Atlanta vs. San Antonio, Thursday August 6th

Who: The Atlanta Dream (10-10) take on the San Antonio Silver Stars (9-10) as both teams try to hang around .500 and fourth place in their respective divisions.

The Dream have Chamique Holdsclaw (15.0 ppg) as well as All-Star Team members Sancho Lyttle (13.3 ppg) and Erika de Souza (10.9 ppg). Becky Hammon (20.9 ppg) and Sophia Young (17.3 ppg) are among the league's scoring leaders, and Ann Wauters (14.7 ppg last year) is back with the team.

What: The first of two games this year against the Silver Stars - San Antonio comes to Atlanta exactly two weeks later. The Dream are 0-2 all time against the Silver Stars.

Where: The AT&T center in San Antonio, TX.

When: Tipoff is 8:00 pm Eastern on Thursday, August 6th. Here's what sucks - WNBA has Live Access, which is a way one can watch any WNBA game on the internet. The problem is that only San Antonio doesn't buy into Live Access, so...we probably aren't going to see anything but a box score.

Why: First, you have two teams that are "on their way up" for different reasons. For the Dream, it's because the Dream have just gotten better and better as the year has progressed. The Silver Stars have done the same thing, but in a different way - at times, San Antonio was missing some of their pieces. Becky Hammon was playing in Russia. Vickie Johnson had a family member die. Ann Wauters wasn't going to arrive until mid-season. The Silver Stars struggled until they could get their players back together.

There's no history of close games between San Antonio and Atlanta. We lost by 15 at home last year, and by eight on the road. To give you an idea of how long ago that first game was, the lead scorer for the Dream that night was Stacey Lovelace.

If there's an reason to see a Silver Stars game, it's Becky Hammon. She's the leading scorer in the WNBA right now, and she just has one of those sweet shots that's a wonder to see. However, there's the perpetually overlooked Sophia Young as well, and Megan Frazee out of Liberty University is one of the underrated rookies of the 2009 class - it would be interesting to see Angel McCoughtry and Megan Frazee finally butt heads.

With Ann Wauters coming back, the Silver Stars are indeed...stars. Remember, the Silver Stars played in the WNBA Finals in 2008. The Atlanta Dream would like to be in the same place at the end of 2009.