What has gone wrong with the Atlanta Dream?

The Atlanta Dream have had an all around unfortunate and largely disappointing season. It’s hard to sugarcoat the ugly reality of how the past couple of months have gone — a span in which the Dream are 7-17 and are currently on the outside looking in with regards to the playoffs.

The bottom four teams in the 12-team WNBA do get the benefit of a weighted lottery draw at the number one pick in 2025 draft. However, as a result of the 2023 Allisha Gray trade with the Wings, the Dream owe Dallas their unprotected first-round pick next summer.

Of course, Gray has become a two-time All-Star, so that’s not to say the team would like a do over there, but there won’t be any significant ‘golden parachute’ for missing the playoffs this time around.

For a season when hype has surrounded both the team and the league as a whole, the play of the hometown team may have begun to turn off onlookers to the women’s game in Atlanta. It’s clear the entire organization is committed to winning now and in the future, and their record isn’t a reflection of that lack of commitment, but there may only be 16 games left to prove that to the fans in 2024.

There are two very obvious reasons for the lackluster play of the hometown team, and they go hand in hand in some respect: the injuries and the offense.

Injuries

This one is pretty straightforward: the Dream have been struck by the injury bug. Bad. Arguably two of their three most important offensive players have missed significant time, and the direct replacements are just unable to produce at the needed level.

Rhyne Howard is currently in Paris with Team USA Basketball helping to bring home gold as part of the 3×3 women’s Olympic team, but she suffered a fluke ankle injury on June 19 in a game against the Minnesota Lynx, and due to this she missed a crucial 10-game stretch — a stretch in which the team went 1-9.

Howard’s importance to the team hardly can’t be overstated: she was named an All-Star in her first two seasons in the league, is the offensive focal point, and is the one who has the ball in her hands when the clock runs down. Her combination of scoring (15.4 points per game) and passing (3.4 assists per game) in her overall creation package is rare for a big guard, and that absence was felt as the Dream sagged to a 1-11 close to the pre-All-Star Break/Olympic portion of the season.

Jordin Canada, the nominal starting point guard, has only play four of a possible 24 games before the break mostly due to a right hand injury suffered in the offseason. In the four games she suited up — all without Howard — she was able to zip the ball around and juice the offense up to the needed standard.

She likes to take a backseat scoring the ball (8.8 points per game) in exchange for ball distribution (6.0 assists per game, a mark that would rank sixth in the league if she qualified). Canada can operate in open space or in tight spaces, and is equally sharp at running a pick-and-roll or finding players cross-court popping open for three.

Here’s an ad hoc pick-and-roll where Canada draws a second defender and dumps it off for an easy score.

Canada can push the pace if necessary and find teammates on the break like below.

And one more example, this one threading the needle to create an easy shot for Haley Jones.

Unfortunately, just as she was getting back into the rhythm of basketball, the point guard suffered a broken finger in a game against the New York Liberty on June 30 and missed the final six games before the break. In Canada’s absence has been a mix of Haley Jones, Crystal Dangerfield and Destanni Henderson, but none of them provide the dribble penetration or court vision Canada brings to the table.

In total, the Dream have yet to have all of Howard, Canada, and Allisha Gray on the court for a single minute through the first 24 games of the season — and that clearly is not a recipe for success.

Offense

The performance of the offense can’t be completely separated from the many issues on the injury front. But as it stands now, the offense is sitting in 12th place, making that the side of the ball the singularly glaring reason for the poor record so far. Their 96.2 offensive rating is the same distance from 11th place (the Chicago Sky at 99.8) as the Sky are to the sixth place Indiana Fever (103.4).

In a similar vein, the team has the worst effective field goal percentage (eFG%) in the league at a brutal 45.1, more than four percentage points than even league average. The only team in their vicinity is the Chicago Sky, who have the benefit of Angel Reese and Kamilla Cardoso to rebound a significant portion of their team’s own misses.

So yeah, it’s been bad.

The shotmaking, and especially so in the three-point shooting, has been a clear issue.

The Dream are shooting a league-worst 24% from the corner — the shortest three-point shot and one that’s almost always an easier catch-and-shoot attempt — despite attempting the third-highest rate of their threes from there (22% of three-point attempts).

Overall, they take the second-fewest shots in the league from three as a percentage of their field goal attempts. Instead, their shot diet is very heavy on inefficient mid-range shots — by far taking the most in the WNBA from 10-feet out the the three-point line. This accounts for 27% of their attempts, a rate even higher when in the halfcourt offense.

Coach Tanisha Wright has the team set up to run a motion offense, where most of the separation comes from running around screens off-ball (usually set by bigs at the elbow or in the paint). A staple set is to run a ‘floppy action’ with two perimeter players finding space to curl into an elbow touch. This means having two bigs who can set screens in the paint is key for the guards and wings find space to receive the ball.

But while Tina Charles has made a strong return from a season away from the game, Cheyenne Parker-Tyus has unfortunately been unable to reprise her All-Star season from a year ago.

This, in part, prompted Wright to move Parker-Tyus to the bench for Nia Coffey after attempting to start ‘CPT’ with Charles in a double big lineup to begin the season. But the lack of spacing — as well as a lack in defensive range — quickly seemed destined to fail.

These kinds of possessions happened too often in the first half of the season: Haley Jones drives in transition with Tina Charles trailing in filling the lane as well. Parker-Tyus, just a 26% three-point shooter, is caught between getting to her reliable spot in the post and spacing the floor, and so she puts up an early long two.

Most of Atlanta’s bigs have flashed touch from long range, but often from a step or two inside the three-point arc. Parker-Tyus, Charles, Naz Hillmon have all shown consistency in spotting up for long twos, but in today’s game of basketball, that extra point behind the line is key.

And certainly that trio of bigs is comfortable scoring from the post. But having a post up-heavy offense with two starting-caliber bigs that aren’t super comfortable passing out of double teams (without even mentioning the lack of spacing around them) has hampered the offense in a major way — as I outlined above.

This is a tough attempt from Charles, the queen of tough attempts throughout the season. DeWanna Bonner help pushes Charles into a baseline fadeway over the concrete base of Alyssa Thomas.

So to recap, the motion offense by design has produced a lot of spot up attempts from long two. And the offense is being ran without the projected starter at point guard for the vast majority of the season. And the spacing from the usual benefit of the corner three has completely abandoned the team.

All of these things and more have added up to an anemic offense thus far.

With the hopeful return of healthy players after the break, and a little more urgency in firing threes after the promotion of 3-and-D specialist Nia Coffey to the starting lineup — as the return of sharpshooting guard Maya Caldwell — there’s hope the Dream can put up more points in the games ahead. But the team remains behind the 8-ball in terms of making the playoffs, three games back of the Sky for eighth place.

They have 16 games left to play in 2024. The question is now: can they salvage what’s left of the season?

*all stats per Basketball-Reference