A Daunting Damiris Dantas deal for Dream lobbed by Lynx

Another day, another Lynx signing.

The Minnesota Lynx have agreed to terms with restricted free agent Damiris Dantas, another step in the massively busy free agency period for Cheryl Reeve. Kent Youngblood had the story first.

This one has many layers to it, so let’s take each in turn.

First there’s the fit itself. The Lynx bringing in Dantas is itself pretty unsurprising. Reeve and the Lynx drafted her in the first round back in 2012. They only dealt her, reluctantly, in 2015 as part of the Sylvia Fowles deal, understandable considering Fowles is the best five in the history of the league.

But Dantas provides more of what Reeve has expressed a need for—athleticism, size and the ability to throw different matchups at opposing frontlines. The 6’3 Dantas not only stretches out beyond the three-point line — with mixed results, but this is a Lynx staff that specializes in enhancing that skill — she is another body to throw at opposing fours and fives to limit the wear and tear on Fowles while providing either a fallback for Rebekah Brunson, should she not return, or a backup the roster sorely lacked for her in 2018.

Here’s why the smart money is on Dantas sticking around in Minnesota: the Dream are virtually capped out in 2019 already, with more than $830,000 committed even before they re-signed Blake Dietrick this weekend.

But more important: they also have six contracts with full protection, matching the maximum for a WNBA roster. There are their five starters — Angel McCoughtry, Tiffany Hayes, Renee Montgomery, Elizabeth Williams and Jessica Breland — plus Alex Bentley, acquired midseason 2018 for Layshia Clarendon. The offer sheet with Dantas also includes full protection.

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Now the Dream have four days to trade one of the six, a group that helped lead Atlanta to within a game of the WNBA Finals, or to let Dantas go to Minnesota. In some ways, it can almost be considered compensation for Montgomery, who left the Lynx last season for a starting job with the Dream.

Notably, it puts the Lynx in the opposite position they faced last winter, when Natasha Howard signed with the Seattle Storm, and the Lynx elected not to break up the core of a team that had just won a WNBA title, instead letting Howard go to a place she’d have a chance to play regularly.

A Dantas addition to Karima Christmas-Kelly, signed Friday as an unrestricted free agent on the first day allowed, helps bring the Reeve approach to team-building into focus. In both cases, she’s added players under 30 years old who can defend, rebound, pass (a double-digit assist percentage last season, 10.8%) and stretch the floor, true two-way players on a team that struggled at times with offense/defense tradeoffs.

The Lynx also retained Seimone Augustus on Saturday, but that’s a different story altogether: the franchise icon is sui generis.

But what’s different here is Reeve exploiting the relative salary cap positions of the two teams to bring a potentially underutilized asset from another team into the fold.

There have been two other RFA offer sheets signed so far, Odyssey Sims and Natasha Cloud. In both cases, their original teams quickly matched.

Don’t expect this one to get resolved quite so soon. And there’s every chance you’ll see Damiris Dantas in Minnesota this season.