Dream Team a Long Time in the Making
May 28, 2010The rule in sports is that winning cures everything. It cures media disinterest. It cures fan apathy. It cures locker room drama. It could be that the WNBA's Atlanta Dream has finally found the precious mix that makes a team a winning team, the mix that will cure any ailment.
“When we defend, rebound and push the ball, I don’t think there is anyone in the league that is faster than us,” head coach Marynell Meadors said after a 97-82 win against the Connecticut Sun, the third win of the year for the Atlanta Dream.
“I don’t think we have to have a bunch of superstars,” Angel McCoughtry said after a 66-62 win against the Indiana Fever. “A lot of great players who are going to play hard and give you what you need … when you have a team like that, you can go places.”
The 2010 version of the Atlanta Dream is so radically different from the version of two years ago that they are essentially completely different teams. The 2008 version of the Dream only won four games in thirty-four tries; the 2010 version has started the season with four straight victories. Ron Terwilliger owned the previous team, Kathy Betty owns the current one. The two versions only have two players in common, Iziane Castro Marques and Erika de Souza. There has only been one other constant: Marynell Meadors.
When Meadors first walked into Terwillinger’s office to be interviewed for the head coach/GM position, she carried with her a list of players she hoped to have on the team. Meadors has known what she has wanted from the very beginning.
“I feel like we are getting there,” Meadors said when asked about her hypothetical perfect team. “I tried to build this team on speed and quickness and we definitely have that, unless we’re on back-to-backs. That slows us down a bit.” Meadors referred to the Dream’s first win of the 2010 season on the road against San Antonio, a 75-70 victory. “I don’t know if you had a chance to watch the game but everybody was impressed with the speed and quickness of our team.”
Meadors has definitely had certain players in mind from day one. One of Meadors’s goals over the last three years has been to pick up Yelena Leuchanka, a Belarusian player with limited WNBA experience. Leuchanka was obtained in the 2008 expansion draft from the Washington Mystics but Olympic and national team commitments kept Leuchanka from joining the Dream until 2010.
Why Leuchanka, of all people? “She has a real good post-up game. She’s big. She seals people out if we get the ball to her,” Meadors said.
The path from her initial list of players to the present team has been a rocky one for Meadors. It’s come with a lot of drama. It’s no secret that certain players have clashed with Meadors and in each of those cases, the door was left open by the Dream front office for departure.
In some cases, it was an easy decision: Betty Lennox was let go after the 2008 season. Meadors wasn’t averse to benching the popular Lennox, and Lennox found her own way off the team. Meadors has always tried to get something of value for those desiring to leave; when 2008 first-round draft pick Tamera Young wanted out, she was exchanged for 2007 Rookie of the Year Armintie Price in the middle of the 2009 regular season.
Price was instrumental in this season's opening home game win against the Indiana Fever, scoring 14 points and four rebounds. Price explained the difference between the Dream and her previous team, the Chicago Sky. “Well, they let us just play here. In Chicago, it’s kind of more like robots, you know? Here, once you get the ball you can go. You can play free, and you can have fun and you know, break the play. So it’s a lot of running and it’s a lot of fun.”
In cases where nothing could be obtained for a player Meadors let the chips fall where they may. She traded Camille Little to the Storm for a second-round draft pick in 2009, one that turned into Shalee Lehning. Stacey Lovelace missed her final two games in 2008 for “personal reasons” and was waived. Chamique Holdsclaw told Meadors that she didn’t plan on showing up for training camp less than a week before its start this season, leaving Meadors scrambling to find a trading partner. Holdsclaw -- the Dream’s marquee player last year -- ended up being waived on May 19.
After signing with the San Antonio Silver Stars two days later, Holdsclaw told reporters there, “It was a personal thing between me and my coach.” Did Meadors take it personally? No. Meadors told USA Today that as far as she was concerned, if a player didn’t want to be with the Dream she would try to find them another place to play.
Holdsclaw’s holdout started a domino effect. With no one to play her position, the job of serving as ersatz Holdsclaw was handed off to third-round draft pick Brittainey Raven. Raven has underperformed in the few minutes she’s played, but nonetheless partially owes her job to her predecessor's departure.
Furthermore, with high-profile players like Sancho Lyttle and Erika de Souza away in Spain during training camp, Meadors was left to make due with spare parts during the pre-season. (Tellingly, Atlanta lost both of its pre-season games.) One of those spare parts was Alison Bales, who was traded to the Dream in 2008 from the Indiana Fever (in exchange for Kristen Mann). Bales was not re-signed by the Dream, but was picked up by the Phoenix Mercury in 2009. However, Bales failed to make it out of the Mercury training camp, leaving her without a WNBA job. Bales spent her off time taking pre-med classes at Wichita State in hopes of pursuing a career as a physician, but still felt she had some basketball left to play.
So she worked hard during the off-season and signed a training camp contract with the Dream. “We needed a trail post, which is the 4, that trails the floor and stops the key, and she can knock that 3-pointer down. And she’s good at the free-throw line and at the elbows and we needed someone who can score there,” Meadors said.
When asked about what she had done to prepare herself after a year away from the game, Bales said, “I played against a lot of guys, and I worked on my quickness. I just hope that’s showing out there.”
“Sancho [Lyttle’s] going to run and she’s going to get her points, and Erika [de Souza’s] going to get her points but Ali can open it up for the players inside and also for the guards,” Meadors said.
The year off seems to have done Bales a world of good. She is averaging 5.0 points per game, but her most impressive stat is 2.2 blocks per game. Her blocks-per-game numbers have gone up every year she's played in the WNBA, and the Dream now lead the league in blocks per game and blocks per game differential.
With Holdsclaw’s roster spot vacated, there was room for both Bales and Leuchanka. Bales isn't starting – that job is for Lyttle and de Souza – but Bales has extended the clock one more season. She was able to make a team that neither Chanel Mokango – the Dream's 2010 first-round draft pick, nor Brigitte Ardossi of Georgia Tech - were able to make.
Holdsclaw's absence hasn’t seemed to hurt Atlanta. The Dream have won each of their first four games by an average of 8.25 points. Atlanta averages approximately forty rebounds per game to their opponents' thirty. The 81.0 points per game the Dream have averaged over their first four wins is not far from the 84.1 points per game the Dream scored in the 2009 season.
Is there a philosophy to the new 2010 Atlanta Dream? Observing the first four games,it appears to be “press the ball” and not worry about the lack of a three-point game. (The Dream have four players 6-4 or above, but the tallest of these -– Alison Bales at 6-7 -– has a knack for hitting the 3.)
“I don’t know that the Dream will ever have a 3-point specialist,” Meadors said. “We’re going to shoot a lot of 2s and get fouled and go the old-fashioned way.” If there’s any key to understanding the Dream, it’s in this, a philosophy that Meadors has often repeated.
Shalee Lehning appears to be a throwback low-scoring point guard, content to pass the ball into the post and hang around until the play is over. Lehning has said that one of her goals for the 2010 season was to become a better shooter, but she is averaging only 1.8 points per game so far this season. The Dream come fast out of the gate, but they’re no Phoenix Mercury –- they would rather shove their opponents out of the way than run by them. Four big women add a new dimension to their game, and even though Angel McCoughtry and Castro Marques are not specifically sharpshooters, they like to shoot the ball … and neither is averse to taking shots from three-point range.
Is Atlanta's good start the sign of things to come, or is it just a statistical aberration? One thing is for certain – if the Dream make it to the post-season and go past the first round of the playoffs, Meadors' detractors might have to come up with yet another excuse not to credit her for a major part of the Dream’s success.
Add a Comment
Please be civil.