WNBA Heat Check, Atlanta Dream 9-1 in Their Last 10

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

Nobody is playing better than Atlanta Dream right now. The record says 9-1 over their last 10; the points column says even more, a +156 margin that works out to 95.2 scored and 79.6 allowed a night.

The chase belongs to Las Vegas Aces, who have gone 8-2 with a +136 margin of their own.

Keep Golden State Valkyries in the conversation too, at 8-2 over their last 10.

Some context helps: across every club in the sample, scoring sits at 85.9 points per game right now. Atlanta Dream are beating the league's own pace by 9.3 a game.

The cold end

Then there is Toronto Tempo. A 1-9 stretch is ugly on its own; pair it with a -163 points margin and it stops looking like bad luck. They are being outscored by about 16.3 points a game, and no scheduling quirk explains that away.

They have company at the cold end: Connecticut Sun, 2-8 over the same window.

In between the extremes it gets crowded, Indiana Fever at 5-5 and Minnesota Lynx at 5-5 are basically sharing a seat, and the next series either way will split them.

The board

The top of the ledger, at a glance:

The fine print

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.