Hope And Dream(s)

I can't recall the specific context, but a while back on "Podcast Ain't Played Nobody," Bill Connelly and Steven Godfrey were discussing the point at which enough recurring disappointment can curdle a fan base into overt, permanent pessimism. Where, precisely, the threshold of soul-crushing losses is crossed and it would take a literal miracle to ford back across that Rubicon to the banks of hope. Godfrey, a fellow lifelong Atlanta sports fan, quipped that in terms of memories, he'd go ten or eleven deep on instances of misery before even getting to the solitary happy example of the '95 Braves. That team is still the only one to bring a Championship to Georgia. Not just in my lifetime. Ever. 

The heartbreak has come in every conceivable fashion and from every possible vector. I won't bore you with all of it because we'd be here all day, but in this decade alone, Atlanta has been through:

A 60-win Hawks squad finishing with a 1-seed and making their first ever Eastern Conference Finals, only to be swept in humiliating fashion by LeBron and the Cavs. Then they let their best players, including my beloved Alfred Joel Horford, walk for no returns, signed Dwight Howard, and pretty much fell apart. I like the general direction they're heading with the current rebuild, but so help me if Luka Doncic winds up a 10-time All Star and Trae Young winds up just being OK, I'm gonna be mad.

The Braves had The Infield Fly Game, utterly cratered afterwards and then got busted for international scouting violations which resulted in sanctions and a regime turnover. This season's Baby Braves have been a genuine delight, and the franchise is on the upswing, but it'll be another year or two before the young pitching prospects are ready to solidify the whole operation.

The Falcons ... well shit, y'all. 28-3 happened. Then we hired friggin' Sark as OC. Now Julio is holding out for a restructured contract, and speaking of contracts, Matt Ryan better damn well stay healthy and keep playing at a high level after we dumped Fort Knox on his doorstep. Yeesh.  

(I should add that while UGA football is not a universal going concern in the state, we Dawgs fans also had to deal with the 2012 SEC Title Game and last year's 2nd-&-26 absolute life wrecker. PS - Fuck 'Bama. PPS - No, Georgia Tech, your bullshit 1990 Natty you split with Colorado in the pre-BCS era don't mean shit.)

The Atlanta Dream were born in 2008, and I was in love from day one. The WNBA had come into existence just over a decade earlier on the heels of USA Women's Basketball putting on a display for the ages during the 1996 Olympics. I was lucky enough to witness some of those games in person, and I was immediately and totally hooked. I've loved basketball since about the time I could walk, but I'd never seen high-level women ballin' out before because of the chronic underexposure that plagued the game back then and is, frankly, only somewhat better now. (HEY SPORTS MEDIA: COVER THE LEAUGE. COVER THE COLLEGE GAME. WATCH THEM WORK. HEY HOOPS FANS: THIS SHIT IS GREAT. DON'T BE MISOGYNIST FUCKHEADS. WATCH THEM WORK.) Anyway, when my home town got a team, even though I was long gone and living in Boston, I was all in. We've had good seasons and lousy ones, but since their inception, the Dream have followed the familiar template of Atlanta/GA sports misery. They have been to three WNBA finals and lost every time. Back-to-back killers to the 2010 Storm and 2011 Lynx, then to the Lynx again in 2013.  They finished last season 12-22.

But this year? This year might be something special.

As you'd expect under any first-year, first-time head coach, Atlanta started off the season in a somewhat janky fashion with Nicki Collen at the helm. They were a spectacular defensive outfit from jump, and currently sport a league-best 95.9 Defensive Rating (per WNBA.com.). Through most of the season, the Dream have used their intelligence and relentlessness on that end of the floor to prop up a schizophrenic and often listless offense. But then things started to coalesce as the players gained more comfort in Collen's system. A mid-season trade that flipped Layshia Clarendon for the Sun's Alex Bentley cemented the roster into a mean, flexible squad. (Full disclosure: I hated the trade at the time. It made perfect sense for both teams, but I so adored Layshia and hated to see her go so much that I was salty about it, logic and necessity be damned. Nonetheless, we brought our girl Alex home and ever since, things have kicked up a few considerable notches.)

