When the Los Angeles Sparks come to town, the Dream know they have to pick their poison.

With a lineup that features perennial All-Stars like Nneka Ogwumike, Chiney Ogwumike and Chelsea Gray, it’s hard to limit every single one of the Sparks’ options to score. But Tuesday night, the Dream weren’t expecting Tierra Ruffin-Pratt.

“I don’t do this very often, but I was a little bit disappointed tonight,” Collen said. “I thought that we guarded really, really hard but I thought we made some mistakes.

“Ruffin-Pratt was a player that, going into this year, is not a player that makes a lot of threes and you have to pick your poison with them a little bit, so we played off her. But after she makes three or four, you can’t play off her anymore, and we didn’t adjust. She was a giant killer in this game.”

Ruffin-Pratt dropped 23 points — a career high — and went 6-of-9 from beyond the arc. Her final shot, the only shot she made all night from inside the 3-point line, was the jump shot that kept the Dream’s lead from growing past two possessions. It was the shot that got the Sparks back in it, and they didn’t slow down from there. The Sparks went on to win, 78-66.

“When you’re playing against a team that has Chelsea Gray and Nneka that can just make plays, can make individual plays late in the game, you want some cushion,” Collen said. “I thought there were multiple opportunities for us to build cushion and we missed shots, or we turned it over. … Missed box outs, things like that.

“I thought that we really could put the pedal to the medal in the fourth quarter because we had more depth than them, but we just couldn’t get enough stops to really get in transition. That little 8-0 flurry that they had obviously was the dagger and disappointing, but it got away from us before that.”

Even if the Dream had been able to get stops when they needed them, there was no guarantee they’d turn that stop into points at the other end of the floor. A season-long issue reappeared: not enough balls went in the basket. Only two 3-pointers found twine, out of 21 attempts, leaving the Dream with their worst 3-point shooting percentage of the season.

Monique Billings paced the Dream with a career-high 16 points, one of the lone bright spots for the Dream in their fifth straight loss. She finished just two rebounds shy of her second double-double.

Collen credited Billings’ success to extra work in practice just moments after remarking that the Dream’s biggest challenge after the All-Star break is getting individual players to put in the extra work necessary to make the ball go in more consistently.

“(Billings) got in the gym yesterday and went 50-for-54 on 15 to 17 footers,” Collen said. “It showed tonight. There’s always gonna be a direct correlation to repetition. She just owned the gym. I rebounded for her yesterday. I just think that when you put in the reps, you build a confidence. And then when you get those shots and you stick one, you believe the next shot’s gonna go in, and then you believe the next shot’s gonna go in.”

The Dream have eight days until their next game — a luxurious break after playing four games in the last six days. The All-Star break has the potential to be good for tired bodies and tired minds.

But there’s no question that there’s work to be done when everyone comes back in town. The Dream have just 14 games left to make a push for the playoffs. The pieces are there for success, but the offense has to consistently produce.

“We just have to score the basketball better,” Collen said. “The challenge for us coming out of the All-Star break is individually, what are they doing to get in the gym and get more shots up. Some of them do everything they possibly can. Some of them need to do more, because they’re getting opportunities and we need them. We need them to make shots if we’re gonna compete with anybody in this league.”