The Atlanta Dream started their West Coast road trip last night with a dud, scoring just 12 points in the second quarter en route to an 87-72 defeat to the Las Vegas Aces.
But they won’t have time to rue on the nightmare for long, as they’ll play again tonight at 10 p.m. against the Phoenix Mercury, who trail only the Minnesota Lynx in the Western Conference.
The Mercury are 7.5-point favorites on DraftKings Sportsbook (-298 Moneyline), with the total set at 164 points, and Atlanta is +240 on the Moneyline. Below, I’ll break down tonight’s sole WNBA action and offer a prediction.
Dream at Mercury prediction, pick
While the Dream’s defense has looked good on paper in the last three games since All-Star forward Rhyne Howard went down with a hyperextended knee, their offense has fallen off a cliff, producing just 95.4 points per 100 possessions. However, even that defensive performance is heavily skewed by an 86-49 demolition of the Chicago Sky in which Chicago, sitting Angel Reese and Ariel Atkins, shot an unsustainably terrible 25.4% from the field, and Michaela Onyenwere left after just 12 minutes with a knee injury. For Atlanta fans, it’s harder to look at the Sky game and be encouraged than it is to be dispirited by the losses to the New York Liberty and the Aces, especially given that the Dream took an early lead in both.
Atlanta’s defense provided little resistance to three-time MVP A’ja Wilson, who stuffed the stat sheet with 24 points, 12 boards, and five assists for Las Vegas, and the Dream also lost the turnover battle by eight, conceded four more free throw attempts, and got out-rebounded by three. Perhaps Atlanta can reliably expect to shoot better than 16-for-38 (42.1%) from two-point range, but it’ll need more than that to make up 15 points against a Phoenix team that has been better on both offense and defense than the Aces have. In their last 12 games — a span in which the Mercury have gone 9-3 — they have been the league’s second-best team.
Phoenix’s strong defense is largely driven by committee: its best individual defender, Satou Sabally, is ranked just 15th in defensive win shares this season. But between her, six-time All-Defensive honoree Alyssa Thomas, and 29-year-old rookie Kathryn Westbeld, the Mercury haven’t missed a beat despite moving on from veteran center Brittney Griner, now patrolling the middle for the Dream. In the last 12 games, Phoenix has allowed the second-fewest made shots at the rim (though at the fourth-highest percentage), the fourth-worst percentage from floater range, and the fourth-worst percentage from the midrange. The Mercury are exploitable from beyond the arc and somewhat exploitable at the rim, so it’ll be up to the Dream, who get to the rim at the fifth-highest rate and jack up the third-most threes, to hit their shots in those zones.
Overall, though, Phoenix isn’t a great matchup for Atlanta. Though the Dream hold opponents to league-low 57.6% accuracy inside the restricted area, they’re fairly exploitable in the midrange, and the Mercury have shot 41.1% on such shots, though on smaller volume. Phoenix also averages the second-most steals per game, while Atlanta averages the fewest, so in a game where neither team is particularly mistake-prone, the ability to manufacture mistakes out of nothing could make a huge difference. Plus, Maya Caldwell, who’s starting in place of Howard, has neither the length nor the defensive prowess that her teammate does, and the Mercury have a huge starting lineup that just got even more physically imposing with the returns of Kahleah Copper and Sabally.
