomes a demonstration Olympic sport.

31) With the start of the third quarter de Souza made another layup and we were tied 39-39. The Dream didn't leave the locker room cautious: on the contrary. Erika de Souza tried a lob pass to Iziane Castro Marques under the basket, and it would have been a perfect play except for the fact that Erika threw it just a little too hard. Iziane was forced to lean backwards to catch it, and she had no time to correct her posture before shooting.

32) Both sides went back to trading baskets again. One of those baskets was a semi-"alley oop" to Sancho Lyttle, or it would have been a true alley oop if Lyttle could leap that high. It was a high lob pass to Lyttle's outstreched hand when she was at layup distance from the basket.

33) Becky Hammons hit a 3-pointer with 6:34 left to give San Antonio a 51-47 lead. I say "Hammons" because that's what the announcer said, and the announcer is always right. (Hmm...whatever happened to Art Eckman, by the way?)

34) With about 5:40 left on the clock, Holdsclaw hit a jumper to put San Antonio up 53-48. Sancho Lyttle followed that with a bank shot and Iziane drove to the hoop and before San Antonio knew it, the game was almost tied again at 53-52. Time out, San Antonio.

35) During the time out, the celebrity dads and daughters came out and did some sort of dance contest. Among the participants were Ryan Cameron and his daughter or daughters, and I could swear that they mentioned that the daughter of Ludacris was there.

I found it very hard to pay attention, and didn't know who won the contest. The reason being that I was distracted by the Atlanta Dream mascot, Star. Star was dressed in a blue and red padded suit with red flowing cape - Star had transformed himself into "SuperStar"!!

36) ...and that's pretty much when the Dream transformed itself into SuperDream.

Angel McCoughtry once said that basketball is a game of runs. There was only one real run in this game, though. For almost the entire final six minutes of the third quarter, they just shut down the Silver Stars defensively.

Atlanta went on a 17-0 run. Steals. Free throws by Lehning. Lay ups by Lyttle. A bad 3-second violation call in Atlanta's favor. San Antonio going over the limit in personal fouls. Fate had suddenly tilted in the Dream's favor and San Antonio couldn't untilt no matter how hard they tried.

Down 53-49, the Dream found themselves up by double-digits at the end of the amazing run. They led by 66-55 with 39.4 seconds left in the third. Only a basket by Michelle Snow broke the run, and the Dream took a 66-55 lead into the fourth quarter.

37) All of a sudden, little dots could be seen at the top of the Philips Arena dome. It was time for another Aaron's Parachute Dog Drop! Aaron's Inc. is one of the Dream's sponsors and every now and then, little Aaron's mascot dogs - Lucky the Dog, I believe - parachute into the hands of waiting fans.

Those damned things were everywhere, but the fans didn't mind. I found myself grabbing one of those, but then I caught myself - hey, I don't have any kids - why do I even want one of these things? - after I grabbed it, I slung it in a random direction.

Unfortunately, I had slung it away from the "second place finisher" - the man who almost got it before I threw it away. My friends told me the poor fellow looked crestfallen. He probably had a kid, too, that would have liked that pup. I learned a valuable lesson that day - never get between a man and his dog.

38) The fourth quarter started, and it looked like the Dream wasn't going to keep its double-digit lead for long. The Silver Stars began to claw their way back into the game with the help of "The Claw" - Holdsclaw, who scored three points in the first half, five in the third quarter and was steadily gaining speed. She hit a jumper and then a couple of free throws to bring it back to 68-61.

With the score 70-61 in favor of the Dream, Armintie Price was called for a foul. I could see Shalee Lehning jawing with the referee. Oh, Lehning. Her image is of sweetness and light, and there she is giving the ref a hard time. You keep this up and we'll have to call you Diana Lehning.

39) San Antonio was determined to get the game down into 6-point territory come what may. Price was doing her damnest out there. With the Dream up 72-65, she got a steal but she couldn't hang on to the ball, and ended up doing an impromptu split on the Philips Arena home floor.

With 6:02 left in the game, the Dream called a full timeout.

40) During the full timeout, it was time for Dream Karaoke. The singer this time was Sancho Lyttle, who was singing some completely unrecognizable song which turned out to be "Glamorous" by Fergie. The contestant figured out Sancho's song, and then said to the crowd, "I'm glad Sancho can play ball."
40a) Did you know every Sunday home game they have family free throws at Philips Arena? After the game, the families can come out to the court, stand in line, and take a toss from the free throw line. That's kind of cool.

41) With less than five minutes left, McCoughtry got to the basket on a dubious skip step that put the Dream up by double digits again, 76-65. Holdsclaw got a couple of free throws and then another drive to the basket to close back to single digits, 78-69.

On the boards, it was another story. Atlanta got two second chances due to their offensive rebounding muscle, and Bales got the foul. Two free throws by Bales and it was 80-69.

42) With the Dream up 80-71, I saw something I had never seen...at least, I think I have never seen it. Lehning was moving the ball into the post area and generally, when Lehning gets the ball in that far she flees - she'll try desperately to kick it out rather than take a shot even if it's a wide-open shot.

She had the wide open shot and she hesitated a little - but she managed to calm herself and take the close up shot which she hit. 82-71 Dream. I suppose Lehning figured that she needed to make shots before Kelly Miller snapped up her starting position.

43) The Dream led 86-75. There was 2:01 left in the game. The Dream had entered the RuPaul Zone, where all you needed to do to win is to "don't f**k it up".

With exactly one minute left, Holdsclaw hit a basket to bring it to double digits, 86-77. The Silver Stars, needing points fast, but the ball into the hands of Edwige Lawson-Wade.

With about a minute on the clock, she hit a 3-pointer. 86-80 Dream. The ball ended up in McCoughtry's hands, but Sophia Young got the steal. Becky Hammon put the ball in Edwige Lawson-Wade's hands and she hit another 3-pointer with 28.7 seconds left. The score was now 86-83 Dream, and it looked like the Dream might need to LipSync For (Their) Life.

Needing to invoke the powers of SuperStar, the Dream handed the T-Shirt Shooting Gun back to Star - a sign of desperation, since Star once had it taken away from him after he aimed it at Bill Laimbeer.

44) With the Dream having the ball back with 28.7 seconds left, the Silver Stars would have to foul to get the ball back. Helen Darling and Edwige Lawson-Wade fouled in sucession, and McCoughtry visited the free throw line with 24.5 seconds left.

McCoughtry made the first shot. And the second. 88-83 Dream. San Antonio called for a 20-second time out, and then another one, back-to-back.

45) During the time out, it was odd to see Carol Ross giving instructions to the huddle. Marynell Meadors hung around outside the huddle as if she were Brittainey Raven.

46) Third time's the charm, right? When the Silver Stars got the ball they gave it to Lawson-Wade again, but she missed the 3-pointer with 8.9 seconds left. Snow got the rebound...but she was called for the travel with 7.6 seconds left. The ball was back in the Dream's hands. Iziane would bring in the ball and she was directing traffic on the court with her free hand.

47) 6.2 seconds left. The Silver Stars got Lehning on the foul. Lehning to the free throw line. If she hit both shots, the game was essentially over.

However, Lehning missed the first shot. That's okay. If Lehning hit the second, the Dream would be up by six and San Antonio would need two 3-pointers just to tie.

Then...Lehning missed the second shot. The shot bounced off the front of the rim and there was a mad scramble. Lehning got her own rebound and tried to lay it up but Snow blocked her shot. The ball ended up in Sancho Lyttle's hands and she made a shot with less than a second left.

It went in! 90-83 Dream. San Antonio got the ball back, to no avail! The game was over. A few minutes before the game was over, Lyttle had been named the Player of the Game. She finished with 24 points, 11 rebounds, and the crucial final rebound and basket.

Great game! And more about it later!

Dream Defeats San Antonio 90-83, Regain Eastern Conference Lead

2010-06-13T21:05:00.000-04:00

Great game. Suspenseful and/or fun all the way through. There was a big crowd, the biggest this year. The crowd was having a good time, and the air conditioning didn't hurt, either.

Here's the writeup from the Associated Press.

Pierce W. Huff writes about it in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Definitely an enjoyable night. Dream are 8-3 on the season. On Tuesday we travel to Chicago to, as the heroine of Kill Bill put it, to execute our 'roaring rampage of revenge.'

The Best Basketball Players: "Pound Per Pound"

2010-06-13T20:09:00.005-04:00

In an article somewhere I've read on line - I'd give it credit, but I honestly can't remember what it was - a WNBA defender spoke about the foolish dismissals of the WNBA where some fool makes the argument because "my favorite NBA team/college team/local high school team could be a WNBA team". The approach to this defense was one I formulated before, but the article beat me to putting it in print.

Namely, that this argument is never made in boxing. Could Vladimir Klitschko beat up Manny Pacquiao? Probably, since Klitschko is physically stronger than Pacquiao and none of Pacquiao's opponents have hit Pacquiao as hard as Klitschko could. In boxing fandom, there is much discussion as to who is the best "pound per pound" fighter - who is the best fighter taking into account the differing weight classes.

As it turns out, we have a nice "one value" metric to assign worth to a ball player - John Hollinger's Player Efficiency Rating, or PER. PER can be calculated for both NBA players and WNBA players. I therefore decided to count NBA PER as essentially equal to WNBA PER. This equalizes male and female basketball players.

For WNBA players, only players who have played more than 5000 career minutes are included. Sorry, Cynthia Cooper. You probably would have been on this list, but the WNBA started too late.

