The Atlanta Dream have a lot to celebrate. Not only did they get two massive wins over the Phoenix Mercury and Minnesota Lynx, but they also got big games from Shatori Walker-Kimbrough.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Dream made headlines in the offseason when they signed Brittney Griner and Brionna Jones in free agency. Adding two All-Star bigs to the roster overshadowed any other move the Dream made, including signing Walker-Kimbrough. The 30-year-old veteran joined the Dream to provide a solid bench presence alongside Maya Caldwell and Naz Hillmon<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n Walker-Kimbrough got off to a slow start but finally found her groove and helped the Dream to two big wins against tough competition.\u00a0<\/p>\n Shatori Walker-Kimbrough played her two best games of the season<\/p>\n Walker-Kimbrough produced little to start the season, especially compared to previous years. She is still only averaging 2 points, 0.8 rebounds, and 0.5 assists for the season, but she looked much improved in her last two games.\u00a0<\/p>\n First, Walker-Kimbrough dropped 11 points on 3-4 shooting from the field, one rebound, one assist, one steal, and one block in a 90-79 win over the Phoenix Mercury. She was one of four Dream players to reach double-digit points and was a major presence off the bench alongside Naz Hillmon.\u00a0<\/p>\n Walker-Kimbrough followed up her performance against Phoenix with a new season-high in scoring. She helped the Dream beat the Lynx with 12 points on 5-5 shooting from the field, one rebound, one assist, and one steal. Again, she was the Dream\u2019s leading bench scorer, outscoring every single Minnesota Lynx reserve and three of the Lynx\u2019s starters.\u00a0<\/p>\n First-year head coach Karl Smesko attributed Walker-Kimbrough\u2019s success to a change in mentality. \u201cI think she\u2019s just being more aggressive offensively,\u201d Smesko said<\/a> after the win over the Lynx. \u201cWe knew she was capable of this. I think she got off to a slow start and\u2026she started passing up some opportunities. And now she\u2019s being aggressive, looking for them.\u201d<\/p>\n The Dream\u2019s bench will be crucial in the playoffs<\/p>\n The Dream have a star-studded starting lineup. Allisha Gray, Brionna Jones, Brittney Griner, and Rhyne Howard will be the driving force behind any success the Dream will find in the playoffs. However, they will also need a reliable bench unit that can chip in when games matter the most.\u00a0<\/p>\n Maya Caldwell and Shatori Walker-Kimbrough, in particular, will have to be ready to take on a bigger role considering Rhyne Howard\u2019s injury troubles. While she has already played 19 games this season, she went down with a knee injury<\/a> in a game against the Fever earlier this month and has been out ever since.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Atlanta Dream have a lot to celebrate. Not only did they get two massive wins over the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":42754,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[99,434],"class_list":["post-42753","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wnba","tag-sports","tag-wnba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42753","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=42753"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42753\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/42754"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42753"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42753"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42753"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}