After the Atlanta Dream erased a 19-point deficit against the Minnesota Lynx in their season opener, the team held a closed-door discussion.
General Manager Dan Padover posed a question to his team personnel: What was the moment of the game when the momentum swung?
Was it the two blocks by Allisha Gray and Angel Reese to close out the game?
Nope.
Was it the game-tying corner three-pointer by Naz Hillmon with 2:44 left in the game?
Also, no.
One staffer correctly answered with the play — the sequence, really — that Padover had in mind.
It came with seven minutes left in the game, after Reese took Lynx rookie forward Emma Cechová to the hole on offense, cutting the Lynx lead to 5 points on a contorting layup. On Minnesota’s ensuing possession, Reese batted the ball away, leading to a breakout layup as the Dream cut the deficit to just one score.
“That was the biggest momentum swing of the game,” Padover said.
Steals and fast-break points happen all of the time, so what made this one special?
Well, it’s a sequence that is better seen than described.
We see players swinging left and right on a player to cause deflections like it’s Tinder-live. We see players striking down at the ball, too. But swatting up at it?
When first asked if she remembered the play, Reese shook her head no. Then the video was queued up for her.
“Oh, this,” Reese said with a laugh. “My teammates remind me of it every day.”
It’s because it doesn’t happen regularly.
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Given the situation and her short window to act, Reese relied on instinct. Whatever got the job done.
Before the steal, Cechová saw Lynx rookie guard Olivia Miles wide open and rolling to the basket for what could have been a layup to bring the Minnesota lead back to three possessions. In the instant before Cechová finished loading up for an overhead pass to Miles, Reese saw her chance and that instinct kicked in.
“I mean, she put a cookie in front of your face, you gotta take it,” Reese said Friday morning at shootaround after watching the playback. “Defense is something that I really rely on, and if my shot isn’t working for me, I’m just trying to find ways to get us and keep us going, get us into it, and get me going, as well.”
When the ball went airborne, it was point guard Jordin Canada who went up in the air and came down with it before hitting Reese in stride for the lightly contested layup.
“I just saw the ball go up in the air and I saw Angel run, and I knew that I had to get it,” Canada told The IX Sports pregame on Friday. “I knew it would be a wide-open layup, so I just wanted to reward her.”
Reese said she “didn’t have a good game against Minnesota,” though she recorded her 49th career double-double with 11 points and 14 rebounds.
That’s just the standard that Reese has for herself, a standard shared by the team as a whole on the defensive end.
They want to press. They want to create turnovers. They want to create pressure.
They do this with what head coach Karl Smesko calls “surgical strikes.”
“You have to be engaged defensively at all times,” Smesko said about his approach to coaching up his team defensively. “Sometimes when you’re away from the play, or you think you’re away from the play, you kind of just kind of hang out, and we want our players looking for chances to make an impact at all times.”
Through three games, that has happened. Take Canada, for instance. Entering the Dream’s Friday, May 22, game against the Dallas Wings, Canada has recorded 10 steals over her last two games, including seven against the Aces.
So what goes into the art of getting a steal for Canada?
“It’s a combination of everything — instincts, having a feel for the game,” Canada told The IX Sports pregame on Friday night. “I think the coaches are putting me in great positions to be aware on the court of what I’m looking for and little tendencies.”
The seven steals for Canada against the Aces stood out, but her defensive play really kicked up a notch in the Dream’s second game. In that game against Dallas, Canada had three steals of different varieties.
Roll the tape.
Canada’s active hands caught Dallas’ Arike Ogunbowale napping in the first of those clips, while it was her positioning barely 30 seconds later that allowed her to hold her own when switched onto Dallas forward Jessica Shepard just long enough to jump the pass.
“I try to find, pick and choose my moments where I can attack and be smart defensively,” Canada said.
Canada is enjoying a breakout season defensively — she is already over 20% of the way to her 2025 steal total of 48 — but it’s still early, and there’s only a three-game sample at this point.
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The focus doesn’t stop with the starters. A defense-first mentality is nothing new for rookie Indya Nivar.
“Preparation. It’s knowing the scouting reports and knowing tendencies of players that really puts me a step ahead and knowing when things are going to come,” said rookie Indya Nivar, who recorded 94 steals in her senior season at the University of North Carolina. “I kind of use that and then my instincts to really get those steals or make things a lot more difficult.”
Nivar made things more difficult on the Aces when she got her first extended run of the season. She didn’t show up in the scoring column for the Dream, but she made her presence known, skying in defensively and, yes, being a perimeter menace.
Although Nivar’s shooting — and particularly her 0-for-4 night at the charity stripe — left points on the table in what wound up a 1-point loss, she remains focused on her goal.
Offense fills the seats. But Nivar knows that defense is just as important as offense.
“[Fans] come to the basketball game to see a lot of people score, but basketball is played on two ends,” Nivar said. “We have a lot of good players on our team that can score, so when I come in, I’m just trying to make an impact on the defensive end.”
It fits with the Dream’s ethos of “One Team, One Dream,” which they yell at the end of each practice.
There isn’t just one way to turn the tide of a game. It can be a brilliant display of an offense run to perfection, or, like Reese’s swipe-up steal, it can be a moment of pure instinct.
