Allisha Gray has the 'ultimate green light' in Atlanta, and she's making the Dream go

Yahoo

2 days ago

ATLANTA — There are no platitudes. Allisha Gray is to the point, skirting the fluff for wholesomely direct and concise answers.
When a reporter asks about the postgame face care routine: 'I just take a good shower.'
Advertisement
About climbing interest in women's basketball and the crowd behind her at the 2024 All-Star skills competitions: 'It's very cool. That made me very happy.'
And on the 2023 trade that sent her to Atlanta, where she has developed into a top-15 player the front office saw in the data projections two years ago, she succinctly lists why it's 'one of the best places I could ever land in my career.'
'I've been a two-time All-Star, looking to make it three-time,' Gray told Yahoo Sports before a 19-point drubbing of the Indiana Fever at home earlier this month. '[I'm] getting a lot more accolades since I've been to Atlanta [and] a lot of people [are] starting to know who I am.'
Despite a national championship with South Carolina in 2017, the WNBA Rookie of the Year award months later, and an Olympic gold medal, Gray bubbled under the radar in Dallas, which drafted her fourth overall.
Advertisement
There is no more coherent proof of her emergence than the early 2025 All-Star fan voting results released last week, listing her 14th between fan-favorite Angel Reese and 2021 MVP Jonquel Jones. Fan returns, which make up 50% of the All-Star voting block, are indicators of both production as well as awareness. Those factors converged in Atlanta.
Allisha Gray is well on her way to her third All-Star nod this season. (Photo by Andrew J. Clark/ISI Photos via Getty Images)
(Andrew J. Clark/ISI Photos via Getty Images)
Gray is averaging career-highs in almost all traditional categories, fueled by 20.1 points per game, good for sixth in the league. A few more made free throws and she'd have a 50/40/90 shooting season through the schedule's first quarter. She's shooting 45.1% from the perimeter (ninth) on an 11th-best 5.9 attempts per game.
And on June 3, she earned the first Player of the Week honor of her nine-year career, plus Player of the Month for May. A second Player of the Week honor landed on June 17 after leading the Dream to a 3-0 record with wins over Indiana, Chicago and Washington.
Advertisement
'She's one of my favorite players in this league,' Fever head coach Stephanie White said after Gray's balanced 23-point night in early June.
The coach and TV analysts' reasons for this are lengthy: aggressive to the rim, strong 3-point shooting, reaching the free throw line, using her size, playing off her teammates.
'I just think that she's incredibly talented, she's gotten better every year [and] she continues to just allow the game to come to her,' White said. 'She's just a tough matchup.'
Gray's 32 points against Washington were a career-best and the first 30-point game of her career. The next game, she moved into fourth on the franchise's all-time 3-pointers list by overtaking co-owner Renee Montgomery.
Advertisement
The background of her success is simple.
'In my three years here, I feel I've had the ultimate green light,' Gray said.
When given it, she goes. It is all the more true in Smesko-ball, the term coined for first-year head coach Karl Smesko's five-out, all shooters offense he brought from Florida Gulf Coast. Players, including Gray, have praised the free-flowing nature of the offense that allows them to play rather than think too much.
The results are clear. Atlanta is fourth in the WNBA standings at 10-4, forcing its way into title talk while Gray quietly enters the league MVP conversation. She leads the league in win shares at 3.2 as of Tuesday morning, according to Her Hoop Stats
Advertisement
'She likes being in a place where she has a lot of freedom and can just look for her opportunities to attack and create shots, rather than just necessarily have to run a play every time down,' Smesko said. 'She's been one of the best players in the league so far this year. She's just been outstanding.'
Six years into a Wings tenure bookended by Rookie of the Year and a Defensive Player of the Year vote, but lacking much else, Gray went in search of a fresh start.
'Being in one place so long, you begin to get comfortable,' Gray told Yahoo Sports.
The chatter that she wanted a new home reached Dan Padover, entering his second season as Dream general manager. The Wings were willing to work with Gray on a trade since she had one year left on her extension, and they wanted two first-round picks in return.
Advertisement
'At the time it was a pretty big risk in the sense that we were rebuilding and we wanted to be patient, but we also wanted to take advantage of opportunities as they arose,' Dream general manager Dan Padover told Yahoo Sports
Padover joined the Dream front office in October 2021, months after the franchise changed ownership from former Senator Kelly Loeffler. Atlanta lost more than two-thirds of its games in each of the preceding three seasons, the worst stretch in the franchise's history. It was the only time the Dream had not won double-digit games since its inaugural 4-20 season in 2008.
'No doubt when we came in, we were flatlined at the bottom and had to figure out a way to inject some life into this franchise,' Padover said.
Advertisement
The first came ahead of the 2022 draft when they traded for the Mystics' No. 1 overall pick and selected guard Rhyne Howard. Padover was looking for someone to pair with her in the short and long term. He had heard good things about Gray from former South Carolina teammate A'ja Wilson while in Las Vegas, where he won back-to-back Executive of the Year awards with the Aces.
That the guard grew up two hours southeast in Sandersville, Georgia, didn't hurt, either. The most crucial piece was not her past, but rather where the Dream saw her going as she reached the peak of her career.
