Atlanta Dream

Team information

Inaugural season: 2008

Home stadium: Gateway Center Arena

Owner: Larry Gottesdiener

Team colors: Red, gray, white, blue

Overview

The Atlanta Dream joined the Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) for the league’s 2008 season. Its majority owner is Larry Gottesdiener, chairperson of the real estate private equity firm Northland. Gottesdiener acquired ownership of the team in 2021 for an undisclosed sum, taking over as principal owner from former US senator Kelly Loeffler. Former Dream player Renee Montgomery and Northland’s chief operating officer (COO) and president Suzanne Abair also bought minority stakes in the team alongside Gottesdiener.

Leading up to the ownership change, the Dream had been struggling both on and off the basketball court. During the WNBA’s 2019, 2020, and 2021 campaigns, the team sputtered to a combined record of 23 wins and 65 losses, missing the playoffs in all three seasons. The team was also embroiled in controversy when former owner Loeffler, a US Senator, expressed her disapproval after team members made public shows of support for the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement. The players responded by advocating on behalf of Loeffler’s opponent, Raphael Warnock, in Georgia’s 2021 special senatorial elections. Warnock went on to defeat Loeffler in the election, after which Loeffler sold her ownership interest in the team.

Since Loeffler’s departure, the Dream have embarked on an aggressive rebuilding phase. Under its new ownership, the team overhauled its front office, hiring Dan Padover as general manager (GM). Padover had previously served as GM of the WNBA’s Las Vegas Aces, where he won two consecutive WNBA Executive of the Year awards.

History

Atlanta had been identified as a desirable potential destination for a franchise since the WNBA’s founding in the mid-1990s. Ongoing efforts to bring a WNBA team to Georgia’s largest city materialized in 2007, when a consortium of local politicians, entrepreneurs, and business community leaders convened to hold a season ticket drive. After selling 1,200 season-ticket packages, the proposed club gained an ownership commitment from Atlanta real estate executive Ron Terwilliger. With Terwilliger in the fold, the WNBA officially announced the arrival of the Atlanta Dream as an expansion franchise in October 2007.

The team played its inaugural season in 2008, posting a record of 4 wins and 30 losses under head coach Marynell Meadors. Terwilliger remained on as owner until 2010, when Kathy Betty acquired the Dream from Terwilliger. Betty oversaw the most successful season in the team’s history to date that year, when the Dream posted a 19–15 record and made a surprise run to the WNBA Finals, where they lost to the Seattle Storm. Fans anticipated another successful season in 2011, but the Dream struggled to a 3–9 start and saw their home attendance figures plummet. Betty then sold the team to Loeffler and partner investor Mary Brock. The ownership change invigorated the team, which recovered from its slow start to finish with a 20–14 record en route to its second consecutive Eastern Conference championship. However, the Dream once again lost in the WNBA Finals, coming up short against the Minnesota Lynx, who swept the series.

In 2012, Fred Williams took over from Meadors as the Dream’s head coach. The Dream won seven of the ten games they played under Williams during the 2012 season but lost in the Eastern Conference semifinals. The following season, Williams guided the Dream to a 17–17 record and another strong playoff performance, with the team going on a surprise run to the Eastern Conference championship and its third WNBA Finals appearance in four seasons. However, the Dream once again failed to break through and claim the championship, losing to the Lynx in a sweep that mirrored the result of the clubs’ previous WNBA Finals meeting two seasons earlier.

Between 2014–2017, the Dream mainly posted middling results under head coach Michael Cooper, who took over from Williams prior to the 2014 season. Cooper’s best season as Dream head coach was his first with the team, when the Dream finished 19–15 and reached the Eastern Conference semifinals. By the end of Cooper’s run as head coach in 2017, the team had fallen to 12–22 and missed the playoffs.

Nicki Collen replaced Cooper as head coach in 2018, and Collen immediately led the team to the best regular-season record in its history to that point. The Dream went 23–11 in 2018, earning a bye to the semifinals where they were upended by the underdog Washington Mystics, who won the five-game series 3–2 on the strength of an 86–81 victory in the deciding game.

Collen remained the team’s head coach until its tumultuous 2020 season, in which the team’s 7–15 record was overshadowed by off-court drama between Dream players and Loeffler. During the summer of 2020, the Dream were playing in a “bubble” established in Florida to allow the WNBA season to continue in the midst of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. While in the bubble, the Dream donned pro-Black Lives Matter (BLM) jerseys during a game and publicly commemorated Breonna Taylor, a Black woman killed by police during a botched March 2020 raid in Louisville, Kentucky. Loeffler, a US Senator representing the Republican party, took issue with the politicized display and wrote a letter to WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert to voice her disapproval and request a league-wide mandate for players to wear American flags on their jerseys.

