Randy

5-14. 13 pts, 6 assists, 2 stl, 2 to......26 minutes - second most this season (30 in Phoenix was the only one higher.) I'm a little surprised Chapman played her that much. Led the game in minutes.

I think you are right mule - over the past several seasons Sancho being out has spelled doom for the Dream. However, I also think that without Angel they probably don't win many games either. I don't think there is another player we can't win without. Perhaps we should ask the coach: "Coach Cooper - name the 3 players you can't win without?"* * During the home games they have a game in timeouts where players are asked to name 3 things they can live without.

Wonder if they will follow the Falcons lead and require "Personal Seat Licenses"? I guess what it comes down to is owners want a monument built to them as proof the city really wants the team. ASG probably would have asked for one too, but were afraid the city would say "Go efff yourself and leave town for all we care."

Yeah - that sounds like the problem with Phillips. Basically it seems that the whole game now is luxury suites - that drives everything. The fans in the regular seats are basically just props and noisemakers to create a sports atmosphere for the people that matter.

I didn't realize he was that old. Might be the hidden flaw I was wondering about. Not so hidden I guess.

What a complete waste of money. Phillips is excellent already, has ample parking, and is within walking distance of several major attractions in the city. Traffic can be bad anytime, anywhere in Atlanta so moving to another spot will do nothing good. Traffic is the problem that should be addressed first, not building another arena. I wouldn't be surprised to see a new one built though - but only after the new Falcons stadium is finished. Creates a lot of money floating around, which we creates a lot of possibilities for the people in charge.

I liked what I saw of him. Pretty cheap salary - surprised no one wanted him bad enough to pay more. Maybe there is a hidden flaw.

Yeah - the plan is to "get the band back together" - Belkin, Levinson, Gearon, Billy Knight+ David McDavid. Once they heard about the lawsuit they all wanted in.

The Dream have waived Erica Wheeler and Milton-Jones. This is the 48 hour period before the contracts are guaranteed for the rest of the season, so a lot of names are coming up on the waiver wire. Brittany Hyrnko anyone? Andrea Hoover? Jasmine Lister? (My choice) and I think there will be some more. We could resign both Wheeler and DMJ later, so those two may just lose one paycheck.

Now one of the minority owners is suing to stop the move. Says the majority owner (Cameron) lied and said the team would never be moved from Tulsa without a super-majority vote. The team reportedly lost over a $1 million per year in Tulsa. Unless the minority owners want to take on the full ownership of the losses, looks like Cameron is holding all the cards and Dallas move won't really be held up. Its also pretty interesting that a minority owner would rely on something he was told rather than what's in the legal documents. Seems like something like that would be spelled out pretty clearly.

Strange how his career has gone. Started out looking like he was fairly good as a rookie, and Scott didn't look like much. As time passed Scott emerged as the much better player and Jenkins simply sat on the sidelines. Did have injury problems and I guess his best year was under coach Drew. Clearly not Bud's type of player, probably due to lack of defense. Scott was never a heralded defender either but he got a lot more playing time. I predict he will have at least one good game against us sometime. Players always seem to come back to haunt their prior team.

We are now 1-3 on the road trip after losing to the Sky. Ajavon seems to have gotten out of the doghouse and Shoni seems firmly back in it. Next game is San Antonio - ought to be winnable, but they just clobbered Indiana. Both teams will have a week to get ready. SA followed by the Lynx - at their place. The Lynx have had some injuries and just made a trade, but may be in better shape by then. Never easy to win in the Twin Cities.

And unfortunately they don't seem to have that bracelet you can use to call 911. I only got to see the last 3 minutes, but that was probably enough. Seattle is one of the worse teams in the WNBA and we struggled to beat them at home, and get blown out there place. Seems like this sort of thing has happened before - play hard and well against a good team, then in a few days, have a no-show against a really bad team. End up losing 2 when they should have won at least one. Chicago is next, and there will be some days off to go back to the drawing board. Then the All Star break. We are now 1-2 on this road trip, with road games at the Sky, Stars and Lynx only the Stars look like a team we should be able to beat, but then so did the Storm. BTW - if there is a bright spot in this season its Erica Wheeler - she is putting up good numbers on good shooting and getting some assist while getting after players on d. She also seems to be the only guard we have that actually plays well in spot minutes.

Well why not start an F-League if we have to wait to long to get a d-league team. Maybe a team overseas. We can call it the Hawks Foreign Legion.

Aw man, my wingspan is only 1.0x my height. I'm a Neanderthal. DJ I wish you hadn't brought this up. I wasn't going to try it, but it was easy that a cave man could do it.

Mule - after about 15 years in pro basketball (counting her teenage years in Brazil) I'm kind of doubting Erika is going to change her shot. She's been among lead leaders in shooting percent, but her numbers are down this year. Could this be a case of Father Time starting to rear his ugly head? Henry has been playing pretty well the last few games, but unfortunately, she has butterfingers, compared to Erika's suction cups. Henry also is offensive foul prone, which makes matters worse. So, not only is a PG by committee its starting to look like its center by committee. Whoever is having a good game plays at the end, I guess.

Since the announcer said the kids were all loaded up on kool aid and twizlers maybe they won't be thinking much about the loss. Good win in a hard fought game. Cooper's guard rotation seems more and more random. The "Wheel deal' finished out the game today (+- of +20) so I guess he's going with what works. The starting PG played 5 minutes. Henry finishes out another close game instead of Erika. Anyone think we will see a starting lineup change against Seattle?