Atlanta entered the All-Star Break on a thunderous mic drop. They ripped off 8 straight wins including games over three top-5 opponents in the Sparks, Storm, and Mercury. The offense is finally matching the defense, and the result is a team sitting at 16-9, second in the league behind only Seattle. (Check out Her Hoop Stats' Megan Gauer for a full breakdown.) Gauer points out the uptick in scoring efficiency from Renee Montgomery and Tiffany Hayes, and the increased production on the offensive glass from Angel McCoughtry, Jessica Breland, and Elizabeth Williams. What's really incredible is that the individual play is so seamlessly tethered to the team and the system. The league is loaded with talent, and Atlanta is no exception, but checking player-by-player stats, something jumped out at me: much like that 60-win Hawks team I mentioned up top, by the numbers there ain't nobody on this roster who is a legitimately elite two-way player.  Close, but not quite.

Seriously, I went to both the official WNBA and the wonderful Hashtag Basketball advanced player stats pages and sorted and sorted by stats groupings until my eyes bled and y'all: in metrics grading overall efficiency (and I adjusted the sortable categories all over the place but always kept at least one offensive or defensive stat in play in each instance), the closest any Dream player got to the top was Tiffany Hayes. Tiff clocks at 11th in WNBA.com's PIE metric; 10th if you remove teammate Alexis Prince's four minutes in one game played this season. Sooooo, I guess ATL "technically" has two players in the Top 10? Kinda?* Further proof of the Dream not having any truly First Class Ballers (by the numbers, not in my heart) is the fact that the 2nd best team in The W has one measly damn All Star in Angel this year.** 

*The best result I got on any statistical breakdown, unsurprisingly, came when I used Hashtag Basketball to isolate defensive stats (defensive boards, steals, blocks, turnovers, and fouls). That put Jess Breland #1 and Liz Williams #8 in the league. Breland is also 5th in the league in total boards.)

**We should, at a minimum, have two. Tiff got fuckin' robbed. Don't @ me.

Anyway, the point is, the Dream don't have a singular game-wrecking talent or clear best player. We surely don't have an offensive dynamo like DT to propel this team. What we have is a murderous defense, and something that's pretty cool and interesting on the other end of the floor: a well-calibrated roster capable of multiple effective looks whose individual skill sets perfectly compliment each other. Nicki Collen's system works, and now that they've acclimated to it and to each other, the offensive production is close enough to the defensive dominance to resemble something that looks very much like a serious title contender. No one player is going to pour in buckets night after night or rack up insane assist numbers. But together, in this system, they are making beautiful things happen by moving the ball, working their asses off, and trusting each other.

And they are fun as hell to watch. They clearly love playing together, and they've got that special aura of "fuck-you" invincibility turned all the way up right now. They are joyful and fearless and borderline unhinged in the best possible way. I live in Chapel Hill, NC, so I watch the games mostly through a computer screen, but I swear I can feel McCamish Pavillion humming with electricity through the pixels every time I boot up League Pass. It's phenomenal when a team you love, when YOUR SQUAD gets to cookin' and really levels up and you start thinking "wait, how far can this really go? Can we go all the way this year? Why the hell not?"

And God help me, because I've been through this over and over and over again as a fan, but this feels real. The tumblers are clicking into place, and the Dream have their collective ears pressed against the door of the safe, working with power and precision to dial in those last, crucial digits and unlock this thing. And awwww, damnit. Now I'm starting to hope again. If they can sustain this coming out of All-Star Weekend, I don't see any reason they can't ride this beautiful brand of collective, gorgeous basketball they're playing through the playoffs. History and experience are screaming at me "NO, DON'T DO IT." Atlanta fans get invested and we get crushed. It happens. Other than 1995, it's always happened. You know what? I don't give a fuck. I love this team. They are great and they are special and they can do this. Let's ride. Let's go. Let's watch them work. #OneDream.