The spat spilled over into the election arena, with Dream players responding to Loeffler by endorsing her Democratic opponent Raphael Warnock in Georgia’s 2021 Senate elections. Warnock posted a narrow and surprising win over Loeffler, who had been projected to retain her Senate seat. Business Insider later reported that post-election research suggested that the advocacy of Dream players influenced the results of the vote.

In the election’s aftermath, Loeffler sold the team to an investment group headed by Gottesdiener. The team’s new owners immediately embarked on a complete rebuild of the franchise, which struggled to an 8–24 record in 2021. In attracting Padover to fill the team’s GM vacancy, the Dream earned the confidence of WNBA analysts, who widely characterize Padover as one of the league’s most capable and respected front-office executives.

The team's popularity translated to box office success. During the 2023 season, the Dream had the most sold-out home games in the league.

Notable players

In September 2021, the ESPN sports network unveiled its picks for the twenty-five all-time greatest players in WNBA history. The Atlanta Dream was represented in the list by Angel McCoughtry, who landed in 20th place. McCoughtry, a forward and guard, played for the Dream between 2009–2019 before joining the Las Vegas Aces in 2020. She was selected by the Dream with the first overall pick in the 2009 WNBA Draft and went on to win the league’s Rookie of the Year award after her debut season. The ESPN retrospective of McCoughtry’s career notes that she was an instrumental force in the team’s three WNBA Finals appearances between 2010–2013 and added that she led the team to championship-caliber play despite a supporting absence of star teammates. At the time of the list’s publication, McCoughtry was a two-time WNBA scoring champion and two-time member of the All-WNBA First Team. She also ranked eighth all-time in steals and is a seven-time member of the league’s All-Defensive Team.

Part-owner Renee Montgomery also ranks among the top players in franchise history. Montgomery, a guard, played the final two seasons of her WNBA career with the Dream. She was a Dream member in 2018–2019, starting all 34 of the club’s games in both seasons and posting points-per-game (PPG) averages of 10.3 in 2018 and 9.5 in 2019. Prior to joining the Dream, Montgomery was a star player with the Minnesota Lynx and Connecticut Sun. She won two WNBA championships with the Lynx, in 2015 and 2017. Prior to turning pro in the WNBA, Montgomery was a college standout at the University of Connecticut, where she won a national college championship as a member of the UConn Huskies in 2009.

Other Dream standouts include Shoni Schimmel, who was named a WNBA all-star during both of her seasons with the team (2014, 2015), and Betty Lennox, who played for the Dream in the team’s inaugural season. Lennox was a former WNBA Finals Most Valuable Player (MVP), winning the prestigious award in 2004 as a member of the league-champion Seattle Storm. Iziane Castro Marquez, a Brazilian forward and guard, also starred for the Dream during her 2008–2011 tenure with the team, marking a career high in 2010 with a 16.9 PPG average.

Bibliography

“Atlanta Dream.” Basketball Reference, 2023,

www.basketball-reference.com/wnba/teams/ATL/. Accessed 19 Mar. 2024.

“Atlanta Dream Sold to Group that Includes Former Star Renee Montgomery.” ESPN, 26 Feb. 2021, www.espn.com/wnba/story/‗/id/30969210/atlanta-dream-sold-group-includes-former-star-renee-montgomery. Accessed 11 Nov. 2021.

Cash, Meredith. “’The New Atlanta Dream:’ How the Wayward WNBA Franchise Convinced Top Talent to Embark on a Total Rebuild.” Business Insider, 25 Oct. 2021, www.insider.com/atlanta-dream-recruit-top-management-team-gm-overhaul-wnba-franchise-2021-10. Accessed 11 Nov. 2021.

Jennings, Chantel. “The Franchise: Change Keeps Coming for the Atlanta Dream.” The Athletic, 14 May 2021, theathletic.com/2584415/2021/05/14/the-franchise-change-keeps-coming-for-the-atlanta-dream/. Accessed 11 Nov. 2021.

Vance, DorMiya. "How the Atlanta Dream Gained Transformative Success Amid the WNBA's Growing Popularity." WABE, 2 Oct. 2023, www.wabe.org/how-the-atlanta-dream-gained-transformative-success-amid-the-wnbas-growing-popularity/. Accessed 19 Mar. 2024.

Young, Jabari. “Kelly Loeffler No Longer a WNBA Team Owner as NBA Approves Sale of Atlanta Dream.” CNBC, 26 Feb. 2021, www.cnbc.com/2021/02/26/atlanta-dream-sold-to-larry-gottesdiener-following-kelly-loeffler-controversy.html. Accessed 11 Nov. 2021.