Top PER Values for NBA and WNBA Players
(min 5000 minutes WNBA, min 15000 minutes NBA)

1. Lauren Jackson (28.55)
2. Michael Jordan (27.91)
3. LeBron James (26.86)
4. Tamika Catchings (26.67)
5. David Robinson (26.18)
6. Wilt Chamberlain (26.13)
7. Dwyane Wade (25.67)
8. Yolanda Griffith (25.49)
9. Bob Pettit (25.37)
10. Tim Duncan (25.02)
11. Neil Johnston (24.72)
12. Diana Taurasi (24.67)
13. Charles Barkley (24.63)
14. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (24.58)
15. Lisa Leslie (24.24)
(T) Sheryl Swoopes (24.24)
17. Magic Johnson (24.11)
18. Karl Malone (23.90)
19. Dirk Nowitzki (23.76)
20. Kevin Garnett (23.59)

So is Lauren Jackson better than Michael Jordan? That's up for you to decide. (As for me, go Lauren.)

Boyfriend of Dream Draft Pick Ardossi Arrested after Assault

2010-06-13T11:09:00.002-04:00

From WSB-TV:

Channel 2 Action News has confirmed that a Georgia Tech football player was arrested following a fight.

Defensive end Bobby Hall is accused of beating his girlfriend, Bridget Ardossi, during a fight over their scholarship money.

Ardossi, a former star Georgia Tech basketball player, said she and Hall had argued. The two shared an apartment at the undergraduate living center.

Ardossi said Hall dragged her and slammed her head against a door and wall.

According to the article, Hall has been suspended from the Georgia Tech team and faces battery charges. The actual police report can be found here.

At least Georgia Tech is taking the right action. Roberty Hall has been suspended indefinitely from the team. Good.

Atlanta vs. San Antonio, Sunday June 13

2010-06-12T23:30:00.004-04:00

Who: The Atlanta Dream (7-3) take on the San Antonio Silver Stars (3-5) in an inter-conference game.

The Dream are led by Angel McCoughtry, who is scoring 20.6 points per game. Sancho Lyttle (14.4 ppg/10.05rpg) is an All-Star post, and Iziane Castro Marques (15.1 ppg) will be playing on the Brazilian national team at the end of the season with Erika de Souza (12.7 ppg/9.8 rpg). The Silver Stars are led by Sophia Young (15.4 ppg). New acquisition Chamique Holdsclaw (14.7 ppg/4.8 rpg) has contributed immediately, and fan favorite Becky Hammon (13.7 ppg, 5.2 apg) runs the offense

What: The second of two regular season games against the San Antonio Silver Stars. On May 15th, the Dream traveled to San Antonio and won 75-70.

Where: Philips Arena in Atlanta, GA.

When: Tipoff is at at 3 pm Eastern time, Sunday June 13. The game will be available on Fox Sports South and on NBA TV.

Why: The Dream have lost three of their last four games, but Atlanta fans don't care too much about that. Fans are probably most interested in the return of Chamique Holdsclaw, who failed to show up for training camp a few days before it started. Holdsclaw sited irreconcilable differences with her coach. Now, she and her newest team come to Philips...and depending on Holdsclaw's performance, the loss of Holdsclaw will be marked either as a burden on the Dream or as a bonus.

Another item on the menu - can the Dream recover their free-throw shooting touch? The Dream are at the bottom of the league in free throw shooting, hitting only 64.7 percent. Historically, there has only been one WNBA with worse free throw shooting - the 1998 Washington Mystics, at 64.5 percent. The 3-27 Mystics are not a team with which the 2010 Atlanta Dream wishes to keep company, and everyone will be watching the Dream at the free throw line.

It will almost be a different San Antonio team from the team the Dream faced in May. Sandy Brondello is back as head coach. The Silver Stars have signed Allie Quigley, and Michelle Snow's status is unknown after suffering an injury against the Shock. Even with the changes, Atlanta is a six-point favorite from covers.com.

New AJC Article: Dream Glad to be Home

2010-06-12T19:19:00.000-04:00

Pierce W. Huff is on top of things in Atlanta. He asks the rhetorical question "Will the real Atlanta Dream stand up?" in this article in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. (Pierce W. Huff is definitely one of the good guys.)

One thing is certain, based on the way the league has approached playing the Dream, opponents believe they are closer to being the 6-0 team than the one that struggled in its next four games.

Lehning said teams no longer overlook the Dream.

“I think everybody knows about the Atlanta Dream,” Lehning said.

Attendance for Atlanta-Chicago Game

2010-06-12T12:38:00.003-04:00

According to WomensBasketballOnline.com, the attendance was 2,515 for the Atlanta-Chicago game. That's not only the lowest attendance for any Atlanta Dream game at Philips Arena, but it's the lowest attendance of any game in the WNBA since June 16, 2009 when the Connecticut Sun visited the Chicago Sky at the UIC Pavilion and only 2,396 fans showed up...and the Sky had an excuse because their previous home only seated about 6,000 people.

Part of the Dream's attendance woes - they're only averaging about 4700 fans this year - come from the fact that the changeover in ownership and management came so late in the previous year that it really hurt the Dream's season-ticket sales. That and the fact that the Dream have had few home games this season.

Look, we all know there are forces out there in Atlanta (looks warily at the sportswriters of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution) that would love to see the Dream fold up and die. But frankly, if you don't show up to these games - and this game on Sunday - the Dream might not be here in 2011. In the end, if you don't show up, the only conclusion they can draw is that you weren't interested enough.

10/2010 - Liberty 91, Dream 79: Doghouses and their Construction

2010-06-12T12:24:00.000-04:00

The Dream came up short in New York, 91-79. Well, come up short is probably the wrong word as the Dream never led at any time during that game. After winning six straight to start the season, the Dream have lost three of their last four. For some fans, that means that its time for panic to set in. The Dream play again at home on Sunday against the Silver Stars on a game scheduled for NBA-TV and no one knows if they should look forward to it with expectation or dread.

Once again, WNBA Live Access delivered a dud. I might try to catch this game if it's archived, but it seems that me (and my computers) and Live Access are simply never going to get along. I watched a short of a halting version of the game for the first half before frustration set in. Most of the time, I could hear the audio, but the New York announcer got so many elementary facts wrong - who knew that Alison Bales was a rookie? - and even had trouble providing an accurate score. It was just damned frustrating, although I did see Leilani Mitchell - all 5-5 of her, soaking wet - block a shot from Shalee Lehning. (Hint: It's not a good idea to begin your shot from somewhere below your knees.) In 76 career games Mitchell only has six blocked shots.

So let's look at the box score and see if we can learn anything:

Box score quarters: The Liberty won the first three quarters of the game. Unlike the previous matchup, the Liberty avoided a Dream comeback in the second half. The Dream got close in the third quarter, when an Angel McCoughtry layup with 6:56 left closed the gap to 46-44. The only quarter the Dream won was the fourth, and by that time the Liberty's lead was in double-digits.

Dean Oliver's Four Factors

Field goal percentage: The Liberty were the better shooters - they hit 47.1 percent of their attempted shots (32-for-68) compared to the Dream's 44.0 percent (33-for-75). But if the Dream were a better rebounding team, then why didn't they make up the 2.9 percent gap?

The answer is that the Liberty were far more effective with the 3-pointer than the Dream were. Atlanta was 2-for-13 from 3-point land. The effective field goal percentage for Atlanta was 45.3 percent. However, the Liberty went 9-for-20 from 3-point range. Leilani Mitchell hit all three of her 3-point attempts. So did Sidney Spencer. New York's effective field goal percentage was 56.3 percent, so if you're looking for a key to New York's victory, it was that their long-range bombing knocked us off the court.

Turnovers: New York 14, Atlanta 15. However, Atlanta had two more team possessions than New York, so New York's turnover percentage is just a sliver higher.

Offensive rebound percentage: Atlanta whipped up on the Liberty on the glass, with a 34.1 percent-15.6 percent advantage in offensive rebounding. Lyttle and de Souza both had double-doubles, but without scoring from everyone else it was wasted.

Free throws: A clear advantage to New York. New York was the best free throw shooting team in the W coming into this game, and Atlanta was the worst. The results tell the story:

Atlanta: 11-for-21, 52.4 percent
New York: 18-for-19, 94.7 percent

In a high-fouling game - the Dream had 21 personal fouls, the Liberty had 19 - every trip to the free throw line was another nail in Atlanta's coffin on both sides of the court.

And now, let's look at the individual players.

Erika de Souza: She had 21 points and 10 rebounds overall, shooting 9-for-13. However, she had four personal fouls and went 3-for-8 at the free throw line. Ugh. Even so, Erika's shooting accuracy made it a good game for her and she was the Dreamer of the Game.

Sancho Lyttle: 15 points, 14 rebounds. And three steals! However, she had four personal fouls and three turnovers. As it turned out, Lyttle only played 28 minutes and De Souza played 30. Without watching the game, I assume that fouls kept them on the bench more than they should have been. Still, good game for Lyttle as well.

Angel McCoughtry: 12 points, 3 rebounds, 3 assists. McCoughtry only played 19 1/2 minutes of the game.

Given the Chicago-Atlanta game where the Dream fell by double-digits because McCoughtry ended up in Coach Meadors's doghouse. McCoughtry's 19 minutes for the game was the fewest minutes McCoughtry has played in a game since the preseason. This has led some fans to ask if McCoughtry has ended up back in the doghouse. Yes, McCoughtry's 6-for-12 shooting was more than decent but her -14 in raw plus/minus meant that the team slid backwards when she was on the court. She had three dimes, so I can't believe it was a case of selfishness.

