The Atlanta Dream swept their way into the WNBA Finals without one of their best players. Getting her back could be the swing factor of the whole series.<\/p>\n
Allisha Gray, the Dream’s All-Star guard, told reporters Tuesday she is “day-to-day” after undergoing a minor procedure on her left hand. She was back on the court for shooting drills at practice, her left ring finger and pinky taped together, and she struck an optimistic tone about her progress.<\/p>\n
“Right now I’m day-to-day, I had a minor procedure,” Gray said. “Progress is great, so as of right now I’m just day-to-day, and you’ll see.”<\/p>\n
The injury dates to Game 1 of the semifinal against the New York Liberty on Oct. 4, when Gray hurt the hand deflecting a pass, briefly returned with taped fingers, then aggravated it and did not play again in the series. She missed Games 2 and 3 as Atlanta completed the 3-0 sweep on Oct. 9 \u2014 a quick closeout that bought her eight full days to heal before Game 1 on Saturday, Oct. 17.<\/p>\n
That was the plan all along, according to Rhyne Howard. After the Game 3 win, Howard revealed she had told Gray to sit the series out: “I don’t want you to play this series. We’re going to take it home,” Howard said, adding that Gray would “come back better than ever” for the Finals.<\/p>\n
Her teammates clearly missed her \u2014 and are not letting her forget it. Angel Reese said the locker room has been teasing Gray about the debt she owes them for the extra minutes they covered.<\/p>\n
“We were teasing her, telling her she owes us 40 minutes, three times,” Reese said Tuesday. “It’s really good to have her back out there, and she looks really good. Same old Lish, the killer that we know.”<\/p>\n
The numbers explain the excitement. Gray averaged 19.0 points per game in the regular season, ninth in the league, on 46.3 percent shooting. Head coach Karl Smesko called her “one of the best players in the W” and noted that beating a great New York team basically without her was a testament to everyone else raising their game \u2014 but that having her back for the Finals would be enormous.<\/p>\n
Atlanta is 5-0 in these playoffs, the only unbeaten team left. Against a Valkyries defense that just suffocated the defending champions, a fresh Allisha Gray might be the piece that tips a first-time-champion series.<\/p>\n
Sources: ESPN via WSB-TV’s Alison Mastrangelo (Oct 13, 2026); Athlon Sports (Oct 14, 2026). Stats as reported for the 2026 season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Atlanta Dream swept their way into the WNBA Finals without one of their best players. Getting her back could be the swing factor of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":194,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-193","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-angel-reese","category-wnba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vacancyatmeta.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vacancyatmeta.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vacancyatmeta.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vacancyatmeta.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vacancyatmeta.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=193"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vacancyatmeta.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":195,"href":"https:\/\/vacancyatmeta.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193\/revisions\/195"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vacancyatmeta.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/194"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vacancyatmeta.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=193"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vacancyatmeta.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=193"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vacancyatmeta.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=193"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}