After the Atlanta Dream lost to the Indiana Fever in the first round of the 2025 WNBA playoffs, Dream head coach Karl Smesko and general manager Dan Padover sat in a room to discuss their vision for the future.
They were bounced in the first round, yes, but they also had posted their best record in franchise history.
Smesko told Padover, “Let’s run it back.”
“I do think we were good enough to advance last year, and I thought we were good enough to win a championship last year, but you have to do it on the court,” Smesko told reporters last week.
By returning their core — as well as trading for forward Angel Reese — the Dream were good enough to not just advance out of the first round in 2026, but also sweep their way to the WNBA Finals. On Friday, they beat the New York Liberty 85-83 in Game 3 of the best-of-five semifinals.
The Dream haven’t lost a game since Aug. 28, and they’ll face the Golden State Valkyries in the WNBA Finals starting Oct. 17. The Valkyries swept the Dream during the regular season, but that’s not what Atlanta is focused on right now.
“First and foremost, we should be really proud of getting here. It’s really hard to get to the WNBA Finals,” Dream guard Jordin Canada told reporters after Game 3. “But I think the biggest thing is you can’t get too high [or] get too low in this moment. You have to stay level and stay steady, and we have to manage our emotions. We want to enjoy this moment. …
“It took a lot of hard work. It took staying together. So being proud of getting there, but knowing that the job is not done.”
Part of staying ready is having a “next player up” mentality. When starting guard Allisha Gray went down in Game 1 of the series against the Liberty, it shifted a lot of the Dream’s offensive and defensive plans. Gray was their top scorer and an underrated defender.
“There’s nobody that can just replace Lish,” Smesko said before Game 2 against New York. “She is one of the best players in the league, and last year [was] first-team All-WNBA. This year, she’s been even better. She contributes on both ends, so we just need everybody to do what they do and do it as well as they can.”
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Attention shifted to the play of guard Isobel Borlase and forward/guard DeWanna Bonner in filling in for Gray. But one of the key players who stepped up for the Dream the most during the semifinals didn’t have her impact measured in the box score. Instead, it was measured by doing the little things on the court.
The glue of the team, if you will.
“I’m glad you’re bringing up Naz because she does so much dirty work for us,” Smesko said about forward Naz Hillmon after she scored 12 points in Game 2. “The defense was just exceptional. The extra possessions were exceptional. She played a ton of minutes and just was fantastic today.”
But in the first and third games against the Liberty, she scored as many points as the people reading this did combined: zero.
Still, her impact made all the difference in the world because of those little things.
After Gray was ruled out, the defensive approach shifted. Rhyne Howard went from guarding Breanna Stewart to guarding Sabrina Ionescu — Gray’s assignment. Hillmon went from guarding Leonie Fiebich to guarding Stewart, the top defensive assignment.
Hillmon held Stewart at bay as much as is possible against one of the top 10 players to ever play the game. She also did the little things with her defensive rotations: taking away the cutting angles, calling out screens, switching ball screens, and putting an immediate body on a Liberty player when a shot went up.
“A lot of people might think she’s undersized, but she’s strong. She’s a dog,” Howard told The IX Sports. “She’s gonna work. Whatever assignment we give her, she’s gonna complete it to the fullest.
“Nobody really talks about the work that she’s doing because maybe she’s not scoring a lot of points. But … in a game like this, we need her to stop Stewie, and we need her to stop [Jonquel Jones]. We need her.”
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Hillmon was one of five starters to return to the Dream this season. That was part of the vision that she and Howard — players who arrived in Atlanta at the same time in 2022 — had.
“Me and Rhy talk about this often. We really got here when it was gutted. We brought in the drywall around here,” Hillmon, who was picked in the second round of the 2022 draft, told reporters on April 17. “It feels great to see how much work we put in and how people want to come to Atlanta to be a part of the culture. For us to be here from the start, it feels great to be a part of it, and it really feels like we built it.”