We do know that McCoughtry ended up in the doghouse last year, if only briefly. Frankly, it's just too damned early in the seson to make catastrophic predictions, and professional athletes are great at looking ahead and not looking back.

Kelly Miller: 0-for-4, including 0-for-2 from the 3-point line. However, Kelly had six assists in the game. Whether Kelly Miller was being asked to perform Lehning's duties of push and get out of the way, I don't know. Besides, four shots taken are sometimes more than Lehning takes in a game.

Armintie Price: 4 points, 5 rebounds. Played 16 minutes, but she had five personal fouls.

Yelena Leuchanka: We're now getting into the realm of mediocre play. Four points, and she hit both of her shots. However, two personal fouls and a turnover in only 12 minutes played. Leuchanka had only two rebounds. One plus: Leuchanka's raw plus/minus was +0 in her 12 minutes on the court - her presence there neither hurt nor helped the team.

Iziane Castro Marques: Iziane should have done better at wiping the popcorn grease from her hands. Yes, her 17 points were second overall for the Dream. However, five of those points came from free throws. Outside of that, she was 5-for-15 from the floor and 2-for-7 from three point range. It was another night of Iziane taking crazy shots that didn't go in.

Alison Bales: Two points. 2-for-4 from the line in 10 minutes played. Two rebounds. -1 in raw plus/minus. Meh.

Coco Miller: The other Miller had 4 points in 2-for-4 shooting, only playing eight minutes.

Shalee Lehning: Okay, now we've reached the "bad game level". In the 14 1/2 minutes that Lehning played, she took two shots, and missed both of them. She had only one assist. Leilani Mitchell blocked one of her shots. She was pretty much negated when she was on the court. The last time Lehning played this poorly in 2010 it was when the Seattle Storm took her to school.

Lehning has to move her game a step up to stay in the WNBA. It didn't happen during this game.

Brittainey Raven: You can't blame Raven - at least she tried. Played 2 1/2 minutes, took a shot and missed it. When you're only getting a handful of minutes a game, you gotta make those shots.

As a result, both Shalee Lehning and Brittainey Raven both were both Bad Dreams - and Lehning's hogging up most of the bed space.

Okay. File it and forget it. The San Antonio Silver Stars come to Atlanta on Sunday. Let's be there to cheer on the Dream and sweep the Silver Stars for the season.

Dream Loses 91-79 Against Liberty on the Road

2010-06-12T09:23:00.001-04:00

The Liberty were leading from the beginning and the Dream were never really in it. Here's the writeup from the New York Daily News.

Here's Newsday's take.

Take from our pals in the Associated Press.

The New York Post also reports here.

One from our pals at Swish Appeal:

As an autograph collector, Atlanta is quickly becoming one of my favorite teams to deal with. They seem to actually like people. Again, everyone on the team was willing to stop and sign, which means that we are now the proud owners of a t-shirt signed by, among many other people, the entire roster of the Dream. That kind of behavior is good for the league. Plus, you get the added hilarity of Iziane Castro Marques noshing on popcorn and hurriedly wiping her fingers off on her shooting shirt between signatures and apologies.

And from SportsPageMagazine.com:

“As a leader of the team, we have players who look up to me and expect a lot, but at the same time it shouldn’t be about that,” Pondexter said. “We need players to get into their own and look to be aggressive offensively, because it’s not about me, it’s about the team.”

It looks like we had a lot of press for this game. It's a pity that it ended up with a Dream loss. After a 6-0 start the Dream have lost three of their last four.

The Dream got as close to two points in the third quarter, 46-44, but that would be as close as they got. They shot 52 percent at the free throw line - 11 for 21.

Cappie Pondexter had another great game with 25 points. Leilani Mitchell had 11 points.

More later.

Atlanta vs. New York, Friday June 11

2010-06-10T23:02:00.001-04:00

Who: The Atlanta Dream (7-2) take on the New York Liberty (3-4) in an Eastern Conference Game.

The Dream are led by Angel McCoughtry, who is scoring 21.6 points per game. Sancho Lyttle (14.3 ppg/10.0 rpg) is an All-Star post, and Iziane Castro Marques (14.9 ppg) will be playing on the Brazilian national team at the end of the season with Erika de Souza (11.8 ppg/9.8 rpg). Cappie Pondexter, a new acquisition by New York, leads the Liberty both in scoring (19.7 ppg) and assists (5.4 apg).

What: The second of four regular season games against the New York Liberty. On May 23rd, the Liberty lost at home 86-77 to the visiting Dream which was Atlanta's first ever win at Madison Square Garden.

Where: Madison Square Garden in New York City.

When: Tipoff is at at 7:30 pm Eastern time, Friday, June 11. The game will be available on WNBA Live Access.

Why: Once again, it's a battle between Atlanta at the top of the conference and the Eastern Conference's bottom-dweller. The last time that happened this year, it ended poorly for the Dream. The Dream ended the season last year 1-3 against the Liberty, but now they've won two straight against New York and have the conference's best road record at 5-1. The Dream have also had six days off.

Oddly enough, the last time the two teams played Cappie Pondexter had an above-average game, scoring 21 points in the loss. The Liberty won the first half of the game but the Dream won both quarters of the second half. Iziane Castro Marques caught on fire, scoring nine of her 13 points in the last six minutes of the game. Furthermore, the Liberty were flattened on the boards, outrebounded 38-25 over the course of the game. The Liberty are the best free-throw shooting team in the WNBA at 83 percent and the Dream are dead last at 66 percent but unless the Dream make a lot of fouls it won't help the Libs.

Atlanta is favored only by two points at covers.com. This might be a very interesting game if your computer will cooperate.

De Souza, Castro Marques Named to Brazilian National Team

2010-06-09T21:08:00.000-04:00

After two years, Iziane will be back in the national colors.

New Brazil women's team head coach Carlos Colinas named the Brazilian women's national team, which will be convined to participate in the South American championship (August 8th through 14th) and in the FIBA World Championship (September 23rd through October 3rd). Among the players named to the team are Erika de Souza and Iziane Castro Marques. Don't worry Dream fans - both players say they won't take their place on the team until the end of the 2010 season for the Atlanta Dream.

Apparently, the news was released during a practice session and the other players started clapping. In May 2008, during the Olympic qualifying rounds Iziane had been benched early in the game by then-coach Paulo Bassul. She was called back on to the court in the fourth quarter and refused to leave the bench, ending her stint with the national team. Iziane had made it very clear that as long as Paulo Bassul was the coach, she wouldn't return. (Who says that only male basketball players can be divas?)

Final score: Castro Marques 1, Bassul 0. Eighteen players have been named as prospective players, and this group will be winnowed down before the start of serious play.

Let's hope that Brazil wins a...silver medal in the FIBA games. After all, I have to root, root root for my home country!

Chanel Mokango Premieres in Los Angeles

2010-06-09T20:17:00.000-04:00

Last night, Chanel Mokango took the court during Phoenix's visit to Los Angeles. With Phoenix up 67-64 in the third quarter and 1:01 left, Mokango replaced Noelle Quinn on the floor while Delisha Milton-Jones was taking a couple of free throw shots. Milton-Jones hit the first, and missed the second. Both teams attempted a couple of shots, with Brook Smith sinking a 3-pointer for Phoenix, giving Mokango a raw plus/minus of -3.

Mokango's box score line was a "billion" - a number of minutes played followed by a row of zeroes.

However, Mokango had one accomplishment. By earning a brief amount of time on a WNBA court, Mokango allows Molly Creamer to retain her record of being the highest-ranked player never to appear in a WNBA regular season game.

(The above picture is Mokango at the game. You can see some great full-sized pictures over at the They're Playing Basketball blog. Go check it out!)

Happy Campers

2010-06-09T20:07:00.000-04:00

Angel McCoughtry visited Elite Hoops Basketball today. The link is here.

The picture is here. I didn't post it here because it's gigantic, but you can find her if you look hard enough.

It warms my heart to see players mingling with the Atlanta community and promoting their sport. I'm sure that McCoughtry's visit made the day a little bit brighter for those campers.

Best Stats Anywhere

2010-06-08T19:54:00.001-04:00

If you wanted to know how well the Dream is doing for some advanced stats like net plus/minus and points per possession, go to this helpful page provided by the Minnesota Lynx organization. You can learn some interesting facts. Did you know that the Dream lead the WNBA in "points in the paint" and "second chance points"?

Of course you did. But if you didn't, go visit the link above. The guy who runs the page is cool.

The Wright Decision

2010-06-07T22:37:00.004-04:00

I suspect that the Minnesota Lynx would be a lot better - or at least not as bad - if they could give Monica Wright's minutes to someone else.

