The Dream are in an absolute free fall

Another week of WNBA action is behind us and there’s really just one major storyline at the moment: the freefalling Atlanta Dream, who have now lost five games in a row. Sure, other things are happening around the league, but Atlanta’s struggles are the defining issue of this past week.

How far do the Dream fall in this week’s power rankings? And what’s going on with this Atlanta team?

WNBA Power Rankings, Week 9

What’s wrong with the Atlanta Dream?

Five consecutive losses for the Atlanta Dream have the team all the way down to seventh in the overall standings. While I’d expect the slide to stop before Atlanta loses out on a playoff spot, this past week has really revealed a major issue for this team.

That issue? Well, it’s probably that the team is shooting 26.0 percent from 3-point range over the last five games. Concerns about 3-point shooting were the primary worry entering the 2026 season, but Atlanta appeared to be doing just enough from deep that, combined with the team’s performance elsewhere on the court, things were going fine. You could even make a strong argument that the team deserved three All-Star starters instead of the zero they actually ended up with.

But the shooting has fallen off enough over this stretch that the Dream have to be seriously concerned going forward. How can that be fixed? Well…the only realistic way would be for Allisha Gray to fix her shot. A 38.4 percent shooter from deep in 2025, Gray is down to just 29.8 percent this season. On a roster that lacks shooting, she has to start stepping up more.

The Mystics look like a playoff team…most of the time

It’s a little hard to make sense of this Washington Mystics team. Its won three of its past four games, including a victory over Minnesota followed by the team only losing by two points in the rematch.

But then the team scored just 57 points in a loss to the league’s worst team, Connecticut.

There’s clearly some consistency issues at play here, which makes sense for a team that is giving heavy minutes to Michaela Onyenwere, Cotie McMahon and Georgia Amoore, three players who are good but would ideally be the sixth or seventh-best players on a contender. However, the Sonia Citron, Kiki Iriafen and Shakira Austin trio is well on its way to being one of the best three-player groupings in the league.

The team has a negative net rating when the three share the floor because of defensive issues, but the offense really hums when all three are out there, with an offensive rating of 107.2 in 249 minutes together. Obviously they’ll need to get the defense dialed in at some point to be true contenders, but this grouping is good enough for the Mystics to maintain their current level of play as the No. 8 seed.

Don’t let Chicago’s wins trick you

The Chicago Sky have won two of their past four games and took both in fairly dominant fashion, but don’t be fooled here: both wins were against the Portland Fire, and Chicago followed that with back-to-back losses to the Las Vegas Aces, albeit closer losses than you might expect.

I’ve seen some chatter about the Sky turning things around with Courtney Vandersloot back and it’s true that her return has made Chicago better, but not so much better that we need to expect a playoff run out of this team or anything. It’s still a very flawed roster.

The best case at this point is that Chicago plays tough against good teams and occasionally sneaks out a win. Sydney Taylor’s shooting has been a nice development, but the lack of reliable frontcourt depth is an issue that’s probably too big to realistically solve at this point, though I wouldn’t put it past this front office to try by being buyers at the deadline when they should be sellers.

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