There were a lot of naysayers talking about the Atlanta Dream's 2025 season began. Despite having made preseason transactions that brought Brittney Griner, Brionna Jones, and Shatori Walker-Kimbrough by way of free agency and adding Te-Hina Paopao and Taylor Thierry to the fold by way of the draft, there seemed to be plenty stacked up against Atlanta. For starters, the team replaced Tanisha Wright with Karl Smesko, who only had experience coaching at the collegiate level, and they hadn't advanced past the first round of playoffs since 2018.
But if the Dream knew everyone had already counted them out, they certainly haven't acted like it. The team is currently sitting very pretty as the No. 2 team in the WNBA — and doing so at a crucial time, with the end of the season on the horizon and playoffs looming.
Atlanta's recent win over the Storm and the team's overall 21-11 win/loss record presents a necessary question: will the Dream end up in the Finals this year?
Atlanta's last Finals match was in 2013
The last time the Dream played in the semifinals was 2018, and the team went down 86-81 to the Mystics. The last time the team touched a Finals match was all the way back in 2013.
The Dream finished second in the Eastern Conference with a 17-17 record, which landed them in the playoffs against the Indiana Fever. Atlanta deftly swept Indiana, which put the team on track to face the Minnesota Lynx in the Finals — and, unfortunately, they were immediately and spectacularly swept.
A return to the Finals could see a rematch of the same scenario. To the surprise of absolutely no one who has been paying attention, the Lynx became the first team to secure a spot in the 2025 playoffs Wednesday.
The 2025 WNBA playoffs race is shaping up to be exciting
Though the rest of the playoffs field isn't yet set, it's absolutely likely the top four teams will include the Dream, Liberty, and Mercury. The final four will likely be made up of some combination of the Aces, the Fever, the Valkyries, the Storm and the Sparks (a sentence in and of itself that would have been difficult to believe based on how some of the teams were playing).
A handful of games will have an outsized impact on what that final line-up will look like. These include the August 19 match between the Lynx and Liberty (the final of the season between these two), August 23's Liberty and Dream bout in Atlanta, and the September 9 game between the Valkyries and the Storm.