Wright was the #2 overall draft pick in 2010. The 5-10 guard has absolutely horrible stats. True, one would expect that a rookie might be underperforming compared to her peers, but her lack of production is at an all new level. Her Adjusted Wins Score is a disaster - there are many "quantify player by one number" metrics but AWS is one of my favorites:

Ten Lowest Values in AWS - 2010

1. Monica Wright, Lynx, -46.0
2. Quanitra Hollingsworth, Lynx, -14.4
3. Marissa Coleman, Mystics, -13.6
4. Noelle Quinn, Sparks, -12.8
5. Nuria Martinez, Lynx, -12
6. Shavonte Zellous, Shock/Fever, -11.7
7. Nicole Ohlde, Mercury, -11.6
8. Roneeka Hodges, Silver Stars, -10.5
9. Katie Smith, Mystics, -10.5
10. Matee Ajavon, Mystics, -8.8

Note the presence of two other members of the Lynx here: Quanitra Hollingsworth and Nuria Martinez. Wright has played more minutes than Hollingsworth and Martinez put together, and here are Wright's stats:

Shooting: 12.1 points per game - but 31.5 percent field goal percentage (40-for-127). All in all, for the 40 shots she made the 87 shots she didn't make put the Lynx at risk. Many of those misses ended up in the hands of the opposing team, probably too many.

A/TO Ratio: 8 assists and 29 turnovers - the only worse player in the WNBA in assist/turnover ratio with a minimum of 20 points per game is Nakia Sanford of the Mystics, with 4 assists and 17 turnovers. Wright is tied for second in overall turnovers in the WNBA with 29, tied with Nicky Anosike (a teammate) and Swin Cash of the Storm, and exceeded only by Lindsey Harding of the Mystics and her 34 turnovers.

Even if Monica Wright were the best defender that ever lived - she was an WBCA Defensive Player of the Year - she is absolutely digging a offensive hole that even a great defender couldn't dig out of. The most glamorous of defense stats is steals. Camille Little of the Storm has 23 steals, leading the WNBA. Tamika Catchings of the Fever has 19 and Angel McCoughtry has 18.

Wright has eight. Put it this way. Erika de Souza and Alison Bales also have eight steals.

I might have only been following basketball for a short time...but what exactly is Wright bringing to the Lynx? In an 81-58 loss to the Fever, Wright went 1-for-13 in shooting. Maybe Wright will warm up and become the great player everyone expected her to be...but I wouldn't be giving her 20 minutes a game to find out.

One of the problems of coaching is called the "principal clerk" problem. Do coaches contribute anything to the success of a team, or is the success entirely dependent on the players? One thing that coaches might be able to do to distinguish themselves is to control the minutes played of players. A coach might have no choice in which players she has. She also might not be able to instruct players or change their bad habits, but the very least she can do is to play the best players and to avoid playing bad ones.

Frisco del Rosario implied that for Lynx head coach Cheryl Reeve, the "last cigarette and the blindfold" might be coming soon. It wouldn't surprise me. On Thursday night the Lynx will face a real gut-check in Phoenix, but at 2-7 you need to have more than your guts checked. You need your head examined.

One Quarter of the Way

2010-06-06T21:56:00.000-04:00

The Atlanta Dream are actually one quarter of the way through their season. They've played nine games and the season is only thirty-four long. I was hoping that I could watch games and comment on their results through the power of WNBA Live Access, but WNBA Live Access has proved punchless all year. I think I've only seen one game on Live Access that I could follow from beginning to end without technical errors. (Of course, when the team is on NBA TV you bet your bippy I'll be watching it.)

So how does the Dream shape up in the first quarter of the season? Which players are dreams and which ones are duds? Here are my reports regarding various players of the Dream.

1. Angel McCoughty: She's lost about 6 percent of her shooting touch, probably because she's playing more minutes and facing tougher defenses. Even so, McCoughtry is talked up as a potential WNBA Most Valuable Player for 2010. With all the things she juggles - US National Team Membership and being named a Dream co-captain - what's most surprising is that McCoughtry doesn't care about honors at all. McCoughtry has that rare quality of a superstar - the ability to will her team to win.

Best of '10: A 97-82 win against Connecticut where she scored 32 points and 10 rebounds. She could have broken her career scoring record in that game if she wasn't cooling her heels on the bench near the end.
Worst of '10: The 66-62 win over Indiana, which was our first home win of the year. She scored 11 points and shot 4-for-13 from the field.

2. Sancho Lyttle. Lyttle might be the most overlooked player on the Dream. The world is waking up and finally noticing Erika de Souza but they appear not to be sold on Sancho Lyttle's abilities. Lyttle has just gotten better and better as time passes. Part of it is due to the fact that she started basketball late in life; she always had the athleticism but each year adds to her understanding and sense for the rhythm of basketball.

Best of '10: When she was a big figure in that 97-82 home win against the Sun. 27 points, 11 rebounds. She was overshadowed however, by McCoughtry's amazing game listed above. Those two players combined for over half the Dream's points.
Worst of '10: The 86-77 road win against the Liberty. She played less than 20 minutes, shot 2-for-7 and had five fouls and just five points.

3. Erika de Souza: Is there anything that Erika de Souza can't do? She dominates the post, she's got height, she can knock Candace Parker off her pins and in the off-season she does it all over again in Spain. If there were something called an "All-World MVP", de Souza would be the #1 contender.

Best of '10: Our recent 86-79 overtime road win against the Mystics. Erika shot 11-for-15 from the floor and had 23 points and 11 rebounds.
Worst of '10: The 80-70 loss against Chicago at home. She scored zero points and shot 0-for-6 from the field. De Souza was essentially a non-factor.

4. Iziane Castro Marques: When McCoughtry and Iziane are hot, the Dream is unbeatable. One out of every three games Iziane is absolutely on fire, and when the Dream are playing well with her, we usually win. Will this be the year the "Iziane Effect" goes away?

Best of '10: The opener in San Antonio, where the Dream won 75-70. She scored 23 points with 9-for-18 shooting and had four steals for the Dream.
Worst of '10: The very next game after that - typical Iziane. Against Indiana, she only scored 5 points and was 0-for-5 from the 3-point line.

5. Armintie Price: A real surprise of 2009. After a mid-season trade to the Dream in 2009, Price seems to have recovered some of her confidence - being reunited with her old college coach Carol Ross didn't hurt. I don't think she'll ever be a consistent starter, but she'll be an adequate role player.

Best of '10: A 14-point game during our win against Indiana. That could have been a 20 point game with a little more luck. Price might be one of the best finishers in the WNBA.
Worst of '10: Against the Mystics she only had two points on 1-for-6 shooting.

6. Kelly Miller: The Dream moved up to Miller from Miller Light. When the Dream need the kind of offense that Lehning can't bring, they go to Kelly Miller. Miller's assist-to-turnover ratio isn't as good as Lehning's though, so she'll be playing behind Lehning for the time being - the name of the game is to get the ball to the Big Four.

Best of '10: Our 96-93 road win in Phoenix. She scored 10 points and two assists in just 17 minutes of play. She was 2-for-4 from the 3-point arc.
Worst of '10: The opener against San Antonio. She only played six minutes and had three turnovers.

7. Alison Bales: If Bales doesn't win Sixth Woman, she might win a Most Improved Player award. After a year off, Bales figured out a way to extend her career another year. If she keeps playing like this, she'll extend it another year.

Best of '10: The home win against Indiana where Bales had six blocked shots.
Worst of '10: Bales had no points and no blocks in the game against Washington and was at the bottom of raw plus/minus with -10.

8. Shalee Lehning: Many people who are Dream fans have strong opinions about Lehning. Should she be starting on the Dream? I don't think she scores enough and from point blank she can't shoot at all. However, all she's asked to do is to push the ball into the post and she does it well - Lehning usually leads in that classic stat assists/turnovers. If she learned how to shoot she'd be dangerous, but without that teams will be tempted to leave Lehning unguarded when she has the ball.

Best of '10: The win against Connecticut was the classing Lehning game. Zero points...ten assists.
Worst of '10: She was schooled in Seattle and Kelly Miller had to pick up the slack.

9. Yelena Leuchanka: Leuchanka's return to the WNBA hasn't exactly been the second coming of Lisa Leslie, but she's been effective in spots.

Best of '10: She had eight points in 15 minutes against Seattle. Her +6 in raw plus/minus was a bright point during a night full of minuses.
Worst of '10: Her debut against the Connecticut Sun. 0-for-3 shooting, zero points and 3 personal fouls.

10. Coco Miller: Maybe with the arrival of Kelly Miller Coco has figured that she doesn't have to produce. If her game doesn't pick up her only value to the Dream is going to be strictly promotional.

Best of '10: She had five points in just four minutes of play during that awful 80-70 loss against Chicago.
Worst of '10: The Phoenix game was the opposite of that. She shot 0-for-3 and only played four minutes.

11. Brittainey Raven: She won't get better unless she plays. And with so many good players on the Dream, she'll never get any minutes - Coco Miller is the only player with fewer minutes per game than Raven, and she's playing better than Raven.

Best of '10: She scored six points in garbage time against Seattle.
Worst of '10: Hard to pick one because she's played so little. Only two minutes played in Washington, made a shot, and missed it.

Guess Who?

2010-06-06T17:53:00.000-04:00

Dream Win in Overtime 86-79 in Washington

2010-06-05T22:02:00.001-04:00

The Dream head to Washington and come back winners. Atlanta was behind for large stretches of the game, but they came back when it counted. With the game tied 75-75 after regulation, the Dream outscored the Mystics 11-4 in the overtime period.

All info is here from the Associated Press.

The Dream are 7-2, and the losing streak is over. Hallelujah!

8/2010 - Sky 80, Dream 70

2010-06-05T16:59:00.003-04:00

"Arthur, we're not always this bad."
"I believe you. I'm still waiting for MY ring."