Months later, after dealing with injuries throughout the season to her shoulders and hamstring and taking a step back on a team filled with All-Stars, Hillmon continued to play her role. That role is a big part of why the Dream are where they are right now.
“I think when people notice how calm we are, it comes from Naz. She’s super vocal in the huddles on the court, and she’s making sure that we’re all really taking a deep breath and just focusing on what we can do,” Howard said. “She doesn’t get rattled as often, so we lean on her. Obviously, you have more outgoing people like Angel or DB, but Naz is the one oftentimes coming in and settling us down.”
And when her moment came in Game 2, she was ready for it.
With less than 30 seconds left in overtime, the Dream came out in a stacked set with Howard and Bonner on the strong side of the court, Hillmon and Reese on the weak side, and Canada running the point. The play was drawn up by assistant coach Camryn Brown.
Howard set a slipped ball screen for Canada, curling at the elbow to get the ball. Given her lethal shooting, there were two reads for her: take the shot, or if the Liberty cheated up and doubled too much, find the cutter.
Hillmon saw that Jones and Stewart were helping too much, and she got behind the Liberty defense for a wide-open layup. The pass from Howard was on the money.
“That was just like a best friend moment, because we’ve known each other for like 10 years now,” Howard said about finding a cutting Hillmon. “… That was just a read that just happened to be there. We have three people running at me. Somebody’s got to be open.
“I talked to her after the game because oftentimes she’s getting an offensive rebound and she finds me. I told her any time she’s coming to the basket, I’m finding her, the same way she finds me on the 3-point line. So I think she made a right read there, and she knew that I was going to get her the ball.”
Hillmon, as usual, was ready.
“Our coaches from the beginning drew up a really great play and gave me a little tidbit as we were walking off the court to get into it,” Hillmon told The IX Sports. “As far as what Rhy said, it’s funny. We always talk about how low she talks, but every time I get an offensive rebound, I always seem to find her because she’s always getting my attention. …
“Then she jokes back and says that she always finds me in the paint. And that was just one of those moments where she was very calm, cool and collected. She delivered the pass perfectly, and all I had to do was make sure I catch this ball and jump as high as I can to finish it. So that was all that went into that moment.”
The Dream expected her to make it. And they expected her to be there defensively on the next assignment, because that’s what Hillmon does.
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You can call her the glue, the vocal leader, the unselfish leader, but there’s another word that Howard picked.
“Being able to have her as the backbone of our team is special because not only is she super smart and has real high IQ, but she can go out there and show us what she’s expecting us to do,” Howard said. “She’s going out there getting the stop, she’s impacting the ball, she’s setting good screens. … You don’t get an assist for [screening] on the stat sheet, but we also keep track of screens, so she’s on the board for that. She’s getting a rebound in a mix of a bunch of people, or diving after a loose ball. Stuff like that.
“I think just doing all those little things and showing … how big they really are, I think that’s what helps us in the long run.”
It goes back to the dirty work that Smesko talked about. Taking the assignment that is given. Putting her team first. Wanting the team accolades over the personal ones.
That’s Naz Hillmon in a nutshell.
“I try to come in every day with an attitude of, ‘I’m going to do whatever the team needs me to do, whether that’s defense, whether that’s offense, whether that’s rebounding, and I just want to see this team win and succeed,’” Hillmon said. “I’ve been here, it feels like, from the start and the rebuild of what this program is going to be. In the beginning, we didn’t win a ton of games, and now, we’re finding that footing. And that’s always been my mindset. I want to win, and I want to be a part of that winning culture.”
That winning culture is alive and well because of players like Howard and Gray, who set the tone for bringing in players like Reese, Canada and Brionna Jones. But it’s also because of players like Hillmon, who often get overlooked because their direct impact isn’t always felt on the box score.
But the Dream know. Their fans know. And now, with the Dream heading to the biggest stage in the WNBA, the rest of the basketball-watching world will soon know, too, about the impact of the backbone of the team.
