06.23There is Reason to Hope for Our Atlanta Dream
The Atlanta Dream became the second team in WNBA history to begin the season with a record of 0-13, matching the Detroit Shock in 2002.
And it was Detroit that delivered that 13th loss on Sunday, 97-76.
Coach Meadors is a realist. She understands that it will take time to build a strong team but with a 13-game loosing streak for the first season of franchise history can easily dissolve the early optimism.
You can hear the frustration in her words.
“I’m going to lose this year, OK?” Coach Meadors said. “We know the chances of us having a great year are not good.”
But there is still hope. Maybe not for this season although, at least 1 win would help, but when Detroit was down 13 games in 2002 they came back and won a championship in 2003. And have been a contending team ever since.
“Man, we just have to get that monkey off our back,” said Ivory Latta, who scored a career-high 26 points and 10 assists.
Betty Lennox, fifth in the league in scoring with 18.9 points, only had 5 and shot 2-for-6.
Iziane Castro Marques added 10 points.
Detroit led most of the game with the largest margin of 21 points until Plennette Pierson hit a short jumper with 1:30 left in the first half to bump that number to 23.
With 47 seconds left in the third quarter, Latta hit a 3 to cut the Detroit lead to 8. But the Shock answered with a 10-3 run, topped off by a 3 from Humphrey just before the end of the period.
The frustration runs deep in the new Dream team but they just need to put it behind them and get that first win. It will all come together after that. We as fans just need to be patient.
We definitely know that a team can be built from an 0-13 team to a championship team. Bill Laimbeer did it, and I doubt that Laimbeer is smarter than Meadors.
June 24th, 2008 at 9:52 am