All right. I'm going to have to revisit this one, but God knows what I'll write about it. It's just one of those memories that you don't want to return to, when you were at some teen function and someone insulted you to uproarious laughter and you came up with the perfect comeback - two years later. In this case, it was the Sky that insulted the Dream and the Dream had no comeback, just shriveling away.

My observations, again:

1) Tonight was "Green Night" for the Dream. The last time we had a Green Night at Philips Arena we beat the holy heck out of the Phoenix Mercury 106-76. Maybe we needed the exact same color of green, but hey, we were 1-0 during our attempts to improve environmental awareness, and we were 1-6 all time against the Sky. If the Green Mojo was going to work, it would be for this game.

2) My first concern was Iziane Castro Marques. Usually, the Dream do some sort of shootaround before the game, one of those weaves where a player shoots, then runs over to a forming line of players on the opposite side of the court to make her next shot. Most players jog through these drills, trying to get some pep going.

Iziane was walking through drill. (This will not be a "practice" rant that most NBA fans have used regarding Allen Iverson.) I thought, "wow, if Iziane can't get into this game who else can't?"

3) The National Anthem was sung by Dream season ticket holder (called STHs in WNBA parlance) and Dream ambassador Emile Worthy. He did a servicable job, singing most of it in a low baritone. He wasn't a professional singer, but at least I should give him credit for not trying (and failing) to stretch the song into a two-octave range: the man knew his limitations.

4) Looked for Dream fan pilight. I never saw him in the crowd. Later, I learned that he arrived late due to traffic. He didn't miss anything.

5) Dream starters: Lehning, McCoughtry, Lyttle, Iziane, Erika.
Sky starters: Canty, Perkins, Christon, Kraayeveld, Fowles

6) There's usually a Dream ceremonial ball exchange, where the Dream come storming out of the tunnel, get a basketball and hand it off to some deserving fans. This time, the ball exchange invitees were from Williams Sullivan High School. When the name of the school was announced, there was a roar from the crowd. Williams Sullivan High School has their own entourage! Represent, Williams Sullivan!!

7) The announcer made note of two celebrities in the crowd. I believe they were here for the "Celebrity Dads and Daughters" promotion.

The first one was owner of the Atlanta Falcons Arthur Blank. I was glad to see him here, helping out the Dream just by showing up even though he didn't have to. The other one was Mike Smith, the head coach of the Atlanta Falcons. As he was announced, he got a scattering of applause, except for one man who waited until the applause died and screamed "BOO!!"

Maybe Mike Smith needed to bring his own entourage, or at least give Williams Sullivan High School a call.

8) The first sign this was going to be a bad game for Angel McCoughtry was very early in, about two minutes in. Jia Perkins of the Sky and Angel McCoughtry were going at it and McCoughtry just shoves Perkins out of her position. It was an offensive foul, McCoughtry's fault on the touch, and yet McCoughtry had some words for the officials. Two shots for Perkins, and it's later 6-2 Chicago.

9) Someone sent me some mail recently asking a question so I rewatched the part of the first quarter up until the 5:34 mark. This is when the Sky had a 12-6 lead and McCoughtry was suddenly yanked. McCoughtry had made a grand total of one shot, and the Dream failed to get the ball to her when she was open on at least one occasion.

Looking again, the matchup was clearly McCoughtry vs. Perkins. McCoughtry looked very tired, sort of jogging rather than sprinting. I don't know if it was lack of effort or just exhaustion but Perkins clearly knew that McCoughtry wasn't going to give her any problems. During the time McCoughtry was on the court, Perkins was 3-for-3, contributing six points of the Sky's twelve.

10) When McCoughtry was yanked for Price, it seemed to wak up Atlanta. A pair of drives to the hoop by Price and then by Iziane, and Atlanta was just down 10-12. A 3-pointer from Kelly Miller gave the DReam their first lead of the game, 15-12.

11) Mike Smith learned the perils of sitting courtside - Armintie Price knocked a ball into Mike Smith's direction, and the coach of the Falcons almost had a souvenir.

12) The lead didn't last long. An Epipphany Prince jumper was followed by a layup by Sylvia Fowles, who got fouled and picked up the free throw. The Dream were down 16-15.

Both teams were beginning to bring their second units in. Tamera Young - remember her, Dream fans? - attempted a drive to the basket and Sancho Lyttle just hacked Young. Lyttle had her second personal foul, seemingly always starting the second quarter with two personal fouls. Young got one of two free throws to make it an 18-15 game.

13) With the first quarter winding down and Sylvia Fowles off the court, it seemed that the Dream couldn't catch a break. With no time on the shot clock, Erin Thorn uncorked a basket as the 24-second buzzer sounded to give the Sky a 22-15 lead. Armintie Price was fouled while shooting for two shots with 22.9 seconds left.

Price hit the first shot. She usually only hits one of two. Every time the announcer says, "Armintie Price shooting two," I mutter back, "and hitting one."
She got the first shot but the second was wiped away when Yelena Leuchanka stepped into the lane too soon.

Thorn's final shot missed, and the Sky led 22-16 at the end of one. Both Angel McCoughtry and Erika de Souza were scoreless, and the Dream had eight turnovers.

14) McCoughtry came back out at the beginning of the second quarter but she was still having a few problems. Tamera Young came out to guard McCoughtry.

McCoughtry went right. Young went right.
McCoughtry went left. Young went left.
McCoughtry went right. Young went right.

McCoughtry's initial drive was negated. She ended up missing her first shot, but she helped with a mini-rally. Down 25-18 after a 3-pointer from Erin Thorn, McCoughtry found Yelena Leuchanka who scored and then hit a 3-pointer of her own to close the gap to 25-23.

15) However, Shameka Christon fired a long three of her own and the Sky were further away again. It seemed that the Dream were going to stay within about 6-7 points of the Sky - never getting a run long enough to close the gap but never allowing the Sky to sprint away. And so it went.

16) The Dream are still wearing their "Armed With a Dream" tattoos. This is a promotion with Aaron's Inc. and the Children's Hospital of Atlanta where Dream players will wear a stick-on tattoo of a patient's name during the game. On the name of the upper arm of every Dream player was "Catrina", this game's honoree.

Someone told me that McCoughtry had hers on upside-down. I have no graphic evidence, not yet anyway.

17) We had another celebrity in the house: Vivica Fox. I thought she was known as "Vivica A. Fox", myself. Don't try to visit her website unless you have a computer that can handle Matrix-level graphics.

Hmm. I wonder if she's here in Atlanta to film a show. "Kill Bill Part Three?" "Tyler Perry's Vivica A. Fox?"

18) I happened to catch Kathy Betty (owner of the Dream) hobnobbing in the front row with Arthur Blank (owner of the Falcons). It would be interesting to know what they were chatting about, even if it were only small talk. Maybe Blank is telling Betty that what the Dream needs is a brand new stadium somewhere in Doraville.

19) I always seem to be of three minds regarding Iziane Castro Marques. When both she and Angel are on fire, the Dream can't be stopped. I'm perplexed, however, at her sometimes indifferent defense and her attempts to shoot in front of three defenders.

However, Izi can amaze you. She hit a 3-pointer to close the game to 33-28 and when she got the ball back she executed a beautiful behind-the-back dribble in motion that left me amazed. Clearly, Iziane Castro Marques is a skilled player, but how do you get the best out of her?

20) Dominique Canty got the ball from Sylvia Fowles on a drive to the basket to put the Sky up 35-28. When Canty got the ball back again, Angel committed a shooting foul that sent Canty back to the free throw line, where she hit one of two.

36-28 Sky. 4:22 left. Meadors yanked McCoughtry once again, and we didn't see her for the rest of the first half.

21) With the second quarter winding down, the Dream tried to provide at least some defensive intensity. It was the offense that the Dream couldn't get right - they just couldn't move the ball in the halfcourt. All in all, the Dream committed 13 first-half turnovers.

The only thing that saved the last few minutes of the second half was Coco Miller. Not Kelly Miller, Coco Miller although it's hard to tell because each player has the name "MILLER" on her jersey with no initial. (They might simply be wearing the same jersey, with one Miller hidden in the wings for the hand-off while the other claims the need of a bathroom break.) Coco Miller hit a sweet 3-pointer and then saved an Erika de Souza miss on a putback with 11 seconds left after the offensive rebound to close the Dream within five points, 40-35 at halftime.

22) At least the halftime show was interesting. Human bowling. At the end of the lane an ersatz bowling alley was set up with gigantic plastic pins. Contestants pushed their partners down the court while they rode a platform with wheels on it - one person was the bowler and the other sitting on the platform was the ball. I think one of the contestants lost her slipper.

The Dream was outshooting the Sky, 44.4 percent to 41 percent. However, the Sky had taken 12 more shots than the Dream had. Furthermore, the Sky were leading the offensive rebounding battle which is unheard of. Atlanta's rebound game had disappeared. Erika had six rebounds, but Sancho Lyttle only had two. The Dream had been held to just two offensive rebounds in the first half...and Coco Miller had one of those.

23) Other announcements. Brian Finnerman was announced as being in attendance late in the second quarter. I had no idea who Brian Finnerman was. He's a wide receiver for the Atlanta Falcons.

24) There was more halftime joy from the High Velocity Super Dunking Crew. This was the third or fourth time I've seen the Crew, and let me tell you, they can put on a shot. However, the Dream's bad luck seemed to rub off on them, as they missed two point-blank dunks. The Super Dunking Crew is usually more sure-handed.

25) Recieving the handoff in the beginning of the second half - some kids from Walker High School. They didn't seem to have the entourage that the Williams Sullivan High School kids had.

