Well, probably not. No. These games take two hours of broadcast time, or thereabouts, and movement in the standings takes place over days, not hours or minutes. The Liberty, if they have even an intern looking at the WNBA standings on a day-to-day basis, would be able to see if another team’s record was starting to approach their own.
Well, let’s just take a look at the Eastern Conference Standings, shall we?
Seed | Team | Win/Loss | Streak |
|---|---|---|---|
1 | New York Liberty | 7 - 0 | Won 7 |
2 | Atlanta Dream | 5 - 2 | Won 4 |
3 | Indiana Fever | 3 - 4 | Won 1 |
4 | Washington Mystics | 3 - 4 | Lost 2 |
5 | Chicago Sky | 2 - 4 | Won 2 |
6 | Connecticut Sun | 1 - 6 | Lost 2 |
As you can tell, we did. Thanks for looking with me, friend. This is called bonding.
I’d ask if any team besides the Liberty stood out, but, if we’re being honest with ourselves, it’s kind of easy to look pretty good when you’re the only other team in the conference besides the Liberty to have a plus-.500 record. 5-2, baby. Two games ahead of the Caitlin Clark-less Indiana Fever.
I get a $50 bonus every time I write Caitlin Clark’s name. That’s not true, but I wanted to write that sentence anyway. Moving on.
Atlanta is the second-best team in the whole, wide Eastern Conference
For the Dream, it’s been a few years of building, and flashes, and hope, and feeling like they were on the edge of breaking through into the next tier of WNBA team. There always seemed to be drama. My Dream fan friends weren’t especially impressed by the coaching. It just always seemed a year would start with some promise then, just, the Dream would do something dreamy.
This year, I fell for the pump fake a little less. Allisha Gray had been there for two years, Rhyne Howard for three. They brought in Jordin Canada last year, and this year added two powerful bigs in Brittney Griner and Brionna Jones. All great. Wonderful. But this seemed like kind of a weird combination to me. I was perplexed.
I remember getting the news during the middle of the Unrivaled season that Griner was moving to the Dream. The Mercury received Satou Sabally and Alyssa Thomas at the end of it all, so I was just kind of confused as to what the plan was here. It felt like Griner was the first domino and may have just found herself in a worse situation.
She must have seen something. She’s taking more 3-pointers now. That must be pretty fun. But more importantly, the Dream are winners of four straight. Three of those wins were against teams they should have beat, but one was against Seattle. That’s legit.
As long as they can keep themselves above the lower half of the Eastern Conference, they should be set up for a successful year. How they come together over the course of the season can only raise their ceiling. It still seems like an odd collection of players to me, but that’s why I do this, and they play, manage, and coach basketball for a living.