WNBA Heat Check, Atlanta Dream 8-2 in Their Last 10

Ten games is not a season, but it is a mood, and moods decide a lot of games. The current mood around WNBA: Atlanta Dream keep winning, Toronto Tempo keep losing, and everybody else lives somewhere in the weather between.

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 deep freeze

At the bottom of the temperature map sit Toronto Tempo: 1-9 in their last 10, -138 on points margin. That is about 13.8 a game in the wrong direction, and no lineup shuffle fixes it overnight.

Connecticut Sun (2-8) share the cold row, for whatever comfort that provides.

The middle of the table is where the real congestion lives: Dallas Wings (5-5) and Las Vegas Aces (5-5) are separated by almost nothing, and one good weekend reshuffles the whole neighborhood.

The board

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

One more thing

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.