COLLEGE PARK, Ga. \u2014 Allisha Gray scored 26 points, including a career-high seven 3-pointers, and Naz Hillmon had 18 points and nine rebounds in her first start of the season as the Atlanta Dream beat the Phoenix Mercury 96-72 on Friday night.<\/p>\n
Atlanta scored 34 points in the first quarter after making 62% of its shots, including 8 for 11 from 3-point range. Gray had 14 points in the quarter\u2014 a career-high for any quarter \u2014 and Maya Caldwell added 11 to outscore Phoenix\u2019s 23 points. The Dream\u2019s eight 3-pointers tied a franchise record for any quarter.<\/p>\n
The Dream extended their lead to 58-42 at halftime behind 16 points and four 3-pointers by Gray. A 9-0 run to begin the third quarter made it 67-42 before Phoenix made its first basket of the half with 6:30 left.<\/p>\n
Atlanta had 84 points and 12 3-pointers entering the fourth.<\/p>\n
Brionna Jones had 16 points and eight rebounds, and Caldwell added a season-high 14 points for Atlanta (17-11). Gray was 8 for 12 from the floor, including 7 for 9 from 3-point range, to reach 25-plus points for the seventh time this season. Brittney Griner (neck) and Rhyne Howard (left knee) did not play.<\/p>\n
Kahleah Copper led Phoenix (16-11) with 19 points. Alyssa Thomas had 12 points and 10 rebounds. Thomas moved into 13th in league history with 2,579 career rebounds.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"COLLEGE PARK, Ga. \u2014 Allisha Gray scored 26 points, including a career-high seven 3-pointers, and Naz Hillmon had…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":54224,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[99,434],"class_list":["post-54223","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\/54223","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=54223"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54223\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/54224"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54223"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54223"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54223"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}