26) Angel started again in the third quarter. Her line from the first half: 1-for-4, 5 points, 10 minutes played. She spent ten seconds on the dribble against Jia Perkins and couldn't move the ball against her. Perkins was on McCoughtry like Teflon on a non-stick griddle.

As it turned out, no one else was going to move the ball either. The Dream looked like they were sleepwalking - always a half-step off, never in rhythm. They lacked fluidity, the sign of a well-running team. When a team is in the zone, it seems that every pass is crisp and every rebound decisive. Every opportunity falls into their hands. None of those descriptions characterized the Dream.

The Sky went on a 16-6 run to start the third quarter. Sancho Lyttle picked up a blocking foul, her third. Erika de Souza picked up a blocking foul. De Souza still hadn't scored. The Dream simply couldn't find her on the court, and when you can't find Erika de Souza on a court, you know that you're going to have problems.

The run ate up almost five minutes of the third quarter. If it weren't for Sancho Lyttle - who scored all six points for the Dream in the first five minutes of the third - it would have been a 16-0 Chicago run. All the Dream had to show for it was two turnovers, two personal fouls and three missed shots.

The Dream only took four shots in that five minute Chicago run. You can't win games that way. The Dream's lack of activity just killed the crowd.

27) To keep the crowd interested, Mike Smith and Brian Finnerman faced off with a 3-point challenge. Finnerman proved to be the winner, hitting a single 3-pointer in the alotted time.

28) Tonight's Karaoke singer was Brittainey Raven, who sang Keri Hilson's "Knock Me Down". I didn't recognize the song, and definitely not due to Raven's singing. Raven's vocal range is two notes.

So why wasn't Raven in the game with the Dream down 56-43 and 4:13 left on the clock? That's the life of a third-round draft pick that makes the team - the only time you're going to get is when you're up - or down - by twenty points.

29) What I didn't like: on a possession both Alison Bales and Shalee Lehning passed up shots that I thought either of them could have made. Ladies, you're down by double-digits, what on earth are you waiting for?

30) The officiating: not good. I'm not going to whine too much about it, but it was clearly substandard. It's not to blame for our loss, though.

31) For a few moments, there was a raw of hope. Down 58-46 and with about 2 1/2 minutes left, Iziane hit a 3-pointer off an assist from Shalee Lehning. Thirty seconds later Price found Iziane all alone and Iziane downed another three.

58-52 Chicago! There was still hope!

32) And then, twenty seconds later, hope disappeared. Alison Bales was called for a phantom foul - Shameka Christon tripped without any contact from Bales and the ref from the other side of the court called an illegal screen. The ball went back into the Sky's hands, and Bales was called for a foul trying to defend Sylvia Fowles. The Sky had the momentum again.

Fowles would get one of two free throws. Lehning would get a couple of free throws and Prince would score under the basket. The Sky had a 61-54 lead at the end of the third quarter.

33) The Dream were still outshooting the sky. Even without the help of Angel McCoughtry or Erika de Souza, the Dream were shooting 46.3 percent from the field - but the Sky were shooting 44.4 percent and had taken 13 more shots. The Dream put together a 13-5 run to end the third quarter, which is why they were only down by seven. The Sky was still winning the battle of the glass.

34) As the fourth quarter started, the hope was that the Dream could stir from their doldrums. McCoughtry was sitting on the bench as the fourth quarter started. Lyttle scored the first points of the fourth with a layup that closed us within five points - but Shameka Christon fired a rainbow 3-pointer that put the Sky up 64-58.

It was time for another Sky run. The Dream would go cold to start the fourth as the Sky took a 10-4 run over the first four minutes to take a 73-61 lead. The Dream was back down by double digits again. The hope was that either Cathrine Kraayeveld or Shameka Christon - each with four personal fouls - would hit foul trouble and that Chicago would need more of their second unit.

The crowd certainly wanted to jump in. They screamed when Kelly Miller hit a 3-pointer for the Dream's 61st point. But it seemed that the Sky would stay up by double-digits for a little while. The Sky only had five minutes left in the fourth quarter and Chicago was entering RuPaul territory - the man who advises his aspiring drag queens to "Don't f**k it up." If the Sky didn't screw up, they'd have the win. Who knows, this was the Chicago Sky...the Sky might indeed f**k it up. We could only hope.

35) With 3:48 left in the fourth, McCoughtry had been back on the court for around three minutes. She hit a 3-pointer, her ninth point, to bring Atlanta back up to 76-66.

Steven Key, the Chicago coach, has a new nickname from me: "Pope". It's because when he complains to the referees, he has both arms outstreched as if he's giving an imaginary benediction.

36) A pair of free throws by Atlanta closed it back to 76-68. With 2:15 left, McCoughtry committed foul #4 of the game.

37) Over the final three minutes of the game, only six points were scored. I suspected that both teams wanted to get this over with as quickly as possible. The Sky wanted another win. The Dream players just wanted to forget.

The crowd was starting to head for the exits at Philips Arena. They weren't leaving. They were fleeing. Fleeced once again by Chicago. Beaten by Steven Friggin Key.

38) With 13 seconds left, McCoughtry broke into double digits in scoring. A layup closed the Dream to 80-70. But we needed a lot more than 13 seconds. The game was over.

Thank goodness! Let's hope for a win tonight against the Mystics!

Atlanta vs. Washington, Saturday June 5

2010-06-05T14:08:00.001-04:00

Who: The Atlanta Dream (6-2) take on the Washington Mystics (4-3) in an Eastern Conference Game.

The Dream are led by Angel McCoughtry, who is scoring 21.4 points per game. Sancho Lyttle (14.5 ppg/9.3 rpg) is an All-Star post, and Iziane Castro Marques (14.4 ppg) has really stepped up. Monique Currie (18.1 ppg) leads the Mystics in scoring and Crystal Langhorne (15.0 ppg/9.4 rpg) provides the rebounding punch.

What: The first of four regular season games against the Washington Mystics. In 2009, the Dream split the series with the Mystics 2-2, winning both games at home and losing both games on the road. The last time these teams met was an 82-64 loss in Washington in the final game of the 2009 regular season.

Where: The Verizon Center in Washington, DC.

When: Tipoff is at at 7 pm Eastern time, Saturday, June 5th. The game will be available on WNBA Live Access.

Why: The Dream have lost two straight games, and the gut-check might turn into a case of full-fledged nausea. After a tough 80-70 loss to the Sky last night, the Dream head immediately to Washington to take on the Mystics. A third loss in a row will lead to questions as to whether or not the Dream's 6-0 start was simply a hot streak that has now cooled down.

The Eastern Conference will be tough. Washington will not be a "gimme" game. The Mystics are 4-3 and they went to the playoffs last year, and they know a win will bring them to within 1/2 of a game of the Eastern Conference lead.

Right now, the Dream have four principal scorers: McCoughtry, Lyttle, De Souza, and Iziane. Two of those players didn't show up on Friday and it showed. As for Washington, they broke a losing streak against Connecticut last Sunday and have had six days to prepare for this game. Four Washington players scored in double figures and Crystal Langhorne had 17 points and 16 rebounds. The Dream need to find Langhorne's "off" switch or it might be a long day today for the Dream.

Dream Lose Second Straight Against Sky, 80-70

2010-06-04T23:05:00.004-04:00

With much love to audsquad, the blogger at the Chicago Sky Blog, man do I hate the G*******d Chicago Sky.

Pierce W. Huff is off the block with the first post-mortem from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Score Atlanta tells you the score, Atlanta.

The Dream lost 80-70. Don't let the score fool you. The Dream weren't in it all game. Angel McCoughtry looked lost. Erika de Souza was held scoreless. And to top it off, we go to Washington and play the Mystics back to back.

That was a game I just don't want to think about anymore. What the hell happened?

Atlanta vs. Chicago, Friday June 4

2010-06-04T08:13:00.002-04:00

Who: The Atlanta Dream (6-1) take on the Chicago Sky (2-4) in an Eastern Conference Game.

The Dream are led by Angel McCoughtry, who is scoring 22.9 points per game. Sancho Lyttle (14.6 ppg/9.9 rpg) and Erika de Souza (11.95 ppg/10.0 rpg) are Atlanta's All-Star posts that provide any team trouble. Chicago is led by Sylvia Fowles (18.0 ppg, 7.0 rpg) and Cathrine Kraayeveld (10.2 ppg)

What: The first of four regular season games against the Chicago Sky. In 2009, the Dream were swept over the course of the regular season by the Sky, losing all three games against them. The last loss was an 82-80 loss at Philips Arena on August 8th, 2009.

Where: Philips Arena in Atlanta, GA.

When: Tipoff is at at 7 pm Eastern time, Friday, June 4th. The game will be televised on Fox Sports South, but it could also be blacked out/delayed depending on attendance. If you flip the channel and the game isn't on, come back at about 10 pm.

Why: When the Atlanta Dream played the Seattle Storm this Friday, Seattle was coming into the game with a single loss. That loss was an 84-75 road loss against the Chicago Sky. The Sky can be tough when they want to be, but now, they're 2-4 and sitting at the bottom of the Eastern Conference.

This game is a "mental toughness" game - can the Dream bounce back on their home court after such a big loss to Seattle on the road? If so, it will confirm that in the Eastern Conference the Dream are still the team to beat, one reason being that the Dream beating the Sky is a rarity. The Dream are 1-6 all time against their Eastern Conference sisters, with the only win being the first win ever by the Atlanta Dream franchise in 2008, one that broke a 17-game losing streak to start the 2008 season.