'The biggest thing from us was, just from a value perspective, all the data told us and all our models told us that she was an extremely undervalued player and could be a top-15, top-20 player in this league and wasn't being utilized like that,' Padover said.
Gray averaged 13.5 points per game in Dallas with only two individual top-10 marks: a fourth-best 52 steals in 2017 (2.8 steal percentage ranked eighth) and an eight-best 44 the following year. The franchise cycled through four different coaches combining for a 81-111 record (.422) from 2017-22, earned a No. 1 pick that didn't pan out in a ho-hum 2021 WNBA Draft, lived their lives in the lottery mix, and endured messy exits with their veteran standouts. It was a franchise continuously building out instead of up.
Advertisement
The Dream sent the 2023 No. 3 pick, which Dallas used on Villanova all-time scorer Maddy Siegrist, and a 2025 first-round pick. Dallas dealt that 2025 first-rounder to Washington the night of the 2023 draft to acquire the rights to Stephanie Soares, a 6-foot-6 Iowa State prospect high on upside.
After missing the 2023 season with an ACL injury, Soares played three games for Dallas in 2024 before the team waived her. The Mystics drafted point guard Georgia Amoore, who sustained an ACL injury in training camp, at No. 6 as part of their loaded 2025 rookie class playing quality early minutes.
'I think it was a great move for Lish (Allisha), and I think it was a phenomenal move for us,' Padover said. '[I'm] really, really happy we did it and really, really happy with how much Lish has just embraced Atlanta and come into her own here.'
In Gray's consideration, the flourishing of her game in Atlanta demonstrates the grass can be greener on the other side.
Advertisement
'Ever since I've been here I've been an All-Star, I've had fun, I've improved every year as a player,' Gray said. 'That just shows sometimes you've got to take that leap of faith to get what you want in life.'
Gray stacked career-bests and individual accolades in her first two Atlanta seasons. Her 17.1 points per game scoring average in 2023 stood as her best until this year, and she's averaged more assists than any season in Dallas. She won the 2024 Athletes Unlimited individual title with a record-shattering performance in leaderboard points and scoring average, as well as leading the league in total points, free throws and 3-pointers.
Advertisement
In Phoenix a year ago at the most-watched All-Star Game in league history, she headlined the first night with wins in both the skills competition and the 3-point contest. The next night, she poured in 16 points off the bench as Team WNBA's second-highest scorer in an upset of the Olympic national team.
But the Dream still barely made the playoffs, winning their final three games to sneak into the No. 8 seed for a second consecutive year. They finished 15-25, prompting the firing of third-year head coach Tanisha Wright.
A month later — and days into the collegiate season — the Dream hired Smesko, the longtime Florida Gulf Coast head coach who dubbed all his players 'shooters.'
'Ultimately, we looked at the talent we had and the talent we wanted to get,' Padover said. 'And we wanted to put our players in the best possible position to succeed and I think Karl has had a long track record of getting the most out of players.'
Advertisement
Gray's first impression of her new head coach was purely her style: 'A cool person off the court and then on the court it was cool, too.' The two had dinner in Miami, where Gray averaged 19.1 points, 5.5 rebounds and 2.7 assists per game for Unrivaled's Lunar Owls club.
'He loves the 3 ball and that's right down my alley,' Gray said. 'So, I loved it. He, yeah, he gave me the green light on day one.'
For the first time in Atlanta's rebuild, Padover didn't have to work trades to draw talent. Free agents were interested in the Dream, and Gray's years in the ear of Phoenix Mercury center Brittney Griner paid off.
'BG, if you ever get tired of Phoenix, you can come to Atlanta,' Gray recalled telling her. 'We'd love to have you.'
Brittney Griner (center) joined Allisha Gray (right) and Rhyne Howard in Atlanta this season. (Photo by)
(Dustin Satloff via Getty Images)
Brionna Jones, another top center on the free agency board out of Connecticut, also signed. The splashy free agency additions frequently seen around the league since 2021 finally hit the ATL.
Advertisement
'I've always said, players want to play with other players,' Padover said. 'We can do whatever we want to do, but ultimately players look around at who's on the team and they want to go with players they want to play with.'
The roster's versatility and presence of two of the game's best bigs on the floor at the same time creates increased opportunities for the guards. And their ability to work off the other developed quickly, Smesko said. A quarter of the way into the season, the team is beginning to understand itself better.
At 85.5 points per game, the Dream are sandwiched between the 2024 Finals opponents believed to be on a collision course for a rematch. The reigning champion Liberty average 88.3 points, and the Minnesota Lynx average 84.8. Atlanta limits turnovers better than anyone.
It also has yet to test itself against those two powerhouses, with the exception of a five-point loss to New York that dropped the Dream out of clinching the Commissioner's Cup berth. They'll face the Lynx, Liberty and Storm over the next week, with the surprising expansion Golden State Valkyries and a fourth match with the Fever to follow.
Advertisement
'I think we have a group right now that can compete,' Padover said. 'What that means? Too soon to say. Our goal is to get better every month and hopefully by the end of this year, we can do our best in the postseason. But overall we feel like this is the most competitive group we have.'
Much of that falls on the annual leveling up of Gray. Beginning with a third consecutive All-Star nod she is in position to receive, her goals are sharp.
'All-Star. All-WNBA,' Gray said. 'Hopefully competing for a championship.'