{"id":280931,"date":"2025-11-09T08:36:25","date_gmt":"2025-11-09T08:36:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/280931\/"},"modified":"2025-11-09T08:36:25","modified_gmt":"2025-11-09T08:36:25","slug":"fighting-for-a-playoff-spot-sparks-fall-to-the-dream","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/280931\/","title":{"rendered":"Fighting for a playoff spot, Sparks fall to the Dream"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

ATLANTA\u00a0\u2014\u00a0Rhyne Howard scored 19 points, Brionna Jones had 16 points and 13 rebounds for her 12th double-double of the season, and the Atlanta Dream beat the Sparks 86-75 on Wednesday night<\/a> to move into sole possession of second place in the WNBA standings.<\/p>\n

The Sparks (19-21) trails Indiana (21-20) by a game and a half for the eighth and final playoff spot<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Atlanta (27-14), which has won five of its last six games, moved a half-game ahead of Las Vegas (26-14) and Phoenix (26-14) with three regular-season games remaining.<\/p>\n

The Dream play the Sparks<\/a> again Friday, followed by a two-game series with Connecticut to end the season. The Sparks have four games remaining with two of them at home.<\/p>\n

Dearica Hamby had 21 points, nine rebounds and four assists for the Sparks. Kelsey Plum had 18 points and seven assists, and Rickea Jackson scored 15.<\/p>\n

Naz Hillmon added 15 points and Maya Caldwell scored 14 for Atlanta. Former UCLA star Jordin Canada recorded her first double-double this season with 10 points and 10 assists.<\/p>\n

The Sparks scored the opening 10 points of the game as Atlanta missed its first seven field goals. But the Dream closed the quarter on a 12-3 run to take a 26-24 lead after one. Atlanta started the second quarter on a 15-3 run to build a 41-27 lead.<\/p>\n

Atlanta led 53-41 at the break behind Howard\u2019s 12 points and three three-pointers. The Dream led by at least eight points the entire second half.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ATLANTA\u00a0\u2014\u00a0Rhyne Howard scored 19 points, Brionna Jones had 16 points and 13 rebounds for her 12th double-double of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":280932,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[24796,3444,2000,148720,5460,4233,89083,13544,9532,17589,18118,19630,5190,31878,23629,99,434],"class_list":["post-280931","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wnba","tag-assist","tag-atlanta-dream","tag-connecticut","tag-first-double-double","tag-game","tag-lead","tag-playoff-spot","tag-point","tag-quarter","tag-rebound","tag-rhyne-howard","tag-run","tag-season","tag-spark","tag-sparks","tag-sports","tag-wnba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280931","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=280931"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280931\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/280932"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=280931"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=280931"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=280931"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}