Team Heat Check: Atlanta Dream Run Hot, Toronto Tempo Run Cold (WNBA)

Form is the story the standings tell slowly and the last ten games tell fast. Right now the fast version of WNBA is easy to summarize: Atlanta Dream are rolling, Toronto Tempo are reeling, and the gap between those two feelings is enormous.

Burning up

Start with Atlanta Dream. They have won 8 of their last 10, and they have not been sneaking past anyone: the points margin over that stretch is +110, which breaks down to about 97.0 scored and 86.0 allowed per game. That is the arithmetic of a team winning on merit, not on bounces.

Right behind them sit Indiana Fever, 8-2 over the same kind of stretch and +83 on points margin, quieter, but pointed the same direction.

Minnesota Lynx (8-2) round out the warm end of the ledger.

Some context helps: across every club in the sample, scoring sits at 86.7 points per game right now. Atlanta Dream are beating the league's own pace by 10.3 a game.

The cold end

Toronto Tempo are the cold front. They have gone 1-9 over their last 10, and the -138 margin underneath means the losses have not even been close, roughly 13.8 points a game the wrong way.

Connecticut Sun are not far behind on the misery index at 2-8.

Do not ignore the middle class, either: Dallas Wings (5-5) and Las Vegas Aces (5-5) sit close enough that a single hot or cold series flips their order.

The board

Here is the warm half of the form table, last ten games for every club:

Worth remembering

Records fib a little and points margins fib less. When the two columns disagree about a team, trust the margin, it is the slower liar.