The Atlanta Dream’s latest win came with the same late stamp that has defined their start: they moved to 10-4 on Thursday night by beating the Indiana Fever and won the fourth quarter for the 11th time in their first 14 games.
That kind of closing run is the reason Allisha Gray is being searched now, because the Dream have turned the last period into their best one by a wide margin. Their fourth-quarter plus-minus through 14 games is 79, which already sits ahead of the next closest quarter mark in the league, 91 by the Valkyries in the second quarter. The Dallas Wings are at 68 in the third quarter, and the gap shows how far Atlanta has pulled away from everyone else in the game’s final stretch.
The numbers become even sharper when measured against full seasons. Since 2010, only five teams have finished an entire season with a fourth-quarter plus-minus above 100, and three of them went on to win the title or reach the WNBA Finals. The 2024 New York Liberty finished at 135, the 2021 Las Vegas Aces at 112, the 2021 Minnesota Lynx at 110, the 2012 Minnesota Lynx at 142 and the 2010 Seattle Storm at 116. Atlanta is not there yet, but the pace is unusual enough to be mentioned in the same breath.
The backstory matters because this was supposed to be the part of the game that hurt them. The Dream finished 2025 with a 79 plus-minus in the fourth quarter and were the worst team in the league in the final two minutes, which is why Karl Smesko spent the offseason and training camp pushing the group to end games better. Angel Reese echoed that idea by saying the goal was to put together a good 40 minutes, not just play well for 38 and fade late.
That is where the cleanest version of Atlanta’s surge starts to blur. Rhyne Howard said the team is often coming from behind in the fourth quarter, which means the late success does not always reflect control so much as recovery. Howard said the group’s resilience shows up when the game starts to matter most, but she also added that being down is not ideal, even if the team keeps finding a way back.
The Dream are still winning those minutes, and that is the part that matters in the standings. Howard is one of five starters playing more than 30 minutes per game, and the load on that group helps explain why Atlanta keeps showing up late with enough left to finish. The unanswered piece is how often that edge holds when the Dream are already ahead entering the fourth, because their record in that quarter says they can close; Howard’s view says they are still doing it the hard way.
