Dream vs. Wings: Rhyne Howard Drops 25 as Atlanta Closes on a 23-5 Run to Beat Dallas 86-69

With 7:35 left on Friday night, the scoreboard at Gateway Center showed something that had looked laughable an hour earlier: Dallas in front. The Wings had opened the game by missing practically everything they threw at the rim, spent two quarters digging out of the crater, and now led 64-63. If you had wandered off after the first six minutes and come back right then, you would have assumed somebody hacked the scoreboard.

Rhyne Howard fixed the glitch. Back after sitting out the previous game in the concussion protocol, she finished with 25 points and eight assists, and the Atlanta Dream slammed the door with a 23-5 closing burst to beat the Dallas Wings 86-69. That Dallas lead lasted 14 seconds. It was the only one the Wings got all night.

One for Seventeen Is a Choice

We have to begin at the beginning, because it was spectacularly grim. Dallas started 1 of 17 from the field. Azzi Fudd's 3-pointer, 6:12 into the game, was the first Wings basket of any kind, and Atlanta's lead reached 16-3 while the visitors looked like a group still stuck in airport traffic. The Dream carried a 19-9 lead into the second quarter.

Then the night got strange. Dallas strung together 10 straight points across the quarter break, including the first eight of the second period, and suddenly it was 19-17. Atlanta responded with nine in a row midway through the quarter to go up 38-25 and took a 44-31 lead to the locker room. Order restored, adults back in charge.

Not quite. The Wings hung 27 on the Dream in the third, and Awak Kuier's 26-footer with 4.2 seconds left in the period kicked off a 9-0 Dallas run that spilled into the fourth. Jessica Shepard scored, Fudd scored, Odyssey Sims scored, and a 13-point halftime cushion had become a one-point deficit.

Howard Did a Little of Everything, Then All of It

Howard's line deserves a slow read: 25 points on 7-of-12 shooting, eight assists, four steals, two blocks and a perfect 9 of 9 at the foul line. Those nine free throws topped the entire Dallas roster's six. She finished plus-18, the best mark on the floor, and she closed this game as both a scorer and a passer inside the same three-minute window, which is about as annoying as a defense's night can get.

She had help that fit around her. Allisha Gray scored 16 without making a 3, doing her damage going downhill. Angel Reese had 15 points and nine rebounds on 7-of-11 shooting, though five turnovers kept it from being a clean sheet. Jordin Canada supplied nine points, six assists and five boards, and Te-Hina Paopao drilled all three of her 3s in 13 minutes off the bench.

Dallas got almost nothing from its headliners. Paige Bueckers, who came in averaging 20.8 points, scored seven on 3-of-13 shooting. Arike Ogunbowale managed two on 1 of 11, 15 below her average. Together they shot 4 of 24 and finished minus-25 and minus-27.

The rest of the roster at least made it interesting. Kuier came off the bench and went 6 of 6 for 16 points. Sims had 14 on 5-of-6 shooting with five assists. Shepard, two nights removed from a triple-double in Chicago, grabbed 11 rebounds to go with her 10 points, six of those boards on the offensive glass. Fudd chipped in seven points and three blocks. That is a fine supporting cast. It is not a lead actor.

Fourteen Seconds of Daylight

The whole game lives in one sequence. Sims put Dallas ahead at 7:35. At 7:21, Howard scored off a Reese feed to take it right back, and that basket launched an 8-0 Atlanta run that made it 71-64 by the 5:37 mark. All the Wings could find in response was a single free throw from Kuier.

Then, at 3:41, Howard let a 24-footer fly off a pass from Naz Hillmon, and the suspense left with it. What followed was 11 straight Atlanta points in a little over two minutes. Canada drove for a layup. Howard set up Gray for two more driving layups, at 2:06 and 1:49. Howard took it in herself at 1:22, and the scoreboard read 82-65. The Dream won the fourth quarter 23-11, and the Wings, who had just spent a quarter and a half making everyone in College Park nervous, went quiet at precisely the wrong time.

Stats That Matter

• 4 of 24: Bueckers and Ogunbowale from the field. Very few teams survive that, and Dallas was not one of them.
• 55% vs. 38%: Atlanta went 34 of 62. Dallas needed 74 shots to make 28.
• 12 of 13 vs. 6 of 12: Free throws, a six-point gift the Wings handed over with their own misses.
• 54-42: Atlanta's edge in the paint, even with Dallas swatting eight shots.
• 25-18: The Wings' edge in points off turnovers. The Dream gave it away 17 times and won by 17 anyway.

Where Everybody Stands

Atlanta moves to 3-1, with the lone loss an 85-84 decision against Las Vegas on May 17. This was the Dream's first home win of the season, leaving them 1-1 at home and 2-0 on the road, and it makes two wins over Dallas in 10 days after a 77-72 result on May 12. Phoenix comes to town on Sunday.

Dallas drops to 3-3 and 2-1 away from home. A two-game winning streak, built on a 92-69 rout of Washington and that comeback in Chicago, is gone. The Wings head to New York on Sunday, and you would assume their two best scorers are already sick of watching this film.

A Great Middle Act Can't Save the Movie

Dallas scored 49 points in the two middle quarters and 20 in the other two. That is a film with a terrific second act, an opening nobody should have greenlit and an ending that sends you checking your phone. Atlanta, meanwhile, led for 99 percent of the night according to the box score and spent the other 1 percent making sure no sequel got made. Fourteen seconds of Dallas was plenty.

Stats from the official box score via ESPN. Game details as reported by the Associated Press.