The Atlanta Dream moved to 10-4 on the season Thursday night with a win against the Indiana Fever, a team that has had their number since outing them from the first round of the playoffs last season.
No, this isn’t a game recap — we don’t do those here. But it is a look at a trend that we’ve seen through 14 games of the Dream’s season so far: For just the third time this year, despite leaving with the win, the Dream lost the battle of the fourth quarter. That’s right — in 14 games, the Dream have won the fourth quarter 11 times.
This is a sign of a team that knows how to close, of course. But it goes deeper than that. Because the Dream aren’t just winning the fourth quarter — they are winning it handedly.
| Team | 1st (+/-) | 2nd (+/-) | 3rd (+/-) | 4th (+/-) | Total (+/-) |
| Atlanta Dream | -35 | 29 | -5 | 101 | 90 |
| Chicago Sky | -64 | 13 | -15 | 0 | -74 |
| Connecticut Sun | -36 | -40 | -32 | -64 | -176 |
| Dallas Wings | 11 | -5 | 68 | -1 | 73 |
| Golden State Valkyries | 36 | 91 | -45 | 18 | 100 |
| Indiana Fever | 44 | -1 | 8 | 4 | 61 |
| Las Vegas Aces | 34 | -4 | 37 | -16 | 51 |
| Los Angeles Sparks | -28 | -20 | 8 | -17 | -48 |
| Minnesota Lynx | 58 | 62 | 48 | 33 | 201 |
| New York Liberty | 18 | 43 | 49 | -16 | 99 |
| Phoenix Mercury | 13 | -47 | -15 | -21 | -79 |
| Portland Fire | -17 | -49 | -33 | 0 | -99 |
| Seattle Storm | -39 | -12 | -47 | -8 | -106 |
| Toronto Tempo | 13 | -48 | -15 | 9 | -37 |
| Washington Mystics | -8 | -12 | -11 | -22 | -56 |
The next closest +/- total for any team in any quarter is the 91 mark by the Valkyries in the second quarter. After that, it dips down to 68 by the Dallas Wings in the third quarter.
To put it in context: Since 2010, there are only five teams who had a +/- higher than 100 in the fourth quarter for an entire season. Those teams are the 2024 New York Liberty (135), 2021 Las Vegas Aces (112) and Minnesota Lynx (110), 2012 Minnesota Lynx (142) and the 2010 Seattle Storm (116). Of those teams, three of them won the title or made it to the WNBA Finals in that same season.
That’s the opposite of how the 2025 Atlanta Dream season went. While yes, they had a 79 +/- in the fourth quarter in 2025, the Dream were the worst team in the league in the final two minutes of the game after dominating the first 38 minutes.
It’s something that Karl Smesko identified during the offseason and preached all through training camp: They must get better at ending games.
“We were the No. 1 team in the league last year for the first 38 minutes. In the last two minutes, they were one of the last teams, and we wanted to make sure we put a good 40 minutes together,” Angel Reese told The IX Basketball. “So, I think it’s just important to be out there and just try to do as best as we can and execute as best as we can.”
The Dream being able to close games has been huge for the early success of a team that has title aspirations. But being able to close the games in the fashion that they are isn’t always a good thing.
“Well, oftentimes we’re coming from behind, so we’re still trying to have to fight and still trying to make it a game to try to come back and win,” Rhyne Howard told The IX Basketball. “I wouldn’t necessarily say that’s been a good thing, because we’re down, but the fact that we can do it in the fourth quarter, when it starts to matter the most, it just shows our resilience.”
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Howard is a part of a key group that has had that fourth-quarter success for the Dream. In fact, she’s one of the five starters for the Dream who are playing more than 30 minutes per game so far this season. It’s a heavy workload, and a lot of that comes down to the minutes that Smesko has his starters playing in the fourth quarter.
This fourth-quarter chart from across the league shows the most-used lineup among teams in the fourth quarter:
| Lineup Net Rating | Lineup | OFF RTG | DEF RTG | NET RTG | PACE | Min |
| Golden State | Thornton, Williams, Charles, Burton, Salaün | 116.2 | 123.1 | -6.9 | 89.35 | 20 |
| Los Angeles | Ogwumike, Hamby, Wheeler, Plum, Burrell | 119.6 | 122.9 | -3.4 | 95.78 | 24 |
| Portland | Gustafson, Carleton, Engstler, Leite, Barker | 105.9 | 107.5 | -1.6 | 88.69 | 37 |
| Toronto Tempo | Sykes, Mabrey, Sabally, Juskaite, Rice | 123.3 | 115.2 | 8.2 | 109.31 | 14 |
| Dallas Wings | Ogunbowale, Shepart, Kuier, Bueckers, Fudd | 124.1 | 128.6 | -4.4 | 86.77 | 16 |
| Washington Mystics | Austin, Amoore, Citron, McMahon, Dugalic | 100 | 90 | 10 | 104.43 | 9 |
| Las Vegas Aces | Gray, Loyd, Wilson, Young, Smith | 110.2 | 86.2 | 24 | 96.52 | 29 |
| Connecticut Sun | Nelson-Ododa, Miller, Edwards, Lacan, Rivers | 83.3 | 100 | -16.7 | 99.02 | 8 |
| New York Liberty | Laney-Hamilton, Stewart, Jones, Fiebich, Astier | 100 | 121.1 | -21.1 | 93.67 | 10 |
| Seattle Storm | Hiedeman, Melbourne, Malonga, Johnson, Fam | 107.7 | 60.9 | 46.8 | 108.47 | 11 |
| Indiana Fever | Mitchell, Cunningham, Hull, Boston, Clark | 110 | 96.3 | 13.7 | 114.81 | 12 |
| Phoenix Mercury | Bonner, Thomas, Copper, Mack, Akoa Makani | 90.2 | 81.4 | 8.8 | 93.26 | 22 |
| Atlanta Dream | Gray, Canada, Howard, Hillmon, Reese | 123.5 | 81.4 | 42.1 | 95.17 | 66 |
| Minnesota Lynx | McBride, Howard, Williams, Coffey, Miles | 105.7 | 73.6 | 32.2 | 98.92 | 42 |
| Chicago Sky | Diggins, Cloud, Stevens, Cardoso, Taylor | 58.6 | 83.9 | -25.3 | 113.98 | 13 |
Smesko likes the data.