Game ready to start. Let's go Dream - send 10,000 kids home disappointed and angry today.....

Wow - there is a height inflation scandal in the NBA. How tall is LeBron really? Makes me wonder if any of the NBA all time greats were as tall as claimed. Wilt? Jabbar? Ruessl? (Of did they just start lying about size and using elevator shoes in the recent times.)

I figured the lead wouldn't last since it was built on hitting 3's. No way that would go on for a whole game. They must have let everyone foul like crazy in that 3 on 3 tournament Hayes played in. Or else, the refs don't like her. Strangest thing is the revolving door on Cooper's doghouse - Shoni out, Matee in. Really makes you wonder what's going on. Maybe the Matee at pg experiment is over.....until we lose some more games. We missed Sancho (mainly on d against Dupre) but Burdick has been a good pickup - game leader in rebounds, team leader in assists and steals. If she can add a few more baskets she can be a pretty useful player for us. On to LA. REMEMBER ITS KIDS DAY IN LA. 3 PM START. Last year I think we played a close, tough game against the 1st place Mercury, then went to last place Seattle and god blown out. Hope history doesn't repeat itself. (Always drives me crazy when our teams play well against the really good team on the road, and then follow up with a lousy game against a lousy team, and end up losing both.)

Shoni wins an election without having done anything this year. I think she may have a future in politics. Anyway, speaking of Bridezilla 1- this is going to be a tough game, though I would imagine Griner is going to have a hard time stopping herself from laughing every time she thinks about Glory Johnson suing her for $20,000 a month in alimony.

BTW - If Ajavon isn't injured - Cooper may be in the running for the George McGovern award. First he says "Shoni is our PG and a damn good one. Then he benches her. Over the weekend the AJC quoted him as saying "Ajavon is doing a fine job at PG" and then replaces her with Carter. Its just like "I'm 1000% behind Thomas Eagleton."

I guess Cooper must have seen the same thing in practice I did. Carter rocks.... Or is that Ajavon has her leg wrapped up and Wheeler banged up her knee against Tulsa. Guess they will keep us guessing. Anyway, Sancho was in street clothes, with a sore foot. Everybody else had a uniform on. It was a really exciting game. Dream crowds have been a lot better this year. Unless everyone forgets about the team in the month away, they should blow away last year's attendance numbers since they won't have 3 games at Tech (which struggled to get to 3000 or so.) The crowd was really into the game as well. Our new pickups did play well. Don't think it was on TV but Angel's chest bump on Carter (after bailing out Angel with the dagger two late in the 4th) flattened Sydney. She got up unharmed. Sometimes Angel just doesn't know how strong she is.

"Hold on to your hats" as in "We are almost at the top of the roller coaster and we are ready to go DOWNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN!"? I hope not. Anyway, I attended the Dream practice yesterday (STH perk) and learned some things: 1.) Even though I have been a basketball fan for nearly as long as Gray Mule, I've never actually seen a practice. Practice is pretty boring. I think maybe AI was right. I'm glad I went, to satisfy my curiosity, though. It probably is a lot like watching a movie being made - lots of repetition of the same scene. Not nearly as interesting as the final product. The best part was at the end, when the players shot half court shots for fine money Cooper put up. Shoni shot for Henry (and herself.) She won for Henry. Several players did hit half court shots. 2.) If you had no pre-conceived notion of what players were the best, I couldn't tell from watching practice. In fact, the players that looked best to me were Sydney Carter and Roneeka Hodges. Angel didn't look all world. Practice could be misleading. Perhaps the players worried about keeping their jobs try a lot harder. 3.) Wheeler was all in for practice so apparently she's over getting clobbered the other night. Interestingly, she doesn't do her ISO thing that much in practice...... 4.) Couldn't tell much about what kind of shape Shoni was in. She does look better than the pictures taken (I presume) on Media Day and the NBA ASG, and didn't seem to be huffing and puffing. She seems to have a good sense of humor about her situation. In the Q&A at the end one of the kids asked what her favorite food was. She said "The correct answer is fruit.....but the real answer is candy" which drew a chuckle. Having a sweet tooth is tough (I know). 5.) Our practice players seems better than our regular players, including the female - perhaps they should sign her - deadly from 3 (but rounder shape than Shoni.) Though that may be the way its set up anyway, I don't know that much about how that all works. So it was fun way to spend the morning, but I don't think i'm going to sign up for any Seniors League.....

Its only going to get tougher too. NY on Sunday, and for some reason they have pretty much had our number over the last year and a half. Then its a six game road trip, and 8 of the next 9 are on the road. The lone home game is against Phoenix (Aug 2) - who will be tough. The next home game after that will be Minnesota on Aug. 14. The weakest teams we face in this series of games are Seattle, and San Antonio - two teams we struggled to beat at home, and LA who might finally have their act together once we hit town. So -we could easily lose 8 or 9 games of the next 11. We could be 7-16 by the last third of the season. Not a good place to be. Our Dream could we become our Nightmare...... As always, I would be very happy to be wrong. And I could be. If we beat NY on Sunday it may signal that we've turned things around and would be poised to pull 5 or 6 wins out of this long series of mostly away games.