By Sydney Gibbs

Chennedy Carter banked a three-pointer at the final buzzer, but it wasn’t enough to pull out the win as the Atlanta Dream suffered their third consecutive loss and fell to the Seattle Storm, 93-92, on Thursday night. 

“A lot of positives to take from it but I think we’re too good to start talking about moral victories,” said head coach Nicki Collen following the game. “I hope that us coming back and some of the good things we did builds confidence in our players, but we got to put four quarters together. We were up 15-8 and then before you knew it, it was 31-16 so you just can’t get up and claw your way back from a team that’s this good.” 

The Dream started off balanced for the first few minutes of the game, but the offense slowly began deteriorating and Atlanta stopped making the easy and the hard shots. Seattle shot incredibly well from the floor — 68.4 percent — while Atlanta lost their rhythm and finished the first quarter shooting 35.3 percent. The Storm capitalized off the Dream’s miscues on both ends of the floor and outscored the Dream, 31-16 in the first frame. 

After the first 10 minutes, Atlanta started to get back into the swing of things and slowly started to climb out of the hole they dug themselves in. Despite still trailing by double digits through the end of the third quarter, the Dream showed persistent energy. Each quarter marked drastic improvement for the Dream and began to settle in. 

Atlanta busted out an 18-4 run that started towards the end of the third and lasted halfway through the fourth. Elizabeth Williams’ 3-foot layup with 6:21 remaining gave the Dream their first lead since the start of the game. The Storm repossessed the lead with two free throws from Breanna Stewart to go up 72-71, and made the shots when it counted the most.

The Dream hung on until the very end but never retrieved the lead. 

“I think we started to really guard,” said Collen. “We started out struggling to get matched up in transition and we were losing Stewie [Breanna Stewart], she had 12 early points. Once again it’s back to back games where when you look at the stat sheet we shot it better from the field, we shot it better from three, [and] we shot it better from the free throw line. We turned it over too much, it’s our Achilles heel obviously.”

Stewart went into the break with 12 points and came into the second half and scored 15. The Storm finished the game with a balanced scoring effort by four out of five starters –– scoring in the double digits. Jewell Lloyd had 20 points, while Jordan Canada and Alysha Clark had 14 and 13, respectively. 

Carter had another powerful offensive outing and scored a season-high 35 points with seven assists and three rebounds to match — setting the franchise record for most points by a rookie. Betnijah Laney added 20 points and Courtney Williams came off the bench with 13 points and 10 rebounds for her sixth career double-double.

The Dream battled back from as much as a 17-point deficit. Through six games thus far, there’s a small sense of moral victory in a loss like this one but expectations are always going to be higher. 

“I expect a little bit more for us,” said Carter. “I went into the locker room and I told our team, that shows how good we really are. We were this close, everyone came in and gave us something that we needed. Clutch shots, clutch minutes, rebounds [and] boards –– I think when we’re all on the same page we can do something special.”