Spotlight’s on Angel Reese, but Atlanta Dream goals also depend on Rhyne Howard, Allisha Gray
· Yahoo Sports
INDIANAPOLIS – Angel Reese is ever conspicuous, so the early evening action at Gainbridge Fieldhouse was no surprise. As she finished warmups and video review, bodies scurried to the railings, holding items they prayed she’d sign on her way off the floor. The people booed her during lineup introductions. They cheered after an airballed jumper. Not another soul on the visitors’ side generated anything close to that energy on Thursday.
Visit esporist.com for more information.
It’s kind of the point of her for this WNBA season, in a way, as the most seismic player addition of the offseason. Basketball-centric attention is warranted, for better or worse. Many people keep saying the 24-year-old All-Star is the missing piece for an Atlanta Dream club on the cusp, a cohort that includes the Atlanta Dream, who have literally said that.
“I keep saying it,” guard Rhyne Howard declared after a recent win over Dallas. “I think she’s the missing piece.”
Except the most important person brought aboard by the Dream for 2026 can also be beside the most important points, as a matchup against the defending Commissioner’s Cup champions demonstrated in full. Atlanta was out-everythinged in an 83-71 loss to the Indiana Fever, botching a chance at a statement game. A belly flop making the wrong kind of splash. And for a team talking championships, something that Angel Reese isn’t supposed to fix is a thing that needs fixing.
After only nine games, it is probably still a stretch to say the Dream aren’t good enough or sharp enough on offense to win a title. But they started Thursday with the ninth-best offensive rating in the WNBA, and they didn’t do that metric any favors before the calendar flipped to Friday, with stagnant ball movement, at times baffling shot decisions that led to 34.3 percent efficiency overall and a relative no-show from stars who can’t afford to no-show.
The coldest of takes: If Allisha Gray and Rhyne Howard are not good offensively, the Dream do not have much of a chance to win big. They are and will be the difference-makers through the very end. There may be a point in her career when Angel Reese is a multi-level volume scorer and facilitator – that is certainly the vision – but that point is not now. An 11-point, 10-rebound, three-assist, two-block night like Thursday night can be enough.
The expectation likewise can be that the Dream play coherent enough team offense to get Gray and Howard quality looks, and therefore have a potent offense to complement an elite, long, disruptive defense. On Thursday? Gray and Howard made one bucket combined in the first half. They missed 20 of 27 shots between them overall. One turnaround midrange jumper from Howard caught nothing but backboard and was borderline inexplicable.
It was the sort of collective toe-stubbing that left Dream coach Karl Smesko with only one postgame message to deliver to his group:
Let’s talk about it tomorrow.
“Wasn’t the right time to address anything,” Smesko said late Thursday. “Right now, emotions are pretty high. Because I think we all know that we are better than we played today.”
This is a defensible position. His team has won six of its nine games. This was something like a playoff atmosphere on the road against the Fever, who based on the last couple weeks anyway, might as well have been ants in the sun under a magnifying glass. It would have been nice to win, or even look good in losing. Doing neither is not disqualifying on June 4. And though the Dream’s offensive rating heading into the night (106.6) was middle-of-the-pack in the early going of 2026, it is not far off the average (107.2) of the last five WNBA champions.
With a preseason even more truncated than usual thanks to collective bargaining negotiations, offense being behind the defense is understandable. Yet better than half the league has figured out offense better than Atlanta.
Too much dribbling, Smesko said Thursday night. Too little ball movement. Bad screening. Allowing missed shots to affect energy at the other end of the floor. “We were just stopping and staring,” Dream point guard Jordin Canada said.
It happens. But the numbers suggest it happens a little too much for the Dream, despite the success in the win-loss column. That’s the only conclusion to draw from Smesko refusing every possible out for the shortcomings. “It’ll just get better because we’re going to work on it,” Smesko said. “And we’re going to emphasize it and we’re gonna keep bringing it up until it gets better.”
A 44-game WNBA campaign presents some philosophical quandaries. What is too small a sample size? When can anyone draw viable conclusions about anything?
Nine games isn’t declarative. But this was the Dream competing on an elevated stage – Commissioner’s Cup opener, Prime Video broadcast, extreme visibility with Caitlin Clark on one side and Angel Reese on the other – while being one of the best WNBA teams in the early going. The Dream’s response was going to provide a data point in any event, either way. And the data wasn’t great.
“When we are really working together and playing together,” Canada said, “we are one of the best teams in the league.”
Another defensible position.
But now comes the response to the response, or lack thereof. If the Dream are championship material, they’ll fix their problems before the next nine games are done. And they won’t really need the missing piece to do it.
This article originally appeared in The Athletic.
Atlanta Dream, WNBA
2026 The Athletic Media Company