“He’s so detailed,” Jordin Canada told reporters during a pregame interview. “He’ll have the chances of you winning a game based off of winning a jump ball.” Smesko is building a reputation as a data-nerd, too; he expects data-driven questions at press time.
“I love numbers,” Smesko said, with a smile, in response to a question from the IX Basketball about the Dream’s fourth-quarter numbers. “We’ve played well in the fourth quarter, and we’ve been in some situations where it’s been really tight and every possession matters, and it seems like we’ve locked in a little more in those situations, so we’ve been happy with our fourth-quarter execution.”
And the numbers, as shown above, give Smesko and the Dream a reason to be happy with the execution.
Only one team — the Seattle Storm — has a better net rating (the combined results of offensive rating plus defensive rating) than the Dream do. However, the unit that the Storm are running out there the most in the fourth quarter has played one-sixth as much as the Dream’s unit.
It’s impressive, but what about the other three quarters?
“I don’t want to see a play run sloppily just because it’s not the fourth quarter,” Smesko said. “We have to get more consistent through the game of executing with the pace and precision that we want.”
It isn’t like Smesko is saving up his starters for the fourth quarter. They are the only team that has five players averaging more than 30 minutes per game on the season. To put that into context, there are 22 players across the league who average more than 30 minutes per game. The Dream have five of them.
“Before the season, he [Smesko] talked about playing 40 minutes and just being able to put a full 40 minutes together,” Reese said. “Obviously, we don’t expect to play 40 minutes, but we need to put together a full 40 minutes.”
And the responsibility doesn’t just fall on the starters. Early in the season, the Dream were struggling to get production from their bench. Of late, though, players like Isobel Borlase and Te-Hina Paopao have been able to supply valuable minutes on both sides of the ball to give some of the starters a respite.
While the bench unit is averaging just 19.2 points per game — No. 10 in the league — it has the second-best +/- in the WNBA at 1.6 while playing the third-fewest minutes per game.
“We always want to get off to a good start. I think where it starts for us is what kind of pace we are pushing early,” Smesko told The IX Basketball before the Dream’s game against the Fever. “Sometimes at the beginning, maybe we’re too focused on running sets, and really, I’d rather just see us push it in transition and only really run sets on dead balls. I think if we can really emphasize getting out and pushing it early, I think we can get off to a better start.”
Smesko knows that he’s going to need to get the full 40 minutes from all of his players if the Dream are going to be able to keep up the pace that they are playing at and pushing the ball to the levels that he hopes they can.
Much of the attention on the Dream is being focused on Allisha Gray and Howard right now. Both players rank in the top four in total gravity — the WNBA’s metric that measures how much a player pulls defenders toward them above expected — at 8.5 and 9.6, respectively.
“We’ll have to know the methodology and how they came about the gravity. I mean, I understand gravity as a concept, like defenses aren’t going to leave that player, but I haven’t seen the actual study of it or how they came about the numbers,” Smesko said to The IX Basketball. “We already try to put enough gravity on the court, and so that we have more space to work. So you’d have to explain it to me and how they measure it.”
But the other element that Smesko and his coaching staff will have to figure out in the coming weeks is how Brionna Jones’ return to the lineup is going to impact the rotations throughout the game, but also within the fourth quarter.
When a top-10 player is returning, as Smesko has called Jones multiple times, a coach has a tricky choice to make — individual talent or a solidified unit that’s dominating the fourth quarter?
In four of the top five fourth-quarter units run by the Dream last year, Jones’ name appeared. So, it’s quite the decision that Smesko has ahead of him.
“Bri executes with pace and precision, so I just expect that there’ll be a little bit of shifting around in roles,” Smesko told The IX Basketball. “We’re trying to keep that to a minimum intentionally right now, so that it’s not — there’s always going to be a transition when you add someone of her talent in with the group, but we’re trying to make it so that it’s something that we, in a week or so, that we could probably get right back up to speed, and because of how she plays and how smart she is, I think you know that’ll just help us be even better in fourth quarters.”
Until Jones returns — and after, really — the goal remains the same; put together a full 40 minutes of basketball. The Dream haven’t done that quite yet, but in those last 10 minutes, they are as good — or better — than any other team in the league.
As for the rest of those 30 minutes, well, as long as the Dream’s winning percentage remains what it is, it’s easy to overlook those. For now.
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