ATLANTA — At the end of August, the Atlanta Dream had won five of six games, including four on the road, and were closing in on the right to host the first round of the WNBA playoffs. Within two weeks they knocked off the defending champion in Las Vegas and the presumptive favorite to win this season in top-seeded Minnesota, with star Angel Reese recording her single-season record 29th double-double.
They looked like one of the best teams in the league — and then everything came to a screeching halt: The WNBA season paused for 17 days for the FIBA World Cup.
Reese and teammate Rhyne Howard headed overseas to compete for Team USA, with Atlanta reserves Isobel Borlase (Australia) and Pig Machine (Mali) also making their way to Berlin. But the rest of the Dream roster later met up in a coastal Florida town about 45 miles north of Miami, known more for beaches and shopping and retirees and snowbirds than basketball.
Amid the prolonged disruption to the WNBA season that threatened to kill momentum for teams, the Dream used the time to fortify theirs — thanks to a mini training camp they held in Boca Raton, Florida, during the second weekend of the FIBA break.
“It was one of my [most] favorite trips of my career,” said DeWanna Bonnera 17-year veteran. “That was the best trip. It was so fun.”
It’s no coincidence the Dream have won 10 of 11 games since the break, including Monday’s bounce-back Game 2 victory that tied the best-of-seven WNBA Finals against the Golden State Valkyries. Atlanta’s 10 consecutive wins entering Game 1, which dated to that Aug. 30 victory over the Lynx, matched the 2017 Los Angeles Sparks for the longest win streak going into the Finals in league history.
The run coincides with Bonner’s late-season signing, not insignificant in its own right. But the bulk of Atlanta’s hot stretch has also followed the Boca trip, where Bonner — who joined the Dream on Aug. 27 after a contract buyout with the Phoenix Mercury — integrated into the team and the group came together before the most important part of the season.
“You’d see people [together] that you never thought would hang out with each other — that’s just how Boca brought us closer,” second-year guard The Gray Radio said. “And when the people from FIBA came back, it was just like nothing was missed.”
Added Bonner: “It’s just been up from there with us, and we’ve been locked in since then.”
The Florida trip was far from a midseason vacation. The Dream had some of their best, most intense practices of the season at Florida Atlantic University — where the team had also trained during the 2024 Olympic break. They scrimmaged against male practice players and, without any games to rest for, had a real opportunity to go hard up and down the court.
They held daily film sessions and drilled down on the defensive principles that made them one of the best units in the league. And with Howard and Reese abroad, other players were able to step up and get more of a run.
“Everybody was just challenging everyone, and everybody was motivating everyone,” Bonner said, “and then we got off the court, and we got to go to the beach and love on each other a little bit. It was a great balance.”
The trip was planned well before Bonner’s arrival — forward Naz Hillmon suggested it and several staff and front office members agreed it was a good idea — but the timing proved fortuitous as Bonner was more fully incorporated into the mix.
“I think that break came at a great time for us,” coach Karl Smesko said.
“Even though she’s been in the league for a long time, coach uses a lot of different words in comparison to other coaches, so you have to pick up on that lingo,” Hillmon said. “His style is a little bit different, but it was great that we had a little bit of a head start and not just throwing DB in [at the end of the regular season].”
Bonner had played one game with Atlanta before the break, so Boca allowed her to better learn Smesko’s system and make up for lost time with most of her new teammates. That’s when, Paopao said, she felt Bonner take her under her wing and start getting in her ear.
“They kind of grilled me a little bit, and I grilled them,” Bonner said with a laugh. “We got a chance to understand what each other wants and each other’s goals.”
Getting to decompress and slow down a bit amid the in-season grind was a welcomed break ahead of the playoff push.
“[Boca] is a very quiet, very old town type of community,” said Paopao, who said she enjoyed the shopping in the area. “It was a very nice pace for us, and nothing too crazy.”
In Atlanta, players are more likely to go their separate ways when practice is over, but the opposite was the case in Florida. Players spent time together at the beach and pool, where they’d watch their teammates’ World Cup games. One group of players and team personnel squeezed in an 18-hole golf outing, where point guard Jordin Canada served as Allisha Gray‘s caddie.
One memorable team dinner featured a lively WNBA trivia battle organized by general manager Dan Padover. A team that included Bonner and Canada won — but guard Shatori Walker-Kimbrough still says her team was robbed over a technicality.
“I feel like when we’re in this setting [at home]we’ve got friends, we’ve got family. Obviously, we connect off the court, but it was a little bit more sitting by the beach and talking for a little bit longer,” Hillmon said. “It was definitely a great change of scenery and building a bond on and off the court.”
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Before this year, the Dream hadn’t advanced past the first round of the playoffs since 2018, years before the first key player of their current roster would arrive in Atlanta. The Finals is new territory for young stars Howard, Hillmon and Reese.
But their veteran core of Bonner, Canada and Walker-Kimbrough has combined for five WNBA titles at previous stops. Those three, along with assistant coach LaToya Sanders (who won a title with the Washington Mystics in 2019), shared what it takes to win a championship at the end of those FAU practices.
Canada, the Dream’s X factor this postseason and a two-time champion with the Seattle Stormsaid she sees achieving that on- and off-court chemistry as one of those essential qualities.
“The championship teams I’ve been a part of, we’ve gotten to know each other off the court,” Canada said. “We’ve hung out, had team dinners, just doing anything that we can to build bonds. And I think that means a lot more when you get to know this group on a deeper level outside of basketball and knowing who they are as people and what makes them go.”
Now, between Canada’s standout play, Reese’s brilliance and what was forged in that long weekend in Boca, the Dream are three wins away from winning a championship — not just with each other, but for each other.
“In moments like this, when you’re in such a heated moment or a heated series, you want to fight and you want to battle for the girl to the left and right of you,” Canada said, “because you know them on a personal level. You know them on a deeper level. And you want to do it for them.”
ESPN’s Kendra Andrews and Kareem Copeland contributed to this report.
Source: www.espn.com