The Sky have at least one good player - Sylvia Fowles, a player that might be the WNBA's true MVP despite all of this talk about McCoughtry and Jackson. Fowles's 18 points per game might not look so impressive compared to McCoughtry's 22, but Big Syl is shooting 63 percent from the floor - 38-for-60 over the season. For the Dream to get that win, Lyttle and de Souza are going to have to negate Big Syl under the basket. Chicago Rookie Epipphany Prince is averaging 9.5 ppg despite playing only 20.5 minutes per game.

Linkfest 2010

2010-06-03T20:45:00.004-04:00

Planting the seeds of victory?

All kinds of links to talk about.

First, the picture above of Iziane Castro Marques gardening comes from the Atlanta Dream Facebook page. Click the link and catch some pics of the Dream helping out the Atlanta community.

Next, the battle for the MVP might have taken place Tuesday night and the WNBA agrees. Angel McCoughtry and Lauren Jackson were just named Chasing the Title has an interesting post about the value of the various lineups. The most effective lineup during Seattle's game was that of K. Miller-Price-McCoughtry-Leuchanka-Bales. One of those names might spread terror to an opposing team, but probably not more than one.

Q McCall at Swish Appeal finds out why Marynell Meadors cut their first round draft pick in 2010, Chanel Mokango, before the season started:

I think her chances are really good in this league. I think she needs to get some experience and the only reason I cut her is because Allison Bales beat her out. But it was simply because she did not have any experience and she’s only been playing since she was 15 so she’s very young in her game but she’s gonna be pretty good.

Jayda Evans at the Seattle Times has a game thread of Storm-Dream.

Alexis Hornbuckle of the Tulsa Shock was suspended for two games for a DUI that took place last year in Detroit. How come it took so long for anyone to find out?

A brand new jersey sponsorship: the New York Liberty jerseys will be sponsored by the Foxwoods Resort Casino...a casino in Connecticut.

Each of the above links deserves a full post, but neither will get one, at least not right now.

T. Fitz Johnson of the Atlanta Beat and Kathy Betty of the Atlanta Dream form an ownership brain trust.

Finally, Jonathan Landrum Jr. of the Associated Press writes about the Dream's change from chumps to champs. Check it out.

6/2010 - Storm 90, Dream 72

2010-06-02T21:25:00.002-04:00

Former Connecticut player Iziane Castro Marques wishes she were back in Brazil.

(Picture above comes from Chuckarelei's gallery at SportsPageMagazine.com.)

Yesterday, I spent most of the day counting the minutes to Atlanta-Seattle. I have two cats who are not Atlanta Dream fans - yet - and I wondered how much of my time I'd have to spend corralling one or the other of them.

Maybe I should have spent the time with the cats instead. The Dream lost 90-72 on the final game on their four-game road swing. Don't let the score fool you - that could just have easily been 100-72 if the Storm wanted it that way. The Storm got into the car, climbed into the driver's seat, and simply zoomed off into the distance leaving Atlanta to chase behind like a dog after a car.

1) You'd think that Key Arena would have been packed to the rafters, but I was surprised. The crowd was what I'd call "average to good" without having any other standard by which to measure. I wonder why? Was there some sort of NBA game on to compete?

2) ESPN2 started with a look into each team's locker room. Generally, there's not a lot to be learned from these visits. Locker room talk isn't like that of Vince Lombardi even in the most dramatic of situations...you might learn a little bit but it's usually a pedestrian reinforcement of points the players should already know.

For Brian Agler of Seattle, the emphasis was to put pressure on Atlanta's passers. Meadors was committed to the transition game: "They can't defend what they can't catch." Agler wants to deny the transition game; Meadors wants to emphasize it.

3) There was some brief discussion of Chamique Holdsclaw's departure, a loss that seems like it happened a year ago instead of a month ago. The motto of the Dream players? "Play on" - Holdsclaw never showed up in training camp and the players simply assumed that she'd never be back and prepared for the post-Holdsclaw era. Wise decision.

Regarding the Holdsclaw hullabaloo - fans thought that, "yes, this is it, Meadors has let another player go and is destroying the Dream." I am inclined to invoke a rule called "Stengel's Law" after Casey Stengel of the New York Yankees.

Stengel's Law: On any team, 20 percent of the players love the coach. Another 20 percent of the players hate the coach. The other 60 percent of the players are indifferent - they just want to play basketball.

Most likely, the bulk of Atlanta's players stayed out of the Holdsclaw brouhaha - they would have played ball with Maddie (the Liberty mascot) if you could get her into a Dream uniform. Meadors also seems to have mastered the Corollary to Stengel's Law: The secret to a long life as a coach is to keep the 20 percent who hate you away from the 60 percent who are indifferent.

4) Atlanta starters: Lehning, Iziane, McCoughtry, Lyttle (Sancho, not Camille), Erika
Seattle starters: Bird, Wright, Little (Camille, not Sancho), Cash, Jackson

5) Seattle in dark green, Atlanta in home white. I've not seen enough games to know if this is a general rule for Storm games.

6) And the game is underway! It took a few glitches - a Sue Bird overthrow to Lauren Jackson, followed by a travel by Erika de Souza - before some points were put on the board with a pair of free throws by Jackson. 2-0 Seattle.

7) Shalee Lehning had two quick turnovers - she turned over the ball, but Erika de Souza saved the first turnover when Camille Little made a bad pass. Then Lehning got the ball back and turned the ball over again. Egad. Lehning followed her two turnovers with a blocking foul shortly thereafter.

8) Almost immediately, one could tell that something wasn't quite right. It seems that the Dream were relying on bank shots instead of jumpers, trying to play pool against the Storm instead of basketball. Part of the problem was that the Storm were all over Angel McCoughtry. Lauren Jackson stripped the ball from Iziane Castro Marques...when it's usually the other way around.

9) The announcer said something to the effect that "Iziane Castro Marques is an eight-year player out of the University of Connecticut...." To which I replied "say what?"

I've got a post percolating in my head regarding the relative value of WNBA coaches. Part of that post is the idea that WNBA players are relatively "finished" when the arrive to a league in that their game is pretty much what it's going to be forever. However, I think the only coach that could make Iziane stop shooting is Geno Auriemma, who would cause Iziane to return to Brazil when Geno benches her and Iziane refuses to return late in the second half of a UConn-Rutgers game.

10) As we approached the halfway point of the first quarter, the Storm were up 7-4. The Dream had five turnovers, and Sancho Lyttle had picked up her second foul. I wasn't worried about the second foul, as in a lot of games it seems that Lyttle picks up two quick personal fouls. (The five turnovers, on the other hand....)

11) Meadors to a referee: "They're pushing us into the screens!" The refereeing was...pretty bad. Not the worst I've seen, but bad nonetheless. If we had lost by six or less, we might have been able to blame the refs for the loss, but in this case, it wasn't the refs that did us in.

12) The Dream then went on an 0-8 cold shooting streak. Seattle increased its lead to 12-4, taking advantage with a mini-run. Kelly Miller came in and took a 3-pointer that a blind man could see wasn't going to fall.

13) The supporting cast of the Dream was switched out. Price came in. Leuchanka came in. But the supporting cast wasn't the problem. The problem was McCoughtry taking crazy shots. McCoughtry would find herself double (and maybe triple-teamed once or twice) and simply fail to kick out, trying a bank shot that was destined not to go in. She started cold, ending the quarter 1-for-8 from the field. She hit a 3-pointer later in the quarter to close the score to 15-9, but Swin Cash followed with a rolling in shot at the end to finish the quarter with a 17-9 Storm lead.

14) It could have been worse - the Storm only shot 37.5 percent from the field (6-for-16) but the Dream only shot 18.2 percent in the first quarter (4-for-22). McCoughtry was 1-for-8 and Iziane was 1-for-5. When the two hottest shooters on your team are 2-for-13, you know it's going to be a looooong night. Swin Cash and Lauren Jackson had seven points each.

Meadors told her team that "we're not pushing the ball". But as we'd found out, that was easier said than done....

15) McCoughtry appeared to calm down at the beginning of the second quarter. She got a steal, and a pass to Yelena Leuchanka closed the gap to 20-13. She followed with a travel call, but the Dream would get the ball back and Kelly Miller would find that 3-pointer to close the score to 20-16.

It could have been 20-18 if Armintie Price was not mugged by the Storm on the way to a drive. It was clear that Atlanta had finally picked up the aggressiveness they needed. Would Seattle wilt like so many other teams?

16) The Dream were on their way to a 11-2 run of their own. McCoughtry drove to the basket. Leuchanka banked it in past Lauren Jackson. McCoughtry hit a fade away prayer and the score was tied, 22-22.

17) Seattle surged ahead. The Dream were determined to get that three pointer against a determined Storm defense, and missed a couple of attempts. That misguided agression let Seattle score the next six points. Kelly Miller got another 3 pointer to fall and it was back to 28-25 Seattle.

Erika de Souza, having two personal fouls, returned to the game. Almost immediately after her return she was tagged with a third personal foul. By this point of the game, Erika had zero points.

18) With With the score 30-27 after Iziane hit a shot just as the 24-second clock expired, it looked like Atlanta would hang around for a while, never more than a basket or two away from Seattle.

