The deadline passes.
It’s done: Damiris Dantas will be a member of the Minnesota Lynx, a league source has confirmed to High Post Hoops.
Dantas signed an offer sheet, as a restricted free agent, early this week, giving her prior team, the Atlanta Dream, four days to match.
At 5 PM EST on Friday, that period will lapse, and when it does, the Lynx have themselves a brand new big. The Dream will not match, High Post Hoops has learned, making that 5 PM deadline a formality.
Dantas is expected to play both the four and the five for Minnesota, backing up Sylvia Fowles and either supplementing Rebekah Brunson or replacing her as a starting power forward, depending on what decision the five-time WNBA champion makes about continuing her playing career.
For Dantas, it is a return home of sorts. The Lynx made Dantas the 12th pick in the 2012 WNBA Draft, and she played 2014 and 2015 in Minnesota for Cheryl Reeve, before the Lynx dealt her to Atlanta in a three-team deal that netted Fowles.
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Dantas, who only turned 26 in November, has expanded her game considerably since that time, taking more threes and moving in the general direction of the league as a whole, which is expecting more versatility than ever from its bigs.
Dantas played in 19 games for the Dream last season, and would have faced a daunting task to get into a rotation of bigs that already includes Elizabeth Williams, Imani McGee-Stafford and Monique Billings.
Previously, I detailed here why it was so difficult for Atlanta to match the offer.
Instead, she gets to be part of a Lynx team that is still redefining what their offensive and defensive flow will look like in a season that won’t include Lindsay Whalen or Maya Moore, something no Lynx team has faced since Barack Obama’s first year in office.
A frontline of Fowles, Dantas and Karima Christmas-Kelly is a new look for sure, but also provides stout defense and a variety of offensive looks. Doom, in other words, has not come to Minnesota.