Then...the Lauren Jackson show started. Jackson hit a three, and Iziane and McCoughtry couldn't answer. McCoughtry looked clearly frustrated. Jackson got loose near the basket and the Storm were up now by ten points, 37-27. The half ended with a pair of Jackson free throws

What happened? Jackson scored nine of Seattle's last 11 points. Swin Cash and Tanisha Wright pretty much had McCoughtry wrapped up with a bow, and the Storm took a 39-27 lead into halftime.

19) Seattle was shooting 50 percent compared to just 29.3 percent by the Dream (12-for-41). This surge in scoring was caused by Lauren Jackson...who now had 18 points after her mini-explosion at the end of the first half. Camille Little had eight points, and Swin Cash had seven.

McCoughtry had gone 3-for-14 in the first half and had seven points to show for it. When Kelly Miller and Yelena Leuchanka are your second leading scorers - six points each - it's not a good sign. Lyttle and de Souza had been negated by foul trouble. Kelly Miller's six points came from 2-for-4 shooting, each shot from behind the 3-point arc.

20) Chantelle Anderson officially weighs in on Atlanta coaching. From Twitter:

@MissChantelle I love how Marynell acts like she's the coach when it's really Carol Ross.

21) Even after a dismal first half, the Dream hadn't had the fight beaten out of them. Not yet, anyway. A 3-pointer by Lehning finally got the Dream back to within single digits, 43-34.

It was then that the announcers began to talk about an "old style point guard" or "old fashioned point guard" when they talked about Lehning. It's a meme that I've picked up on. "Lehning is an old style point guard."

The announcers helpfully provide a definition. That is, an old style point guard is looking to distribute during the first seventy percent of a possession and looking to score during the final thirty percent. That would mean that an old style point guard only looks to score during the final seven seconds of a 24-second possession.

I'll have to run some numbers to see which WNBA players are "old style point guards". My suspicion is that Lehning's so old-style she predates Naismith.

22) An interesting announcement: Shalee Lehning, Angel McCoughtry and Sancho Lyttle have been named Atlanta Dream team captains. Lyttle is a surprise; McCoughtry and Lehning are certainly not. Lehning and McCoughtry (writers of several Beatles songs) can definitely lead a team in the charisma/management sense of the term.

24) The Dream were at least keeping it interesting. McCoughtry closed it back to within single digits again with a 3-pointer to close to 47-39. She would have to do it alone for a while, because we were halfway through the third quarter and Erika still hadn't scored.

25) We were still managing to stay within about 10 points of Seattle. Lauren Jackson hit a bucket midway through the third quarter to put the Storm up 51-40. It was Jackson's 20th point of the night.

The game was getting a little bit weird, though. Lehning had the opportunity on a drive to the basket. Iziane passes to Lehning, Lehning is shooting at point blank range - and misses. I've seen it more than once in Lehning's career.

Yes, I'll get five mail messages that say that Lehning can shoot and that Lehning just doesn't want to shoot and that that missed gimme was an aberration. So I won't go there, for now. I will say this - Lehning is definitely no finisher. You give Armintie Price point blank range and it's two points, for all of Price's other perceived failings.

26) Lehning, however, might have just gotten hacked. She gets a visit to the free throw line for two shots.

The camera pans to Marynell Meadors talking to Iziane Castro Marques on the sideline. Meadors tells Izi, "We get two shots and the ball." This is incorrect. This hypothetical four-point play becomes a one-point play when Lehning hits the first free throw and misses the second.

27) A Sancho Lyttle jumper beings it the closest we've come in a long time: 51-44 with around four minutes left in the third.

28) 3:31 left in the third. Erika de Souza picks up her fourth personal foul. I hope that she found some coffee in Seattle that she liked.

29) The Smart Play Highlight: Lehning picked up a steal from Lauren Jackson on a drive - which is rather amazing given the difference in height and how smart and accomplished Jackson is as a player. Later, when Wright tried to drive to the basket, Lehning planted herself perfectly and Wright was charged with the offensive foul.

30) The score was down to seven points again, 53-46. McCoughtry was being defended with the same fiery intensity that she was being defended in the first quarter. And then...

...for some inexplicable reason, the Dream decided that they'd play zone. And leave Lauren Jackson out on the perimeter, challenging her to take 3-point shots.

Swish! Storm 56, Dream 46.

Swish! Storm 59, Dream 46.

There were less than two minutes left and the Dream had gone from a three basket deficit to a six basket deficit, all from two shots by Lauren Jackson. It was a mistake that the Dream wouldn't recover from. The Storm finished the third quarter with an 8-2 run and led 61-48 going into the final quarter.

31) Seattle was shooting at 51.1 percent, thanks to Lauren Jackson. The Dream had managed to crawl into mediocre territory - 35.7 percent shooting. However, in offensive rebounding - Atlanta's major strength - the Dream actually fell behind Seattle due to the prolonged absences of Lyttle and de Souza. Yes, they had two more offensive rebounds overall at this point, but the Storm was winning the battle of the glass on the Dream's end of the field.

Jackson had 26 points. Little had 14. McCoughtry had finally crawled up to 16 points, but when you take a lot of shots to do it and when the Storm are pulling down the defensive rebounds the points McCoughtry was putting on the board weren't making the Dream stronger.

32) There was still the slim chance of a Dream comeback in the fourth quarter. A couple of minutes passed, however, and the Dream were no closer than they were at the end of the third. With the Storm up 67-55, Jackson got the ball again, hit the basket and then picked up a foul from Armintie Price.

And one. Storm up 70-55. And then Bird found Jackson for the three pointer. 73-65. But that's okay? McCoughtry would answer with a 3-pointer, right?

Nope. Abrosimova got the rebound, Cash drove to the basket and it was a 75-55 game.

33) With the Dream down by 20 points and 5:58 left in the fourth, Meadors released the franchise...Brittainey Raven! Raven scored six points in the final quarter (and three personal fouls) but it was against Seattle's second string.

34) For the rest of the game, I had one single hope - not to be utterly embarrassed. There's not much to say, I simply defined in my own mind what "utterly embarrassed" meant, which would be not losing by twenty points.

With 49 seconds left, Svetlana Abrosimova hit a pair of free throws. 90-67 Storm. It looked like the Dream were going to go home whippped.

However, Kelly Miller saved the game for us - or at least for me, anyway. Miller hit two free throws after a foul by Ashley Robinson. Leuchanka stole the ball from Abrosimova, Bales made the pass and Kelly Miller hit the three pointer with 20 seconds left to keep the Dream from losing by twenty on the road.

Storm 90, Dream 72. Game over, and thank goodness. More on the game later, just to help us all forget.

Chanel Mokango Signed by Sparks

2010-06-02T08:16:00.001-04:00

Chanel Mokango, the Atlanta Dream's #1 Draft pick in 2010, has been signed by the Los Angeles Sparks. The Sparks cut Tiffany Stansbury and signed Mokango the same day.

It seemed as if Mokango would never play in the WNBA. Mokango, as the #9 overall draftpick in 2010, would have been the highest ranking draft pick never to play in the WNBA. She still hasn't played yet, but if Mokango steps onto a WNBA court then Molly Creamer's record will remain safe.

Dream Win Streak Ends at Seattle 90-72

2010-06-02T07:59:00.002-04:00

It wasn't going to last forever, and playing against the Storm on their home court at the end of a four-game road swing was just too much to take. The Dream lost 90-72 last night. They have never won at Seattle's Key Arena, and it will be either 2011 or the WNBA Finals before they get a chance to try again.

With the Atlanta loss and the Seattle win, both teams are 6-1 and leading their respective conferences.

Jayda Evans writes about it here.

Here's the AP writeup posted in Sydney, Australia.

All it all circumstances can't be blamed - the Storm are damned good. McCoughtry taking bad shots and Lyttle and de Souza getting into early foul trouble didn't help.

Let's beat up the Sky on Friday night at Philips Arena to express our displeasure.

Dream Fever Hits Atlanta and Other Places

2010-06-01T20:12:00.000-04:00

With the Dream at 6-0 on the year and the Dream heading into Seattle against the best team in the Western Conference, everyone seems to have caught Dream Fever.

1. Mechelle Voepel's newest article for ESPN is called "It's a dream of a start in Atlanta." And it definitely is:

McCoughtry was last season's rookie of the year, an honor she was expected to contend for after being the league's No. 1 draft pick in 2009. McCoughtry was a can't-miss prospect and is living up to those expectations. She has started this season making a case for already being in the WNBA's elite despite being just 23.

...

I think of Lehning as like that person in an office whom you might overlook … until something goes wrong with the copier, and she's the only one who knows how to fix it. Or a file is misplaced, and she's the only one who can find it.

2. Kathy Betty showed up for a Dream of an interview on The Zone in Atlanta at 790 AM. You can listen to the entire interview on the Atlanta Dream Facebook page. I liked the interview, it's worth a listen.

3. Angel McCoughtry got named as the Eastern Conference Player of the Week for the second week in a row. (Someone named Candace Parker won the Western Conference Player of the Week award.)

4. SLAM magazine and Ben York tells us that "Angel McCoughtry Has Arrived". McCoughtry has arrived, her feet are up on the table, and she's watching television, and it's her house now.

Enjoy the Dream love...and enjoy the game. Tonight. 9:30 pm. ESPN2.

Dream-Sparks Gallery

2010-05-31T19:20:00.001-04:00

I'd call this a "mismatch".

This is from Eric Wade over at SportsPageMagazine.com.

Some great pics, so come over and take a look.